We still have two perc pots, a 10 cup and a 20 cup, and used them exclusively on trips for many years. Too many years; it is easy to make an terrible pot of bitter coffee with an overlooked/unregulated perc, and a slow blurp. . . . . blurp. . . . . blurp of a proper perc takes a while.
A long while with a watched pot and an urgent need for caffeine. Come on dammit, I don’t want something tea colored, get dark!
The 20 cupper was well received on group trips, even when the coffee was rushed and over-perc bitter. We had a small coffee flag; tied to a stick the kids would parade around in the morning carrying the flag and 20 cupper, visiting our tripper friends.
If verbal blessings accumulate my boys had their Pearly Gate tickets paid for by age 10. At some sites it was just a begging hand holding an empty cup out a tent door in morning anticipation.
(Or sometimes not morning; one of the funniest things I have ever heard while camping was uttered by a friend’s wife, walking over midday to see if we had any coffee left in the pot she could heat up. A solemn approach, with a serious expression, and she quietly said “Do you have coffee left? Alan thinks he can sit up now”)
Then a French press for years on family and solo trips. Done properly a French press makes excellent coffee, and I like my coffee strong and dark. Great tasting coffee, but I didn’t like many aspects of the press. To wit:
The press we have makes enough for two big mugs of coffee, call it four 8 oz cup measures with some dregs left in the press; perfect for two people (I pour the cooling dregs in my insulated mug as soon as there is space).
But for just me on solo trips the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] mug left in the press was tepid by the time I got to it. And with a companion if I/we wanted a second cup I had to deal with the grounds pressed on the bottom.
Ah, the press grounds. What to do with the pressed grounds? Even in cleaner practices, dumping them in the trash bag or into a hot working fire, the grounds are a bigger PITA to knock free from the press bottom than from a removable perc basket. And at some point you gotta rinse the clingy grounds completely out of the press pot.
I never actually measured, but it seemed to me that I need to use almost the same amount of grounds to make ten strong cups in a slow perc as I need to make four cups in a French press.
The perc pots, the French press and at least one of those Melita V funnel filters (a sucky shape to pack) all reside unused in the box of spare camping stuff.
With the advent of Starbucks Via, sometimes mixed with a 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] packet of cheaper “instant” (Folgers Black Silk Roast Concentrate is not bad) I can have a great tasting mug of coffee in the time it takes to boil water with no fuss, no muss, not pot or press and grounds to tote in and clean.
I have some addictions, and morning coffee is one. Usually two mugs a morn, one before and with breakfast, and one intermittently savored while I pack gear. On a long trip the sheer amount of ground bean needed vs a fistful of Via packets becomes another consideration.
http://www.canoetripping.net/forums/forum/gear/camp-kitchen/28385-breakfast-ideas/page5
I don’t see myself packing in a pot/press and grounds ever again.
