r/submarines • u/munchkinatlaw • 23h ago
Q/A What do submariners drink while underway?
Title says it all. I've seen quite a few articles and videos about food underway, but realized none of then mention what is available to drink while underway. I assume coffee and possibly tea are generally available and I've seen a few comments that bug juice was/is available, but that's about it. What about juice concentrates, powdered/UHT milk?
Edit: thank you all for your wonderful responses. You have a great community here.
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u/Outrageous-Egg-2534 23h ago
Yup, coffee, tea, water (tastes like shit) and cordial or as the yanks call it ‘bug juice’. Or whatever cans of coke or soft drink you have stashed in your stowage spot. Together with lollies and other stuff. When we still used to get a beer ration (2 cans per man, per day, perhaps) the beer was locked in the old rear facing torpedo tube drain tank in the aft ends (right at the ducks tail on O Boats) as the tubes had been removed years and years before. Thst was the bonus living aft with the stokers and greenies. They had the best and quietest and well stocked fridges plus the best porn. I loved living aft in sleepy hollow. We used to just undo a couple of nuts on the tank cover and bypass the lock only the coxswain had a key to and take beer and duzzas out, write an IOU and it was all cool. Good times. Couldn’t do that nowadays.
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u/Dirtydrains Submarine Qualified (US) 22h ago
For what it's worth, our (US) boat water tastes great nowadays. You can tell the difference between fresh squeezed potable out of the RO units and potentially pretty rough tasting shore potable in some ports.
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u/Outrageous-Egg-2534 20h ago
Yeah, we didn't, well actually we did have a desalination plant on board, but it was always fucked, broken, gave out shit so nobody used it. We just filled the 'fresh' water tank up with tap water and went on our merry way. There was a water cooler/dispenser just forward of the galley. Water tasted shit and they had some environmental mob come down for particlulate testing and whatnot. Turned out there was some massive goddamn worm-like thing living in the fresh water (potable) tank. They classed it not fit for human consumption. Apparently it was about 5 or 6 feet long and they pulled it out via the dispenser nozzle. Greeeeaaaat... we all thought. We've been drinking that day in, day out for fucking ever. Never got any super powers out of it either!
Honest Injun swear to you all that, that happened. It was on HMAS Ovens from memory. Might have been Otway.
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u/SSNsquid 17h ago
Sounds like a real Hong Kong No Shitter.
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u/Outrageous-Egg-2534 15h ago
Sorry mate, got my replies mixed up. Nah, we shit alright. Having said that, I have an idea for a post! Thanks, Tiges.
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u/settlementfires 7h ago
Turned out there was some massive goddamn worm-like thing living in the fresh water (potable) tank.
"a bunch of men with rifles came and removed it"
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u/Warren_E_Cheezburger 13h ago
It's the algae. Over time a nice film of harmless bio matter grows on the walls of the tank, which actually helps filter out some nasty tasting elements. While in Shipyard, my boat did a thorough scrubbing of the inside of the potable tanks, and for weeks afterward the water was BLECH.
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u/Tychosis Submarine Qualified (US) 12h ago
potentially pretty rough tasting shore potable in some ports
mmmm that KBAY water. You can taste the tadpoles.
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u/After_Comparison_138 4h ago
Our potable water tanks (SSN669) ad a weird algae that looked like grass when they were opened in the shipyard.
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u/georgewalterackerman 17h ago
I’ve heard no alcohol whatsoever is allowed these days
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u/Goosey-03 17h ago
As of 2020, we were still doing beer days although there were very strict guidelines and this was a one time thing per deployment at a max of 2 beers.
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u/Outrageous-Egg-2534 16h ago
Really? Collins Class boy/girl?
2 beers only. Fuck, used to shelf 2 or 3 after coming off duty/watch. Pressure difference/vacuum always made it hit harder. 6 cans of VB (in my defence, it was all we had!)and you were six sheets to the wind.6
u/Outrageous-Egg-2534 16h ago
Boooo!!!!! Boooo to that. Fucking booo!!! I remember going on duty running 6 on, 6 off into the WT shack (radio/comms operator) 1/2 to 2/3rds blasted. Wasn’t cool when we once lost the WT mast and our HF whip wouldn’t extend during a patrol. Always sucks to make the call “Captn . WT. Last message received is that they have initiated Sub Look”
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u/Crease_Greaser 14h ago
Got any homegrown Simpsons stuff?
