I've always made "cowboy coffee" or some variant thereof. Either free-floating the grounds in the pot and settling them before the pour, or tying up the grounds in coffee-maker filters for less mess. But I have been looking at other methods recently including the MSR "Mugmate" which caught my eye. It is basicly a fine mesh cup that sits in the cup and contains the grounds for pour-over and steeping. Sorta like an old fashioned tea egg. I've use the folgers' singles bags and they are ok. Never tried the Starbucks VIA coffee. Hate every instant coffee I have ever tried. A caveat is that when I wake up in the morning out of doors, I do enjoy cup after cup of fresh coffee, beginning before I cook breakfast, while I am cooking it, and as a chaser after eating. I am even known to finish the last cup while packing up camp. Has anyone tried the MSR coffee dealio?
Here is a discussion about trail coffee on the Backpacking light forum. Note that if you go there, they definitely have a different mindset, as the forum title suggests. Please, if you post, be respectful of that forum, it's members and staff. The thread is a good read though as members, over years' time discuss their own preferences on coffees, methods of making trail coffee.
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Now back to me. The days of backpacking are over for me and my canoe is my Sherpa, so weight isn't a prime concern. I still don't care to pack along a lot of baggage to have to load, unload, unpack, repack and reload. Breaking camp and casting off in the morning should be a pleasure not an ordeal.
Also, I am not too fond of foo-foo coffee like expressos and exotic flavors and additives. I currently make my coffee in a stainless one quart billy can, usually with spring water to negate the hassle of filtering and treating. One or two gallons of bottled water is not significant weight to my canoe. I've pretty much done away with campfires, mostly using my Emberlit for cooking and a little bit of heating, since my adventuring is no longer in winter, and not a lot of overnighters in the early spring/late fall shoulder seasons.
As to my personal "wilderness ethic", I have no qualms about scattering coffee grounds when I leave camp. I don't leave any trash though like coffee filters or bags or other packaging, plastic or paper. I do carry ziplocks for messy stuff and a trash bag inside a mesh onion sack for garbage. How this will change with the local bear population. Never traveled among grizzlies and blacks before.
So if you make coffee a part of your outdoor experience, what are your preferences in methods and materials?
Michael
I also cart coffee into the mountains. Can't live without it. I use this though:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002YT2CII/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
...which uses #4 conical filters. I can get into a foo-foo coffee once in a while but not as a common practice. For the most part, I drink Folgers, WaWa or Duncan Donuts...usually a medium-to-dark brew / blend with sugar.
My coffee grounds usually get buried in my "cat hole" but I burn the filters up in the fire. One might [correctly] argue that they are made from paper and therefore biodegradable [so they could be buried without harming the environment] but I don't do it because...well, I just don't.
I always camp near a moving water source but I still filter and boil the crap out of it. Having a good supply of pre-filtered/boiled water is commonplace for me so I don't consider it "an extra" step.
I also pack out all things not environment friendly but also note that I do a lot of "re-packaging" so I have less to pack out. One example is instant oatmeal...I'll buy
__X amount of__ boxes for a given trip. If they are all the same flavor, I'll just open all the packets and dump them into one ziplock. sometimes I'll make a 2:1 ratio of plain:flavored. Same goes for Ramen Noodles. I buy cases of them and open all the packs, crush them into one gallon ziplock bags and put the flavor packets in a quart ziplock.
Dry goods/spices are sometimes a 'mess' issue so I learned to do the following:
Figure out what portion ratio of salt : pepper you can 'generally' live with. Mix that ration in a 35 mm film canister, shaking well. Add water and let that thing cake up rock hard...and let the excess water evaporate. Simply scrape the 'brick' when you want to season your food. I also make a dedicated "salt brick" this same way...just no pepper.
Individual Tasty-cake pies? Yeah....this one is awesome
..........
Each one of those pies is in an aluminum foil pan with a rolled edge. Eat the pie and wash the pan with hot soapy water. Fill it with granulated sugar and fill it with water. Let this get rock hard. Scrape off what you need into your coffee, whatever. I typically use one level spoon of sugar in a 12 oz cup of Joe. that brick lasts about 4-5 pots of coffee.
Your next trip to Burger King, grab like 5 extra straws. not McD's, their straws are too thin/pop/split for this next AWESOME tip:
I will ALWAYS take my favorite 4" Cast Iron frying pan into the woods with me. I'll sacrifice a different comfort for it because food
just tastes better in it. But you need a good grease to cook on it.
Take your straw and jam it straight down into a can of Crisco shortening. Fill the straw to 1/4" away from the top end. Take a clean pair of needle-nose pliers and heat the tips up with a candle and melt the top end of the straw. Move down about 1.5" and melt the straw together. Try
NOT to melt it to the point of cutting through it. You only want to seal it. Move down another 1.5" and do it again and again, until the entire straw is a "segmented" like this. Take a sharp scissors and cut the center of the melted segment and throw them into an Altoids can. Simply pop one open and squeeze the Crisco onto the pan and cook your food.
!
