Fresh Eats: We Drink Coffee with 40x the Normal Caffeine

Thanks to radioactivity and government grants, the Bay Area has its share of mad scientists. One has done something useful: create coffee with 40 times the caffeine of regular drip. It's the creation of Funranium Labs' Phillip Broughton, who in his day job goes around UC Berkeley ensuring people work safely with radioactive materials.

Andrew J. Nilsen

Drink at your own risk: 50 ml doses of Funranium's "Black Blood of the Earth."

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More About

• Phillip Broughton
• Soundgarden
• University of California-Berkeley
• Funranium Labs

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Broughton sent SFoodie test tubes of the stuff, which lasts months in the refrigerator. He says 50 ml is a dose, and recommends we not exceed 100 ml a day. How did he calculate the strength? Broughton writes, "40x is the back of the envelope calculation. The attempt to get an empirical measurement resulted in breaking a gas chromatograph by detector saturation and subsequent loss of lab privileges." Not just a radiation scientist, but one with lab privileges revoked. Coffee time!

Broughton recommends a 3-to-1 water-to-coffee ratio. I was cautious: I drank only half the dose. He claims he created his extraction process — which takes 48 to 96 hours — because he doesn't like the taste of coffee. "Hypercaffeination was a just a nice bonus," he writes. (That's what they said about LSD.)

This is coffee with the absence of flaws. It's bland, like you'd expect a generic "coffee flavor" exhibit in a museum to taste. But co-workers who tried it with me reported they couldn't concentrate or that their heart rate has sped up. I finished the vial to cover the Soundgarden concert. Soundgarden rocks, but can't it rock faster? Asked for a 300-word review, I cranked out about 750. Then I read a bunch of stuff online, watched YouTube, and played Hearts against myself. About 3 a.m. I crawled into bed.

The next morning was baaaaad.

You can order this coffee/drug delivery system at www.funraniumlabs.com.