Klatchian Coffee

It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.
—Unknown, from UseNet, modified from the Dune quote below.

While a Gargle Blaster will get you insanely drunk, Klatchian Coffee has the opposite effect. Rather than slowing down your brain, Klatchian Coffee speeds it up tremendously. In some cases, the results can be Nightmare Fuel in a cup, or just really scary to think about. Can generate Caffeine Bullet Time. May be used to demonstrate the level of a person's Must Have Caffeine addiction if Klatchian Coffee is their regular morning brew.

Possibly based on Turkish Coffee, which is an incredibly strong brew of coffee. Rather than drip or espresso it, you just boil ultra-fine ground coffee grounds until you achieve drinkable coffee .

Contrast Gargle Blaster. May overlap with Hideous Hangover Cure or Uncoffee.

Examples of Klatchian Coffee include:

Anime & Manga

  • In Serial Experiments Lain, the machine/drug Accela does exactly what it sounds like - it accelerates the brain. By 12 times.


Comics

Jon: The coffee's strong today.
(it reaches out of the cup and slaps Garfield round the face)
Garfield: Not just strong, but mean!

    • Also demonstrated by this game, made to market a Garfield-themed coffee.
  • Peter has brewed several coffee based drinks in FoxTrot that have this effect. One had Paige blinking so fast she thought there was a strobe light in the room.
    • That would be the coffee-tea. Teabags boiled in coffee instead of water. And Paige didn't just have one. She had a dozen cups.
    • Another strip had Roger pour himself a cup of coffee, which began vibrating wildly (as in, bouncing up and down on the table). Turning to Peter, he remarks, "I can always tell the mornings when you have to cram for a test."
  • Gaston Lagaffe's homemade coffee is so strong, it causes whoever drinks it to lose coordination and make uncontrollable violent gestures. After drinking a cup of it, he ended up wrecking his car.
  • One Lucky Luke album has a recipe for coffee for Real Men: "You add one drop of water for each pound of coffee. Then you add a horseshoe. If it doesn't float... add more coffee."
  • Desperate Dan's favorite coffee is strong enough to hold a spoon upright.

Film

  • In George of the Jungle, George inadvertently invokes this by eating large amounts of coffee grounds.
  • Hidalgo has a scene in which the Sheikh offers Hopkins a cup of coffee. He tries to warn Hopkins that Arabian coffee is stronger than most western preparations, but Hopkins just knocks it back. He then explains that back home, they test the coffee by tossing a horseshoe in the pot. If it stands up, the coffee's ready.
  • Hoodwinked: Near the end of the movie the squirrel gets a cup of coffee to run down the mountain and get the cops. They have to tape his message and slow it down to hear it properly.


Literature

  • Discworld is the home of the Trope Namer. Klatchian Coffee on Discworld is so potent that it can take you right through sobriety and out the other side, into a state of horrifying depressive hyper-awareness known as knurd ("drunk" spelled backwards). In order to offset its effects, Klatchian Coffee enthusiasts typically drink Desert Orakh (one of several Discworld Gargle Blasters) to make sure they're safely drunk.
    • Also from Discworld, there's "Splot", briefly featured in Making Money, a drink that has been outlawed in several places despite not being alcoholic... it is said that's because alcohol couldn't survive in it. It is made entirely of natural ingredients and herbs, in the same way that "Arsenic is natural and Belladonna is an herb". It apparently speeds the brain well beyond the point where the mouth can keep up, just for starters.
  • In Dune one of many, many uses of spice is to generate dangerous levels of sanity. Mentats drink sapho juice, a drug that amplifies a Mentat's natural ability, allowing them to go beyond their usual limits and comprehend vast amounts of data even faster. The mantra for drinking it in the movies was:

