Old Coleman one - used with hand roasted green beans (got to roast them yourself or you lose so much), it makes a great cup. It was about £15 if that helps?
Coffee in the bush
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Old Coleman one - used with hand roasted green beans (got to roast them yourself or you lose so much), it makes a great cup. It was about £15 if that helps?
Have you looked at the aerobi aeropress? It may look like the sort of thing sold in a plain cover from specialist book shops but it works really well, very smooth coffee, easy to clean and bombproof.
Went to Tamarack the other day and they had an esbit hexi powered expresso maker. V cool.
Went to Tamarack the other day and they had an esbit hexi powered expresso maker. V cool.
If you buy your beans from www.hasbean.co.uk, before sending them to you they roast the green beans in a commercial roaster at a consistent temperature while the beans are tumbled. They are perfectly roasted to your specification and as fresh as the time it takes to arrive in the post, which is usually less than 24 hours.
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EdS
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
an old tin lined copper briki (cezve) warmed on the embers still makes the best coffee.
Coffee, sugar, water & 1 cardamon pod. Job done.
Coffee, sugar, water & 1 cardamon pod. Job done.
I have been using Hasbean for years. I prefer green beans (which they supply in all the varieties). I don't want to order every week, but I do prefer the flavour of freshly roasted (actually 48 hrs after is optimal for me). Try roasting your own sometime - you might be surprised.
I've looked into it and read a lot of disappointments. Seems it can be very tricky to get an even and consistent roast. I've never done it, but I would think with pan roasting it would be very difficult to bring all the beans to the crack at the same time, which means some would be under-roasted. If you wait till they are all cracked, how do you avoid some being over-roasted, over-caramelised and bitter? How do you get consistency without a commercial home roaster?
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I like to skillet roast outdoors in the summer. A deep sided wok works well for keepig things moving. I have been known to raise Spikey da Pikey from his pit with the smell 
(he got to break out the hand grinder as a result). Electric Popcorn makers work well though if you want a mobile air roast (or in the winter) - cheap too if you keep an eye on Argos and ebay.
(he got to break out the hand grinder as a result). Electric Popcorn makers work well though if you want a mobile air roast (or in the winter) - cheap too if you keep an eye on Argos and ebay.
Sounds like fun. I might try it, though I confess I'm sceptical of the results.
If ever you are backpacking and dont want to carry your skillet, burr-mill grinder and percolator, try Starbucks VIA sometime - you might be surprised.
If ever you are backpacking and dont want to carry your skillet, burr-mill grinder and percolator, try Starbucks VIA sometime - you might be surprised.
i buy green Etopean Mocca beans from HR Higgins who seem to be the only ones to have them. I roast them at home in a glass covered pan and keeping beans moving whilst heat is applied is part of the experience and only way to get an even roast. I leave them to cool and grind them the following morning. Nothing smells as good as fresh ground coffee in the morning.
As I said in a previous post I prefer filter coffee so I carry a pot and filter cone. I have one of these in the picture though and if you like strong Italian coffee they are great, and perfect for use on a stove or small fire...(careful if the handles are plastic or they will melt.(happened to me when a Coleman flared up).
I find the coffee very strong with these and you only get a small amount even in the biggest pot...I like a good half litre of coffee in the morning...
cheers
Gareth
I find the coffee very strong with these and you only get a small amount even in the biggest pot...I like a good half litre of coffee in the morning...
cheers
Gareth
When I was a kid my grandparents used to roast their own (we called it parching rather than roasting) in the oven with the heat set on about 400-425 Farenheight. Way back when they were growing up whole green beans was the only way coffee came. If they're arranged in a single flat layer on a cookie sheet or something similar they will roast evenly just like peanuts or pecans or chestnuts. That was pretty much the standard for getting coffee in American households until about the 1910s and in rural areas on up until the 1930s. Not sure why you want them to crack though. They should be an even dark color (color to your taste) but still whole until you grind them. That's what keeps them fresh is keeping them whole and unscathed. Not sure how to replicate that process in the bush though.
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LOL.Just don't grind them with your pepper mill or the same grinder that you use for your spices unless you want a customized flavor.
