How the Real Men in the Navy Make Their Coffee
How do our heroes in the military drink their coffee?
B Dubya, one of the commenters from my Sunday morning PJ Lifestyle post revealed the secret:
I had just aquired a taste for black coffee when I joined the Navy in the spring of 1970. In those days, Navy coffee was in packed in 5 pound rectangular tins; in the six years I spent on my first submarine, we would burn one of those in three days just in the engine room pot.
From the time I was 20 until I left the service at 32, I did not measure the volume of coffee I drank in cups. It was more like in quarts and probably averaged 6 quarts daily.
For a brief time, they tried to get us to drink freeze dried coffee, but it sucked so bad that the rews raised hell over it and the supply types were forced to go back to the real deal.
There is nothing like very strong engine room coffee to keep your motor running for two to three days in a refit period, when you are on deadline to get the ship ready to get underway and sleep is not an option. After a few years, the caffein “jitters” never appeared again, even after massive quantities of the stuff. In fact, like other stimulants, you eventually aquire a very high tolerance for it. While I don’t drink coffee by the gallon any more, I still drink at least a couple of cups of it before I go to bed and I sleep like a baby.
Decaf? You’re kidding, right? Might as well drink water as decaf.
One of the worst headaches I ever had was two days after the entire boat ran out of coffee at the end of an extended patrol in the North Sea. It was due to caffein withdrawal. Well, that and maybe one too many days in a 400 foot sewer pipe with 145 other guys without seeing daylight. The secong thing I did after we got back into New London was to drink and entire pot of coffee made to my specs (Most people who drink coffee I make eventually develop a taste for it of just give up and dilute it).
On a destroyer I was on before I went to the Mare Island NPTU, I know for a fact that the overhaul of that ship was largely financed via the exchange of cans of Navy coffee for yard bird services and parts, which we could not get at any price in another exchange medium (actual US currency). Of course, the overhaul was in Hunter’s Point Shipyard, which is located in Vichy San Francisco, so that may be the basis for the value of good old black market coffee.
Is there nothing coffee can’t do?
Coffee and a little Irish whiskey is my martini of choice to this day.
When I inquired further as to his methods, these instructions came:
My coffee technique is very simple. 2/3 cup of grounds for a 10 cup pot. I brew it into a carafe at home, because nothing kills coffee as effectively as leaving it open to air and over heat. I also keep my coffee cans covered and refrigerated; coffee left open and at room temperature oxidizes and turns sour, both in smell and taste.
I don’t like Starbucks, as a rule. Over roasting just smells and tastes burned to me. I absolutely love the smell of fresh ground, regular roast coffee. The way I make it makes it taste the way it smells to me, warm and earthy, just a hint of bitter.
My mother’s mother was an Englishwoman named Winifred Alden. She taught me how to make tea, and I suppose it carried over to the way I like my coffee. To her, black tea was too weak if, after pouring a quarter inch into a white china cup, you could see the bottom.
As much as I like the way I make my own, I will drink coffee that has been on the burner for 8 hours and that you could float a horseshoe in, if that’s all that is available.
Ron Robinson and Kathy Shaidle also had some amusing coffee anecdotes to share in the comments.
My Dad was XO on a destroyer in the Pacific in WWII. He had one steward whose only duty was to bring him a cup of coffee every hour, on the hour. During critical pushes he would stay awake 4 to 5 days at a stretch. That’s 24 cups a day. He finally collapsed and was sent back from the front to the West Coast in the last few weeks of the war.
One could do worse than the 17th century Spanish recipe for coffee–”Black as the Devil, hot as Hell, sweet as an angel, strong as love.”
Not precise perhaps, but a good rule of thumb.
It was a dark and rain drivin night, But Navy coffee was the best of the best. Don,t know about the rest of the services. The opening of a new can of coffee, OHhhhh the aroma and those 5 gallon coffee makers. Where did all go?
Us Army guys would also drink gallons of Coffee each day. Twice as strong as mere mortals would drink; made in a coffee maker that hadn’t been cleaned in decades. By God, that stuff would make your scalp go numb.
You had coffee? Luxury!
All we had to drink was cold poison.
Greetings:
I was told the coffee wasn’t ready until a spoon would stand up straight in it.
My grandmother would say a mouse should be able to walk across your cup of coffee and not get its feet wet.
So, how do the fake men make it? Or the (gasp) women?
They don’t; they get lattes to go at Starbuck’s.
Bullseye! Perfect answer!
Well, from the experiences of this submariner I’d say his description and recipe are spot on! Nothing screams coffee as much as being awake for 3 days straight while shuffling live ordinance around the torpedo room, or when bribing shipyard workers to do a good job for a change, lol. The best quality work I have ever seen came after the supply department fudged 3 cans of coffee and gave it to the shipyard guys.
Coffee is like sex. When it’s good, it’s good. When it’s bad, it’s still good.
To hear some of my coworkers who’re retired sailors, “A Navy ship runs on bunker oil and coffee and it’s hard to tell the difference.”
When cream and sugar are added to Navy coffee, it’s called “formula”.