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

    • The novels rarely mention it, but the movie seems to make it the source of all Mentats' abilities. One of its characteristics is that it permanently stains the lips of the drinker a cranberry red colour. If overused, it is addictive and ultimately deadly. So the mantra makes perfect sense, even the "by will alone" is probably part of Mentat dogma—specifically, that although Sapho enhances your pre-existing abilities the discipline and mental techniques are what allow you to excel. In other words it's an Amplifier Artifact, not Super Serum.
  • The ever-brewed riverboat coffee—In one of James P. Blaylock's novels, The Disappearing Dwarf, there is a scene on a riverboat where the coffee comes from an urn which has been brewing continuously for 13 years. The urn is never emptied. Water and coffee are added as needed. One of the passengers makes the mistake of having a third cup. The coffee is so strong that he starts hallucinating.
  • Harry Dresden makes a potion with this effect in Fool Moon. Naturally, the liquid base is coffee.
  • Regular old Turkish coffee gets a mention in the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede, with a mild twist. The dragon who was King before Kazul took the throne loved him some Turkish coffee brewed strong enough to take the roof off a dragon's mouth. No one's particularly surprised that his assassin just decided to poison his coffee; Kazul comments that you could have boiled a whole field of dragonsbane in a cup of the King's coffee and it wouldn't have changed the taste or texture enough that he'd have noticed.
  • In the Star Trek anthology Tales of the Dominion War, Dr. Crusher uses Turkish Coffee to try and ward off the effects of a Dominion-created superbug long enough to develop a cure.
  • The Ur Example is the New Accelerator in the H. G. Wells story of the same name, a drug which increases the body's metabolic rate by a thousand or so times. The narrator and the inventor both drink just a drop of the accelerator, and the next few seconds become so drawn out that to the characters they feel more like half an hour. Notably, moving so incredibly quickly causes incredible friction and air resistance, and the pair find their trousers are becoming singed as they walk.
  • In Wicked Japanese For The Business Traveler, a semi serious phrasebook, it mentions Japanese tea. "Clear, bitter and still boiling when it hits the roof of your mouth." The phrases associated with it translate to: "Honorable tea? Yes please! I had some when I got off the plane last week. I haven't slept since. I have many evil thoughts. Do you know where I can score a dime bag of the stuff?"


Live Action TV

  • Cafe Nervosa from Frasier serves a drink aptly named "The Defibrillator", judging by its composition (a French roast with three shots of espresso).
  • Dr. Cliff Huxtable, Bill Cosby's character from The Cosby Show, describes the coffee that he had back in med school:

"Take one sip, awake for six hours. Take two sips, awake for 72 hours. Drink the cup, you never blink again."


Radio


Video Games

  • The... "coffee" Mr. Saturns serve in EarthBound causes the drinker to hallucinate Foreshadowing.
  • The Scout in Team Fortress 2 has two highly-caffeinated drinks that give him special effects: Bonk! Energy Drink (It's fulla radiation!) makes him invincible, and Crit-a-Cola allows him to score (Mini-)Criticals.


Web Comics

  • In the Girl Genius webcomic, set in a Gaslamp Steampunk universe where Mad Scientists called Sparks can liberally break the laws of physics, the central protagonist, Agatha Heterodyne, tastes coffee for the first time and, in a fit of caffiene-fueled inspiration, immediately sets about rebuilding a coffee shop's coffee-making engine. A mere sip of the "improved" product can result in something like a religious and possibly life-changing experience. Even licking a few drops was enough to make a Super Soldier pause in mid-rampage to appreciate it.
    • Lately, a Smoke Knight has been shown using a drug called Movit, which is a super-powered stimulant. It comes in various strengths and the strongest stuff safe for civilians is Movit #6. When last seen, Zola had taken some Movit #11, then was shot with more in hopes of causing an explosive meltdown, leading to a CHOPHEAD TINYBITS! rage, and was expected to die of an overdose shortly. (Of course, since she hasn't been seen since, it's probable that she found some other way to burn off that excess energy and will return to plague our heroes in a future chapter.)
    • Also, a cup of water from Dyne apparently tastes like normal water but can (especially if combined with a proper amount of electric shock) cause a minute or so of absolute clarity... little side-effects like glowing eyes and levitation are optional. Of course, the "electric shock" part of this is by far the least dangerous.
  • The coffee at the Google offices in User Friendly is so powerful it does this.
  • Francis' twitch-gamer "power drink" from PvP: "a blend of espresso, Jolt cola, some Pixie Stix, pure cane sugar, Choco Puffs and a splash of Mountain Dew because I'm that @!&$% crazy, man." Oohhh, the colors.
  • Questionable Content: Dora Bianchi is capable of creating such a brew when the need arises.
    • I would assume a "triple-shot in the dark" would be brewed black coffee with three shots of espresso added? THATWASGOODCANIHAVEANOTHERPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE?!?!?!??!
    • Taken Up to Eleven with this concoction
  • This early Gene Catlow strip. It birthed a major plot point.
  • The crew of The Whiteboard, after (or in the middle of) a particularly interesting New Years' party (and that's saying something), manages by accident to create a coffee strong enough to cure astigmatism, boost intellect, and add a cup size to women. The effects are temporary.
    • Doc's normal coffee easily qualifies, as does his home-made Mountain Dew.
    • Doc ODs on caffeine and experiences a possibly-unintentional Whole-Plot Reference to The New Accelerator mentioned earlier in Literature.
  • From Unwinder's Tall Comics, a coffee brew known as "The Huffy Dimension". One of the ingredients is vinegar.
  • Dante from Angst Technology brews coffee that is so strong as to be solid. In one classic strip of the now-defunct Angst Technology series, the rest of the gang put decaf in the office coffee machine to see how close he would get before detecting it (fourteen feet, six inches, it turned out); in the 2010-04-14 Ink Tank strip, where he and Barry (the Author Avatar) are at a Starbucks, he berates Barry for not buying the largest cup. One of the comments on this strip was "I would think that anything from a Starbucks would be WAY too weak for Dante".
    • In the 2010-04-16 strip, Dante uses another version of the Dune quote which heads this page.
  • Nodwick has a case when the phrase "five hundred years old coffee" explains everything.
  • Sluggy Freelance: Although the coffee itself in 4U City isn't that remarkable, the concentrate doubles as an explosive.

