Over at Phil Turner’s blog you’ll find that the young tearaway is rabbiting on about coffee.
Phil is a lovely young chap but sometimes a little too influenced by high technology. On our recent trip to the Cairngorms he was raving on about some coffee he was carrying. It was made fro micro granules, then spun for a few days in the Cern Accelerator, freeze dried by NASA and then hand packed by vestal virgins from Greenland. Or something like that. Apparently it was superb. On his blog he looks at all manner of things and gizmos for making the perfect coffee.
He’s not alone. The last time I was out with Bob he was using some instant cappuccino that came in a tube, It wasn’t bad — but it wasn’t real coffee !!!
For me — and I know for many others — a decent cup of coffee is part of the whole wild camping experience. After years of experiment I have come up with the most simple and elegant of solutions.
Phil gives a hint about this on his blog. You only need one piece of kit, a micro MSR Mug Mate Coffee Filter. This allows you to make great drinks with simple, and real, coffee and loose leaf tea.
The Must Be This Way Coffee Method
First of all you need your favourite brand of ground coffee. This I store in a small size Aloksac resealable bag. These will keep your coffee absolutely fresh for ages.
When ready to brew simply put a table spoon amount (or one tip of the sack if you want to be technical) per person, into the filter.
You can use the filter in a few ways.
Firstly, you can boil your water, place the filter on top of your mug and then pour the hot water into the filter, over the coffee so that it pours into the mug like a regular filter coffee machine. The more coffee in the filter demands a little more patience. If your drink isn’t strong enough just jiggle the filter around in the coffee a bit.
If I’m on my own I will only carry one kettley thing with me which is used for both food or drinks.. If I’m using an alcohol stove I light in the normal way and place the kettle on the stove with just the right amount of water (for a medium or large cup) and then put the filter inside the kettle. The kettle is not too tall as to allow the filter to fall over and so the coffee grains stay in the filter. By the time the water has boiled and the alcohol stove has burnt out you will have a perfectly brewed cup of coffee.
This is about as good as you can get (unless you choose to do something more exotic, see below). Great, real coffee, brewed up in pure, mountain, water. Wonderful. If you are a coffee lover you will want to take your coffee black. No matter how good your dried milk is it will ruin the taste.
Tea
These filters are very versatile. You can also use them for loose leaf tea. Loose leaf tea is very economical, far more so than tea bags, and is very ecologically sound. It takes a tea bag a long time to degrade. I like my tea without milk. The best way to brew is to boil the water and then jiggle the filter around until you have the desired strength tea.
The Exotics
My culinary adviser, the backpacker formerly known as HMP3, is well known for his special Turkish Coffee Brew. He’s even been known to provide supplies of this special mix for other backpackers. So, what is Turkish Coffee? Turkish coffee is brewed with spices and can be quite delicious. It is never served with milk or cream.
The main spice used (indeed often the only spice) is the wonderful cardamon. You can grind some cardamon in advance of trekking — storing it in an Aloksak — or you can carry a small supply of pods with you. To be properly authentic you will need to bring Arabic coffee with you. It is best to use a complete pod as one pod per cup of coffee is the proper quantity to use.
Bring the water to the boil. Take off the heat and add the coffee and cardamon in your filter. Return the the heat and allow to foam.
You can even make this without a filter. Simply add the coffee and then after it has foamed allow it to rest to allow the coffee grounds to sink to the bottom of the mug. A bit messy this when backpacking. I prefer the filter.
If you take sugar, in Turkish Coffee, this is always added during the brewing process and never at the end.
In the real world you pour into your mug after foaming. Never stir as you will destroy the foam. In the field this is a little more difficult to ensure.
So, there you have it. Real coffee on the hill. Pure luxury. Great at the end of a hard day’s walk. A wonderful start to the day when everything is crisp outside and there is a layer of frost on the inside of your fly sheet!
Hi, Andy.
As you say, coffee can be made with or without a filter. Just decanting the drink off the grounds only works for me where the coffee has been ground evenly. Larger particles will float and need picking out individually. Coffees from those folks in Harrogate do the job after a decent meal.
Being a tea addict who occasionally drinks the other stuff, I cannot stand tea made in a filter which has previously been used for coffee, and there is no need to use a filter as tea leaves will nearly always settle. Tea leaves are just chopped up bits of Camellia but I am careful where I dispose of them as they do not rot well.
There are few luxuries really worth hauling into a wild pitch but a decent brew to enjoy with the last of the evening qualifies every time for me.
Best wishes.
The difference here is that you’re actually quite the backpacking gourmet and seem to enjoy the cooking/brewing/steeping process. When it comes to food and drink, I want to add water, leave it for a bit and then consume. I reckon it’s a generational thing…..
Err, with the filer you just add water ….
True coffee, for me at least, is espresso… a bit of a tough call when in the middle of nowhere (and, honestly, most of England is the middle of nowhere as far as espresso is concerned.) That said, I’m heartened to see talk of the importance of a good coffee when trekking on one of the backpacking blogs in my RSS reader
Personally I recommend the Bialetti Mini Express 2, it has served me well combined with a Decagon Stove (from Bob and Rose’s store – their site is how I found this blog in the first place.) If you let the stove get up to proper burning you can put the espresso maker right on top of it, alternatively I sometimes put it on the support from a Bush Cooker stove.
Amongst other places, this combo has produced shots of espresso at the tops of both Snowdon and Scafell Peak (the Pike, and hopefully Ben Nevis, are yet to come.)
Note: the espresso maker weighs almost exactly 300g … so not exactly light. But it is a lot less light than an espresso machine and the generator you’d need to run it
Keep on trekking!
um……freeze dried for me
Yvan, I have to confess that I’ve done this in the past. On treks though the MSR filter is as good as it gets.
After using tea bags I always split them open (when cooled down), spread the contents over the ground and pack out the remains.
This started with a simple question from me to Phil! Thanks for the ideas but I was alarmed to see that this filter costs £15 plus postage. A little wire mesh “tea ball” weighs next to nothing and would do for looseleaf tea. I’m wondering about a muslin bag for coffee? Alternatively, maybe I should just up messing around on the computer and go for a walk.
Yes but at £15 this will last forever. Mine is about 7 years old now and still working well.
I’ve been using Starbucks Via – it make a fairly decent brew once I worked out that 350ml of water is the optimum volume of water for the taste.
I’ve got a GSI Expresso but never backpack with it… I might put it on the scales to see how much it weighs. It might, just might go out on an overnighter.