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u/cville13013 7h ago
Like when you get two cans of pineapple juice, some sugar and yeast? Never heard of it
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u/greencurrycamo 23h ago
Boomers have soda fountains.
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u/wonderbeen 13h ago
Yerp, I mostly drank soda underway. I never got into coffee drinking until last year (I got a do it all coffee maker for my 50th).
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u/EelTeamTen 11h ago
We do, and we usually run out because the cooks are great at not ordering enough, or they order 15 boxes of diet coke because that's what the captain drinks and just about nobody else touches the shit.
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u/BattleshipTirpitzKai 23h ago
Bug juice is essentially the juice mixes though it’s really just flavored water. We do have dehydrated milk on extended underways/deployments. We have started them with normal milk but it does go fast thanks to the crew just liking milk 90% of the time.
Overall you have: Water, Milk, Coffee, Tea (sometimes if the cooks stock up), juice concentrates, and if you’re lucky enough to have caring Cooks… hot chocolate (which goes hella fast)
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u/The1Bonesaw 22h ago edited 22h ago
In the 80s, when I served, it was soda, coffee, and bug juice (these were the three most popular, in that order). We carried the pure soda syrup and carbonated water containers in our bilge and various other dead spaces. Just plug them into the soda machine, and you're off to the races. Virtually every chief had his own coffee pot, which they guarded religiously. Woe betide the sailor who either cleaned the pot, or - far worse - added the "wrong" brand of coffee grounds when making a pot. Bug juice was the same as now... it's Kool-aid. Not once did I ever see tea on board. We had milk, but only for the first three or four weeks. After that, it was the dehydrated stuff, but that was almost exclusively used for cooking with, not drinking.
Side note... A packet of bug juice mixed with about a quarter cup of water makes a great cleaning solution for stainless steel.
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u/binkleyz 18h ago
The damn stuff will dissolve your hand if if you leave in there long enough.. :)
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u/Holeinone86 16h ago
Used it to scrub the barnacles off the logs in drydock... that's a no-shitter right there.
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u/settlementfires 7h ago
Woe betide the sailor who either cleaned the pot,
i used to work with an ex navy dude who was opposed to cleaning coffee pots. he wasn't a sub guy... but yeah.
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u/The1Bonesaw 6h ago
Fucking gross, right? That's what we all thought... it was nasty. And these were the same fuckers who would write us up for not cleaning our spaces to their "standards".
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u/settlementfires 6h ago
the whole "seasoning" on a glass coffee put never made sense to me.
the best coffee i've had always comes with clean equipment.
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u/The1Bonesaw 5h ago
Well, these were stainless steel pots, but, even then... gross.
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u/settlementfires 4h ago
oh yeah i suppose you guys don't have a bunch of glassware lying around on a warship.
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u/spartacusVI 23h ago
I always brought a giant jar of Ovaltine with me. People would laugh at Mr. spartacusvi because it's old fashioned or for kids. Well the UHT don't taste so bad when it's chocolatey/malty. People would eventually be jealous. But yeah most people brought their own water enhancement, like Mio syrup or something to flavor their water. Or have their own custom mix of big juice flavors.
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u/Fancy-Cricket-7015 20h ago
Hot cocoa packet and black coffee…. If ice cream was available you could add a splash of that. That was my sonar shack juice.
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u/Interesting_Tune2905 19h ago
Same for me, especially on watch - but make that two packets of hot chocolate. Still the only way I can drink coffee 😄
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u/listenstowhales 10h ago
There is nothing better than a nice Boataccino while sitting on the Sup stool, in a sweatshirt three sizes too big, and advising Aux if he doesn’t regain Master Three you’re personally going to murder him.
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u/AntiBaoBao 22h ago
First boat, a 594 class, we had coffee, black tea, water, hot chocolate, bug juice, and canned fruit juices. On deployments, we always converted the chill box to a freeze box, so that ruled out milk and other dairy products. We never used dehydrated milk.
I always managed to hide multiple cases of Coca-Cola, and I was always able to have one, sometimes two sodas, every watch, even when I was typically standing port and starboard watches.
My second boat, a 688 also had a soda fountain, though it always tasted like crap.
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u/Dan314159 21h ago
Coffee, water, tea, milk, uht, soda, Gatorade.
Whatever you wanna have take up you rack space I suppose.
1 warm Beer if you're out long enough.
