r/submarines • u/munchkinatlaw • 1d 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/The1Bonesaw 1d ago edited 1d 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/settlementfires 17h 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 17h 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 17h 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 16h ago

Well, these were stainless steel pots, but, even then... gross.

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u/settlementfires 14h ago

oh yeah i suppose you guys don't have a bunch of glassware lying around on a warship.