It's not quite the same, but with my time spent as a Navy contractor, I learned to appreciate the "Chief's coffee mess" tradition. Generally, the least senior of all the Chief Petty Officers is responsible for the coffee mess. And the tradition is that Navy coffee doubles as barnacle remover in a pinch. If you make a pot of weak coffee, someone usually suggests that the pot was just being cleaned, they weren't REALLY making coffee. It looked that weak because some of the fresher coffee stains were dissolving off the glass surface.
I didn't REALLY appreciate Navy coffee, though, until I went back to one of my mother's family reunions. In Alabama, you can pick up the traditional Bunn-o-matic glass coffee carafe of freshly-brewed coffee and hold it up to the light. You can see through it, and not just dimly. Yecchh!