Camp Coffee Elevated
MAK enjoying coffee on a beach in Mexico
A Semi-Definitive Guide to Gear and Brewing while Camping
MAK and I have been on the road for more than nine years now. It’s absolutely wild to type that out. So much has changed in that time. Our life now bares little resemblance to what it did when we started. In much the same way, our coffee setup has evolved and changed over and over. Recently though, the dust has started to settle after years of experimentation. I generally think of the “gear” as three things, the brewer, the grinder and the coffee itself. At the end I’ll also provide a recipe for how we make a delicious cup of coffee every morning. Alright, lets get on with it!
You can’t beat coffee with a view
The Brewer
We’ve tried SO many different brewers. In fact, we made a whole video and blog post where we tested the highest rated brewers from REI. That experience, in addition to previous ones helped me discover what I liked and didn’t like in a coffee brewer. While I liked the body that a french press produces, I didn’t like it enough to deal with oily coffee and bitter silt in the bottom of the cup. French presses also require more water to clean, a limited resource while overlanding. I love the cups that the Aeropress brews, but I don’t love the limit on volume and the fact that it’s made of plastic (I’m aware that it’s BPA free and that there is no current evidence that it’s harmful. However, if I can avoid heating up plastic to 200F, I will). Ultimately I found pour over brewers to be what checked the most boxes for me.
Our first pour over was the Clever Dripper. It was a great little brewer that served as a pour over and immersion brewer. Pretty freaking cool. We had ours a long while back and at the time they only made them in plastic so we ultimately moved on. The next pour over we had was the Snow Peak Collapsible Coffee Drip. To this day I think this is a great brewer. I love that it folds to be basically flat but opens up large enough to brew larger batches. The one knock on it is that it forms a square rather than a circle which keeps water more stagnant (more on why this is a problem later). The Snow Peak served us admirably for a while and I still have this brewer in our garage. In my quest to try more and more brewers and make better and better coffee I eventually moved on to another. That new brewer was the Miir Pourigami. This brewer truly folds flat and has a nice case that keeps it very neat. However, it forms a triangle which I found to be even worse than the square that the Snow Peak forms for keeping water stagnant. It also doesn’t permit for large brews. I moved on relatively quickly from this one. That said, I took the Pourigami with us on our trip to Japan and I think it still works well for travel away from our truck. While all this was going on, there was one brewer I always wanted but it never made sense for our lives. It was the Hario V60. For a long time it came in plastic or ceramic. As mentioned, the plastic was a no go and I felt that the ceramic wouldn’t be able to handle the never ending beating of life on the road. Then they released a stainless steel version.
I love the V60. It can be so simple and so complex at the same time. The myriad resources and recipes out there make it easy to dive as deep as you want. There are also many iterations of the V60 so you can pick which material serves you best. As stated above, I went with the steel one for the sake of durability. We’ve had this for a few years now and it’s held up perfectly.
The adjusted kit for the Hilux. In our Four Wheel Camper we have a 1 liter kettle with thermometer that we use instead of the Jetboil.
The Grinder
During all this experimentation with brewers, there was an almost equal amount of tinkering with grinders. In my experience so far, I think that the grinder is equally important.
I started with no grinder, so we were getting pre-ground coffee. There’s nothing wrong with that, but once you start grinding your coffee fresh, the difference is obvious. When I came to this realization, I naturally bought a cheap hand grinder on Amazon and thought that was the end of it. Oh how wrong I was… That grinder was an introduction to patience and a daily arm workout. The results I got were better than pre ground coffee but still not what I was hoping for. And by the time I was done grinding coffee (2-4 minutes) I was craving water more than a hot cup of joe.
When I started looking for the next grinder, I naturally went for an electric one to make my life easier. I scoured the internet for a compromise of price, performance and 12V compatibility. It was pretty slim pickings and I landed on a pretty obscure grinder.
Since then I’ve bounced around with a few different grinders (even an obscure 12V one!) but I’ve settled into a 1Zpresso manual grinder. Not only does it make for a great cup of coffee, it also grinds super fast. I can grind 20 grams of coffee in about 20-30 seconds. That’s a massive improvement and my arms, while perhaps not as cut, are thankful! They don’t make the one I have any more (that’s how long I’ve had it), but if you are looking for one now the ZP6 is supposed to be the best for pour over. In fact, when the budget allows, that’s the grinder I would really like to have.
An indoor coffee morning in the Four Wheel Camper
The Coffee
Of course the coffee itself is a huge part of the equation too. We always get whole bean coffee since we have our own grinder and prefer to grind as needed. Obviously taste preferences are going to be subjective so take my recommendations with a grain of salt. We love light roasts as they tend to produce a flavor that is brighter and less bitter. If you aren’t sure what kind of coffee you like yet, try a wide variety and spend some time “researching”. Its fun to really hone in on what you like and what you don’t!
I love to try different coffees from all over and overlanding is a great outlet for that. Since we’re traveling all around the country (and even the world) we get to sample from local roasters all over the place. I like going into coffee shops and if the coffee really strikes me, I’ll snag a bag of their beans. All that said, our favorite areas of the United States tend to be very remote where there is very rarely a local coffee roaster. Because of that we usually have some beans from our favorite roaster, PERC on us. What I like about PERC is they brand their coffees as “mild” or “wild”. Mild coffees tend to have more of the traditional and balanced flavors you know and love. Meanwhile the wild coffees are more experimental and have flavors I’ve never experienced in coffee before. We LOVE the wild coffees.
You can get 15% off your order at PERC with the code: BoundForNowhere15
The Hario V60 in action
The Recipe
This recipe is an amalgamation of many recipes I’ve seen and tried over the years. It produces a coffee that is tea-like in body and has a bright flavor. The recipe produces 300ml (~10oz) of coffee and uses about a 1:16 ratio of coffee to water. It can be scaled up though to fit whatever amount you need (although I tend to just make it twice).
What you need:
19g of coffee
300g of water (300ml or ~10oz)
Kettle, grinder, V60, paper filter and scale (if you’re fancy, otherwise you can just hone it in with practice)
Step by Step:
Grind 19 grams of coffee to a medium level
Place paper filter in the V60, presoak the filter and dump that water out of whatever you’re brewing into
Add ground coffee to the V60
Bring water to a boil and let sit for 30 seconds to slightly cool
Pour 60 grams of water over coffee to let the grounds bloom (if scaling, do about 3x the weight of the coffee)
After about 45 seconds pour 120 grams of water over coffee and give it a swirl to even out the bed (if scaling, divide the remaining weight of water needed by 2)
Just before the water has fully drained, add 120 grams of water over the coffee and give it another swirl to even the bed
Let it drain and then enjoy!
I hope that you’ve been able to get some useful information from all of this. Since we’ve had so much experience over the years, we just wanted to share our own journey while offering some hindsight. Give the recipe a try and let us know what you think!