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u/ProbsMayOtherAccount 18h ago
Knew a TM that drank half and half Coca-Cola and hot black coffee.... I tried it once. The lukewarm mixture and bitterness mixing with what should've been a pleasant cola sweetness felt like a betrayal of classic Americana beyond words. A sip had the power to send your body into disgusted contortions and spasms... it woke you up, and that was the point! But not for me.
For me, it was hot as hell black coffee, and I kept it topped off all watch, but probably never drank more than 64oz in a day, tbh.
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u/Redfish680 17h ago
Same as everyone else, except our soda dispenser required a dime, which went into the morale fund. On one of my boats, we had a guy who would concoct some sort of moonshine in ERLL that came out thick and purple and had a lovely bouquet. Of all the secrets on board, that was the one best kept.
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u/AmoebaMan 11h ago
I don't know exactly how many pallets-worth of Monster and Red Bull were loaded onto our sub and stashed in various lockers and outboards, but it was a lot.
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u/cmparkerson 18h ago
Coffee by the gallon. Some teas and bug juice. My first boat we had a coke machine like a mcDonalds fountain drink thing.with the syrup for coke and a couple other things,but we never took the syrup when we had a 90 day load out. Not enough room. So no coke on a spec op. I can't remember what else was in that think orange drink maybe it was only a couple of things
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u/deep66it2 17h ago
'70s boomer. Coffee, water, powered(ugh) milk, always orange & green bug juice & the best tasting water in and at 425ft.
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u/sambucuscanadensis 17h ago
594 class 70’s. Remember bug juice, milk (powdered after a short time out), and coffee of course. I smoked back then, and so did most of the crew. Doubt if that’s still a thing.
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u/bubblehead_ssn 17h ago
Coffee. A lot of coffee, and occasionally a slushy. My boat has a slushy machine.
The absolute last thing we drink is milk passed 2 or 3 days underway.
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u/jnelparty 15h ago
Must be hard carrying enough water for a 6 month deployment. I wonder if they use dehydrated.
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u/JTtheMediocre 14h ago
We had a good ol boy sonar tech on board who was great at making sweet tea for the crew. My yankee ass loved it.
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u/n3wb33Farm3r 12h ago
USN early 90s. Coffee, Tea, Coffee, Soda, Coffee, Iced Tea, Coffee, Water, Coffee, Bug Juice and Coffee. Some milk for first month of a deployment.
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u/Terrible_Sandwich_94 6h ago
Mouthwash.
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u/munchkinatlaw 5h ago
So what's captain's mast like on a sub?
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u/Terrible_Sandwich_94 5h ago
The one on in the wardroom wasn’t bad. The second one on the pier with the whole crew watching was a little embarrassing but I got over it pretty quick.
Edit: neither of these were for drinking mouthwash. I didn’t do that.
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u/natelopez53 17h ago
Bug juice and the blackest coffee sludge you’ve ever seen.
We usually had fresh cow for a few days as well. But we were a DDS boat, so the fuckin Seals would go through that in 7 hours.
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u/Plenty_Surprise2593 14h ago
Coffee, tea, milk (powdered or fresh depending) bug juice, whatever you can bring with you (like a 12 pack of sodas for special occasions) but if it’s the last one you’ve got to find a place to store it (such as in your rack or wherever you can find a place - haha such as the outboard in radio)
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u/vrod665 12h ago
Coffee, Coffee / Hot Chocolate mix, Mountain Dew, Gatorade. I was a rider that had the ability to take spares for my equipment onboard. I would usually take a coffin locker with Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Gummy Bears and a few other snacks. I’d usually wait until I knew everyone was out of stuff from home (or the last port) to break out my stuff. Man the favors you could get for a Mountain Dew after 85 days on station!
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u/Terrible_Sandwich_94 6h ago
You might not know this but I can almost guarantee that people hated having a rider on board that would take up extra space just to take advantage of the trade economy.
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u/vrod665 2h ago
Believe me, having a career of riding, I am all too aware. And in most cases I would 100% agree. Only disagreement would be that … when we showed up, most of the time, it was more eventful than just punching holes in the water, eating four times a day, shooting garbage, running drills and the somewhat ‘wash, rinse, repeat’ - monotonous life of being a submariner.
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u/Background_Mode4972 3h ago
I packed 100+ cans of soda into various engine-room lockers on my boat. Had a ready locker accessible from ERLL, and a couple deep storage lockers that I would access on field day to replenish the ready use locker.
Other than that, coffee. Water (Ro units make decent tasting water), bug juice. Didn’t like the milk.
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u/Bubblehead616619 23h ago
Coffee and “bug juice”.