Riff: I have all new respect for the coffee.
Leo: I fear the coffee.

  • Not Invented Here: Desmond's "Coder's Sunrise". It's cheese balls floating in Red Bull.

Desmond: It's like there's a hornet party in my ribcage, and everyone's on fire!

  • Freefall had Mr. Raibert found with several empty cans of "E+". Max Post proceeds to describe what drinking this stuff could do to someone with more sane day cycle.

One of these drinks would have my eyeballs vibrating out of my skull. He's had three...

Web Original

  • In RT Shorts, a series of shorts that take place in Rooster Teeth Studios, a type of coffee is mentioned which would presumably be very strong if it weren't imaginary.

Burnie: Okay, one note from the kitchen. If you're going to use the coffee pot to make coffee, you need to use water. Okay? I don't care what the fucking Internet says. There is no such thing as double coffee.

  • In the Whateley Universe, we have 'Devisor Coffee', which is claimed to have been banned in several countries. One of the Juniors, during final exams, overdoses on it, eventually becoming a jittery wreck, flying straight up and exploding 400 feet in the air.
  • College Humor parodied this with Powerthirst, an energy drink which makes outrageous claims about its potency; the drink was later Defictionalized and contains a staggering 190 mg of caffeine per 16 ounces. (For reference, Bawls Exxtra in the Real Life section of this page packs 150 milligrams per 16 ounces.)


Western Animation

  • The world of [[Avatar: The Last Airbender]] has a rare tea that stimulates the human body tenfold. Aang drinks it to comic effect. Bizarrely enough, this is one of the examples cited by Media Watchdogs who think it's a sinful, evil cartoon. Because it encourages kids to do "drugs".


