Breakaway Adventures: Campfire Coffee
Breakaway Adventures: Campfire Coffee
Good Coffee Makes for Happy Campers, So You Best Know How to Make It Off Grid
Photos / Indrek Kongats
Coffee is a morning ritual for most people. No matter where we are, we need to start the day off by sipping a hot cup of java. It used to be quite simple, but in today’s modern society it’s much more complicated with hot or cold choices, espressos, lattes, cappuccinos, mochas - the list goes on! Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned instant coffee that I grew up on? Believe it or not one acquires a taste for instant and can readily distinguish the different subtleties of the various brands offered, just like fine wines! Brands such as Maxwell House, Nescafé, or my favorite - Folgers Freeze Dried!
Once you go off the grid, all of those fancy coffees go with it, and if you want your morning coffee you’d best know how to make it and drink it. Maybe that’s why people don’t like camping so much! You don’t have to be MacGyver to come up with an ingenious plan to make a pot or a cup without electricity, unless you cheat and bring along a generator! Good coffee makes for happy campers, especially if your wife is among them, and that makes for a happy life!
Let’s start with the simplest and fastest way to make campfire coffee, the afore mentioned instant coffee! All you need to do is boil water - how simple is that? I know some of you are already cringing at the though of drinking instant, but the trick is don’t make it too strong. A ¾ teaspoon in a regular sized coffee cup is all that one needs and with a few swirls of your spoon or a twig it’s ready too drink, black as I normally do! If you need to add sugar and creamer like Coffee-Mate, God forbid, maybe you can disguise it enough to fool yourself into believing that you are back home! Somehow drinking coffee other than black is just not right, but heck, who am I to judge!
The next best way to make coffee has its roots in the old west! I am talking about Cowboy Coffee. You know, the type that ramrod Rowdy Yates, aka Clint Eastwood, drank in Rawhide. Wishbone always had a pot brewing for the weary wranglers. There is a trick to making cowboy coffee and if you don’t know it, your cowboy will be on the chewy side, just like shallowing trail dust. Cowboy coffee is made in a pot, nothing fancy but one best suited to pouring! You begin by boiling some water over your campfire. Once it’s boiling you measure out some coffee beans that in the absence of a coffee grinder you crushed with the butt of your pistol. A pot usually requires a cup’s worth of coarsely ground beans. Take the cup of the coarse grind and pour it into the pot directly. Let it boil some more - the time it takes to roll yourself a cigarette and smoke it! The longer it boils, the stronger it gets. The trick that I referred to is, don’t pour yourself a cup until you doused the pot with a cup of cold water. The cold water will sink the grounds to the bottom of the pot, pour gently, and don’t be last in line!
As humans evolved so did their methods of brewing the perfect cup of coffee. Coffee has its roots in Ethiopia around 800 AD. Interesting enough, it was a goat that led man to harvest coffee beans! A goat herder noticed his flocks acting more energized than usual and noticed them eating berries from a bush. The herder took the berries to a Monk who immediately condemned them as the work of the Devil and threw them into the fire! The rest is history and we all know the sinful benefits and pit falls of too much caffeine!
Next on the list of making good campfire coffee is with the use of a percolator. Coffee percolators were only invented around 1810, until then it was either cowboy style coffee or no coffee! Percolators really do make for a great cup of coffee, but as usual, there is a trick to using them as well! Don’t over fill with water, otherwise your cup will be full of grounds, and always percolate for a specific length of time. Since the water is at 212 degrees Fahrenheit for a lengthy bit of time, it allows for the flavor from the coarsely ground beans to be fully extracted. Percolators are still considered the best for making that perfect cup of coffee, smooth and creamy!
In the 1970s, percolators lost favor to automated drip coffee machines making life at home so much easier, but because the water never gets as hot, the full flavor of the bean isn’t extricated as with a percolator.
During the time percolators were in wide use, another coffee maker called a French Press was invented in 1852, by who else but the French. While the French were busy pressing more grapes than coffee, it was the Italians that eventually patented their French Press in 1929.
The French press is an ideal campfire coffee maker as it’s back to just boiling water to make a delicious favorable cup! The French press allows the grind to steep in boiling hot water for several minutes before you push the plunger down to separate the grounds from the coffee. As always, the secret here is to have a coarser grind and allow enough time between steeping and plunging.
All these techniques for making great campfire coffee have something important in common: they are environmentally friendly and that’s what camping is all about, being one with nature!
Make a cup on your next camping trip, sit back, throw your feet up, watch the sunrise and listen to some loony tunes, then you’ll know you are in paradise!
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Indrek Kongats is an artist, traveler, outdoorsman, and business owner residing in Ellicottville. He operates River Dog Art Gallery in Houghton, NY, and his Breakaway Classic Adventures specializes in adventure travel destinations. Learn more about him at breakawayclassicadventures.com.