With all due respect to the US Navy: through most of human history, real men never drank coffee; they drank beer, kumis, sake and/or tea.
You probably know which real men I am thinking about. (Did I miss any manly drink?)
Actually, except when having to stay awake all night, a real man should probably not need coffee at all.
Tea? That was for Grandmother Winnie, though she was a tough old Cockney bird.
I’m pretty sure I would have been happy to have had beer, or a wee dram of decent scotch whiskey on the menu in my years in the Navy, but the Progressives of 1914 put an end to the Navy’s grog tradition and those of us mortals who served thereafter drank coffee. (See US Navy General Order 99, dated from 01June1914)
As far as sake, my father and his cohort of coffee drinkers pretty much kicked hell out of the most notorious sake drinkers between 1941 and 1945.
But, whatever floats your boat there, Snorri.
During the first Indian Ocean deployment by the USS Nimitz in 1980, each man was authorized two cans of beer on the 100th day at sea during a flight deck picnic. Nimitz wound up spending 144 days continuously at sea during that deployment.
From The Mote In God’s Eye” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell
‘Have you heard of Jamaica Blue Mountain? It grows on Earth itself, on a large island; the island was never bombed, and the mutations were weeded out in the centuries following the collapse of the CoDominium. It cannot be bought. Navy ships carry it to the Imperial Palace on Sparta.’
‘How does it taste?’
‘As I told you, it is reserved for the Royal–’ Bury hesitated. ‘Very well. You know me that well. I would not pay such a price again, but I do not regret it.’
‘The Navy misjudges your worth because you lack knowledge of wines.’ Bury’s Motie did not seem to be smiling. Its bland expression was a Trader’s: it matched Bury’s own. ‘Quite foolish of them, of course. If they knew how much there was to learn about coffee. . . .’
This old Boatswain’s Mate still drinks his traditional Navy coffee from a traditional handless Navy mug that somehow stowed away in my seabag when I left my last ship.
Here’s how I made GI coffee in the field in the Marines and Army, both. Take one pound of ground roast coffee, into that crack one egg. Mix the whole egg (shell and all) into the coffee well with your fingers and then put it in a pot. Pour one gallon of boiling water over it, then stir well, ONCE. Let sit. When the grounds have settled to the bottom the coffee with be hot and delicious.
Major General George S Patton III used to fly into 2nd Armored Division’s Divarty HQ when I was attached to it just to drink that coffee of mine. I had been his driver as a younger soldier one time when his regular driver had emergency leave, and when on a field exercise I made the coffee and he liked it.
I used to run a coffee mess when I was a student at Combat Technical Schools Command at Mare Island. It was one of those temporary assignments while waiting for a class to form up. Did it for three weeks. I had three large coffee makers. I labeled them Weak, Medium, Strong. Somedays I’d label them Unleaded, Leaded, High Octane. Or Mellow, Regular, Death Brew. Third option seemed to get more use as the week progressed; it was made by re-filtering brewed coffee back through the filter. You could hear the sweat popping out of its drinkers. Cross-training fleet sailors loved it.
When I got to the fleet I was assigned to an FFG. Mess deck coffee maker had an improperly fitting lid, and its temperature was set too high. After an hour it was burnt and concentrated. Crucny after four hours. God, it was glorious. I guess I’m lucky I didn’t have my first heart attack (that I noticed) while on deployment….
While a new Navy wife and waiting for housing, we briefly stayed with my husband’s uncle, a salty Navy Chief. I cleaned his apartment top to bottom, just trying to stay busy. Thinking I was doing him a favor, I bleached the inside of his coffee mug. I’ll never forget the look of shock on his face when he saw it the next morning. I didn’t realize that having a pitch black mug was a symbol of seniority.
My dad was a Navy veteran, and drank out of his Navy mug every morning for over 50 years.
I worked for a distributor of industrial machinery, and our chief mechanic was a retired Master Chief. His coffee mug, which was NEVER TO BE WASHED, had a heavy black lining of decades old coffee. I never understood why until now.
Had a caption competition on a particularly boring day at work.
I like my women like my coffee……..
Entries included.
…white, sweet and whipped
…late
…hot and strong
and the aclaimed winner…..instant.
As an old Navy boiler room man (52-56 Korea), I recall being threatened with being thrown overboard if I dared to scrub our big coffee pot with soap…
I still drink it black -the milk would curdle in seconds in that boiler room heat (thermometer once hit 122 degrees in the Suez Canal.
Coffee Cut with Chickory was a staple at my granddads
I did not expect to find coffee decorated with whipped cream “in the belly of a battleship”, largely because neither the United States nor any other country (as far as I an aware) has any battleships anymore. Not every warship is a battleship, in fact, no warship is a battleship in the 21st century.
I remember the old coffee pots in the engine and Bouiler rooms aboard LSD21. It was a copper double wall about one gallon. The double wall was for steam heating. Fill it up a metal screen with ground coffee (came in 20 pound burlap bags, add water and open steam valve. In couple minutes you had a full gallon. It was strong but kept you awake. BTW no cream or milk unless you wanted canned evaporated milk.
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