Australia's strongest coffee is literally not for the faint hearted

Are you a coffee nut who can't leave the house without three double-espressos? Need a long black after lunch to make it through the day? Only drink your vodka with enough Red Bull to power a Formula 1 engine? Well, you might want to look at flights to Adelaide.

Viscous Coffee at Christies Beach has a drink called the Adelaide Ass Kicker that we're quite certain contains more caffeine than any other coffee creation in Australia. By some margin, too. For $16 you get four shots of espresso, 120 millilitres of cold-drip coffee brewed for 10 days, four ice-cubes of 48-hour-brewed cold drip coffee and a hit of steamed milk.

Containing five grams of caffeine, the cafe recommends punters consume the Ass Kicker over a four-hour period and anyone with high blood pressure or a heart condition steers clear of the brew. Five grams of caffeine is still about 80 times the amount of caffeine found in a standard espresso shot, so surely that much upper is not good for anyone, right?

"For general health it's recommended the average adult doesn't consume more than 300 to 400 milligrams of caffeine per day, which is about one to two lattes, depending how strong you like your latte" says Gabrielle Maston, accredited practicing dietitian and spokesperson for the Dieticians Association of Australia.

"A lethal dose of caffeine is 15 to 50 grams, although people have still been hospitalised for doses closer to five grams. It depends on body weight, so it would likely do more damage to a child than a large male adult."

"For the general population it's not a fatal amount, but there can certainly be complications if the person has high blood pressure or heart problems, or if they're an anxious person with a lot of stress in their lives, it can make the anxiety worse. And one thing a lot of people don't realise is that caffeine stimulates the bowel, so sometimes there can be, ah, quite an explosive response from too much of it."

If you do find yourself needing to work a long night shift, Maston says there's nothing wrong with a standard cup of coffee as a pick-me-up, but it's better to drink plenty of water to remain hydrated and plan your day to still get eight hours of sleep.

Time management isn't as fun as a cold-drip ice-cube though, is it?