Real Life

  • Consuming too much caffeine will result in shaking, vomiting, and anxiety attacks.
    • Additionally, the withdrawal effects of even relatively minor caffeine addiction include shaking, upset stomach, and insomnia.
  • Possibly the closest thing to Klatchian coffee isn't actually based on coffee. It's a type of tea, called chifir'. Chifir' is a perennial favourite in Russian prisons, and is made by taking two or three tablespoons of tea per person, pouring it on top of boiling water, and letting it boil for 15 minutes. The prisoners then drink 2 sips of it. Each. Anything more can cause heart attacks due its caffeine content — it is an entirely possible side effect of a caffeine overdose. Because boiling tends to extract tannins and glycosides in addition to the caffeine, this brew is also extremely bitter and strongly constipating.
    • A mild version of this is the Egyptian Shay Saidi (meaning Saidi[1] Tea). It's a 1/9 strength recipe of chifir': you use 2-3 teaspoons of tea instead of 2-3 tablespoons and you pull it off the fire after five minutes rather than 10-15. You also always add lots of sugar (minimum 3 teaspoons for a mug, 1.5 teaspoons for a standard teacup) and sometimes milk, since it's made to be drunk like normal tea. Saidis (fittingly for the rednecks of a country where drinking alcohol is uncommon...although Saidis are also known for drinking, Christian and Muslim alike) usually knock back several cups in a night, and often marvel when a Bohairi (Lower Egyptian) can get through more than one cup without going haywire.
    • As a general rule Russians brew tea in two steps. First a so called "zavarka" is prepared — an extremely strong brew (generally around five tablespoons per 1 liter of water), which is then diluted to taste by each drinker. Some don't dilute it at all — and this extra strong tea is called "kupets" (merchant).
  • The Black Blood of the Earth.
  • RedBull
    • Sighted on Facebook by way of the "Funny Status" app: "I put Red Bull in my coffee pot this morning instead of water. Right now, I can see noises."
  • Two words: Bawls Exxtra (explanation: Bawls is a high-caffeine soft-drink that tastes like a cross between sprite and creme soda, but contains a bit more caffeine per ounce than Red Bull does. Bawls Exxtra is the sugar-free version, sweetened with AceK and sucralose (Splenda). It has 50% more caffeine per ounce than regular Bawls)
  • Cocaine energy drink. Three and a half times the strength of Red Bull. Tastes like Gummi Bears and burns when you drink it. Hope you weren't planning on sleeping this week.
    • For the record, that's about as much caffeine as a 20-ounce drip coffee . . . in just over 8 ounces of beverage.
  • The coffee 'syrup' some fast food places use to reconstitute coffee.
    • With the Toddy Coffee maker, you can make your own. Put a pound of coffee and 9 cups of water in the brewer (which amounts to a bucket with a filter and plug in the bottom) and let it sit for 12 hours. Pull the plug and drain off the 6 cups of concentrated cold brewed coffee. Cut it with water at 3:1, and you'll have a very smooth cup of coffee. Drink it straight and you'll have to get dentures to replace the teeth that dissolved.
  • In real life, combining lots of caffeine with lots of alcohol (to use the trope names, mixing Klatchian Coffee with a Gargle Blaster) tends to produce some rather dangerous effects, to the point that it's hard to to tell what will get you first. Do you pass out drunk or wear yourself out on a caffeine high? The worst part is that the conflicting buzzes prevent you from knowing which, with potentially fatal consequences. Thus the FDA in November 2010 clamped down on drinks like Four Loko and Joose by setting limits on the amount of caffeine that can be in the drinks. There are also Irish Coffee and "bomb shots" like the Jägerbomb to consider.
    • The only way to top this required replacing caffeine with cocaine, which is several times more potent stimulant. During Russian Civil War such alcohol-cocaine tincture was called "Baltic Tea", as it was very popular among Baltic Fleet sailors (a primary Revolutionary muscle) as a stimulant and rumored cure-it-all. Given the typhoid fever outbreak that was raging around at the time, these sailors might've been up to something, though.
  • An old joke is "Cowboy coffee". You toss a horseshoe into the pot. When it floats, coffee's ready.
    • Alternatively, it causes your legs to bow when you take a sip of it.
  • 'Scoutmaster's brew' is another legendary example. It's put on the fire to perk the night before; in the morning you heat it up until it perks again - and then you drink it.
  • In World War II, there was a battlefield treatment for shock called a Murphy Drip. It was triple-strength coffee administered rectally.
  • How can you pick out an experienced barista? One good way is the six-shooter—six to eight ounces of espresso in one cup. Even baristas who don't have quite as much a coffee jones will knock back a shot of espresso in well under a minute. For those who like a full-sized cup of coffee, there's the redeye,[2] the caffeine equivalent of a boilermaker—an espresso in a cup of drip coffee—which is particularly popular with geeks and various trades.
  • As noted above, Turkish coffee. It's served in small cups and can give even hardened caffeine addicts a noticeable buzz. Drink the sludge at the bottom if you're brave and have a toothbrush handy.
  • Comedian Ralphie May talks about his first run-in with Cuban coffee. Of course, he drank way too much. It's wikipedia page as well as simmilar Vietnamese and South Indian.
  • Mountain Dew was recently introduced (or re-introduced; supposedly Pepsi Co tried it in the 80s but it never caught on) to the UK market, but thanks to different food-safety standards in Europe it has to be sold as an energy drink, with a warning on the label that it's unsuitable for children under twelve years old or pregnant women.
  1. ↑ Upper Egyptian
  2. ↑ Other names include shot in the dark, depth charge, sludge cup, or (for multiple shots of espresso) blackeye.
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