Staff at an air base in Sweden were left with a nasty taste in their mouth this week when it was revealed that they have been drinking coffee made from the water in the facility’s radiators for the past two years!

The workers were horrified to discover that due to a pipe being fitted incorrectly, the water servicing the base’s vending machines was filtering first through the radiators. This mistake was only discovered when maintenance work caused the heating system to be shut down, as the radiators would automatically refill when drained by the vending machines.

The base is in the Swedish town of Blekinge, and regional newspaper The Local quoted one Captain Catharina Bergsell, of the facility’s F17 squadron.

“As the coffee is black and the radiator water is a bit brown, then we haven’t noticed the difference,” she said, going on to add that she and colleagues had noticed that coffee coming from the nearest vending machine had tasted bad, but they just thought this was due to its “instant” nature.

“When you drink coffee from a vending machine it always tastes a little different than fresh coffee and it may not have the best consistency,” Capt Bergsell observed.