Java Juice is weird: .5 oz. of high-strength coffee extract fluid in a slim little bag, ingredients just coffee and water. The mind reels—surely you can’t make holy coffee by drizzling black fluid into tapwater?! Surely coffee must be “brewed” in a quasi-mystical transformation!

But the instructions are quite clear: Add contents to 12 oz.-16 oz. Hot or Cold Water. Or Add to Your Brewed Coffee for Extra Flavor and Strength.

Against all odds, the resulting hot beverage does indeed taste like coffee—unfamiliar coffee from a truckstop diner you’ve never been to before, but it is coffee.

The reason for this magical little pouch remains unclear, though. Where, in this day and age, can you imagine yourself winding up someplace where they don’t have real coffee, and you’d thank your lucky stars you had a pouch of Java Juice? More to the point, what sort of place might you be where you have access to scalding water and a cup, but somehow you can still neither buy nor make coffee?

We thought the true purpose might be to add it to regular coffee to make some kind of super drink, but when we tried this we found that all the Java Juice did was add a certain bottom-of-the-coffeepot grossness to what had been a perfectly fine cup of coffee.

We respect the miracle of Java Juice, but we remain puzzled as to the motive behind it.