At The Dropp, Mallory Winstead reviews Death Wish Coffee, which claims to contain 200% more caffeine than "typical coffee shop coffee." Mallory writes, "Death Wish Coffee Company’s website has a disclaimer stating that 'this is extreme coffee, not for the weak....Consider yourself warned.' Anyone who knows me knows that I was instantly intrigued."

  • jlargentaye

    Well, now I have to ask them to review the Black Blood of the Earth (by the guy who also makes cryogenic beer steins to keep your beer cool on the Burning Man playa!)

    • http://twitter.com/funranium Funranium Labs

      I actually do make a Death Wish BBotE, which started as a dare from a gentleman in Baltimore and has since turned into one of the most popular varieties.

      • jlargentaye

        Yeah, I noticed when checking your website before my comment, and was confused about whether it was the same as in the article (nope).

        And following my comment, I finally went ahead and bought a sampler. Can’t wait for post-August 19th :)

  • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

    It’s good to have a review of the taste (and, because of taste, I’d be hard to do a blinded review…); but I have to wonder if there isn’t some serious bias driving the subjectively reported stimulant effects.

    The immediate wake-up on ingestion seems unlikely when it normally takes half an hour or more for ingested caffeine to kick in. The description of a pleasantly constant alertness level across a day(in an individual who normally consumes coffee heavily) also seems a bit tricky given the relatively short half life in most people.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      The immediate wake-up on ingestion seems unlikely when it normally takes half an hour or more for ingested caffeine to kick in.

      Is that true? Most drugs seem to take about 90 minutes to work for me, but ethanol starts working within a couple of minutes.

    • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

      30 minutes for a cup of coffee to kick in? As someone who works in a cafe drinking espresso’s all day I call bullshit. It takes about a minute for me to start feeling the caffeine goodness after a decent cup.

  • Boundegar

    Slip a cup to a decaf drinker.  Watch the fun!

  • Paul Gregoire

    I am very curious about this stuff too, I saw it just recently and figured I should get some. I wonder how it would affect me since I have the “fast metabolizer”  version of SNP rs762551.

    • jlargentaye

      Pft, that version of SNP rs762551 is sooooo 2011. You should consider upgrading to  the “low free-radicals” version the ChromoTech introduced last May. I hear the retroviral upgrade therapy has barely any side-effects nowadays.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1197774709 Jeb Adams

    Brewed coffee has quite a bit of caffeine as it is. You knock back a trente from Starbucks and you are looking at a good 600mg. Let’s assume this is compared more with Dunkin’ Donuts, which puts us in the 400mg range for 30 oz. So, a 200% boost there would be 1200mg caffeine. So downing a pot of this stuff (80 fl oz) would be ~3200mg. The LD50 is ~140mg/kg, so rare is the adult that would actually DIE from ingesting this, but it’s not something I would want to try myself. That’s a lot of caffeine.  

    • http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke

      You want to really have fun, brew a pot using caffeinated water.

       I’ve been taking stimulants my entire life (given Ritalin as a young child) and it basically takes about a gram of caffeine just to get me vertical. 

      • Dito

        I actually consume less caffeine now than I used to. What changed? An accurate diagnosis of adult ADD. The Adderall I take would probably bounce most people off the ceiling, but for me, it just gets me to normal.

        • http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke

          I drank less coffee when I was using crystal meth, too. Only the blue stuff, though!

          Slightly more seriously, I got psych help recently (Adult ADD and Depression) and Wellbutrin seems to reduce my caffeine intake. 

        • BillStewart2012

           For me the issue was sleep apnea – got that treated so I’m getting much better rest than I used to, and my caffeine consumption went down from quarts to maybe a cup for the early morning phone calls.

  • trumpet

    On their website they claim to have 200% the amount of caffeine of typical coffee shop coffee then later they go on to say they have 200% more caffeine.

    This isn’t the same thing so which is it?

  • haineux

    Dudes, Amazon sells “Anhydrous Caffeine USP” — make sure it says “USP” or “Food Grade” (and that you trust the seller that it is actually as labeled) so you don’t get 0.001% poison in your 99.999% pure caffeine.

    The first hit I saw sells 100 grams is $10. That’s a LOT of caffeine.

    And, to answer the obvious questions:
    1) It’s a fine white powder. Looks like flour. Compresses a bit, so you might wish to weigh out your dose. A typical “big” vitamin capsule can hold 500mg of caffeine. A teaspoon holds more than a gram. BE VERY CAREFUL.

    (Hint: DealExtreme and other CrapVendors™ sell digital scales that weigh in tenths or hundredths of a gram, for cheap money. I’d presume they are not very accurate, but they probably are somewhat repeatable, so you’ll get similar amounts if the scale reads the same.)

    2) LD50 is very high for caffeine. THAT DOESN’T MATTER. What matters is that if you eat more than, oh, a gram or two, you’re going to be VERY unhappy and may end up going to a hospital for help. 

    3) You *could* snort it, but you will NOT be happy. I am told that some people smoke it, but I don’t know anything about that.

    4) It tastes bitter. Pure, unadulterated bitterness. Putting 50 or 100 mg into lemonade, orange juice, or coffee is not bad at all, but sprinkling it on scrambled eggs is pretty nasty. You can mitigate the bitterness by adding fat or sugar.

    In any case, if what you want is to be awake and alert, Provigil and NuVigil are way better drugs, and are routinely prescribed for narcolepsy and related sleep disorders. Ask your doctor today!

  • http://openid.aliz.es/Remain-Skeptical Remain Skeptical

    Prove it.

  • pjcamp

    Remember Morning Thunder tea? I once dropped a bag of that into a cup of coffee and drove from Atlanta to Ann Arbor nonstop.

  • Dito

    Bully for you.

    FYI: snarking at caffeine addicts on BB won’t get you many sympathizers.

  • Chris Lee

     That’s awesome, Only. Don’t get eaten by a goddamn mountain lion, kay?