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Have to agree, this stuff is a revelation. At home, I buy my beans freshly roasted from hasbean, or pre-roasted from Whittards if I'm being lazy, I grind on a burr-mill grinder and extract using a beautiful La Pavoni Professional hand press. Espresso doesnt get any better than that - god-shots all the way. Sometimes I'll use a French press if there are few people to serve and previously I've used an aeropress when car-camping. I never use coffee pots or percolators because they steep the coffee making it over-extracted and bitter. Percolated coffee is almost as foul as instant IMO. But whatever method you use, when backpacking all the paraphernalia is just way too heavy to carry, so it's either that foul drek known as instant coffee, or tea. No choice really.
However, these new Starbucks VIA sachets are a revelation. It's instant coffee, but it's mixed with micro-ground real coffee that goes into suspension when water is added. The result is a cup of instant coffee that does a very, very good approximation of the real thing. It's not quite as good as the real thing, and real coffee aficionados will certainly tell the difference, but many cant. It's close enough for me to be a very acceptable alternative when practicality is a consideration and for backpacking, they are absolutely ideal. So if you are a real coffee lover who has simply written off the notion of instant coffee as universally horrible, give these a go. You wont drink it as a first choice at home, but for backpacking, it will definitely give you pause when trying to decide whether to carry all your usual coffee junk ...or a few sachets of VIA. Two sachets in a cup first thing, will give you a caffeine hit that will have your teeth rattling.
The problem with percolators is they actually steep the coffee in boiling water. Coffee should be brewed at about 8-10 degrees cooler than boiling. Anything above that releases a tannin much like that found in treebarks that makes it bitter. The easiest way to do that in the bush is just to boil the water then let it cool a couple of minutes before adding the grounds. In an earlier post someone mentioned the best coffee he had ever had was made by boiling it in an old cowboy pot in Montana. The eggshells dropped into the finished pot would have drawn that tannin back out (or so I'm told). Like he said, the company and camp surroundings go a long way to make that coffee perfect.
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Thanks for the link. Yeah the Amish country would be one of those isolated ares I meant. That and some rural areas in the West and in the South.
There are other brand names besides Coleman for the 1 gallon tins on the shelves here but we refer to them all as "coleman" fuel the same way you refer to all vacuum cleaners as a "Hoover." They are slightly cheaper than actual Coleman brand but still about double what white gas at the pump is (in the areas where it's available). No where near what you're paying though. That explains why Butane, Propane and Gaz are more popular there than they are here. Coleman fuel her is about $8-$10 per gallon. At least here in Florida; prices vary across the country.
There's a chap at work who uses ground coffee tea bags. Off the top of my head they're from Lyons. Links to some other solutions...
http://www.gsioutdoors.com/products/cat/coffee/
http://aerobie.com/products/aeropress.htm
http://www.esbit.de/index.php?id=305
http://www.gsioutdoors.com/products/cat/coffee/
http://aerobie.com/products/aeropress.htm
http://www.esbit.de/index.php?id=305
I know you can roast coffee this way, but my point was that if you are after the absolute best you can get, I cant see how home roasting will deliver. It'll be very fresh, no question, but it's going to be inconsistent, with some beans roasted darker than others. The beans dont actually crack, the first and second cracks are terms used to describe certain stages in the coffee roasting process...
http://www.coffeeresearch.org/coffee/roasting.htm
I can see how roasting your own can be fun, but I cant see how it will produce a superior cup of coffee and with companies like hasbean that roast to order using commercial roasters, I dont really see the point.
I caught on to your term "crack" after it was too late to really change my post. Sorry for the confusion. If the beans are spread evnly in a single layer then the roast will be even as well. At least as even as most of us can differentiate. I think you're probably right about the pros being better at it. Reallistically as long as you wait til the last minute to grind your beans then when they were roasted has a lesser effect on freshness. Many companies here now offer roasted but unground, whole beans. Another key is to store them as air tight as possible.
I think many people get mere satisfaction roasting their own because of either a sense of nostalgia (ref my grandparents) or perhaps it's better simply because they expect it to be.
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I reckon it's largely the smell. There's nothing quite like it, apart from (maybe) fresh baking bread.
i use a gizmo made my GSI and a stainless bottle.
someone made a video of its use here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtv8ejyHLbY
someone made a video of its use here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtv8ejyHLbY
Two of my favorite places in a shopping mall: 1) a tobbacco shop, & 2) a coffee shop (one that sells grounds or fresh roasted beans) Both just to enjoy the smell.
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