how to cut coffee weight

[Peter S]

All you Via haters: Maybe you're just not doing it the right way

Trust me… I'm a coffee snob in the civilization ;-)

Ken: Decaf?… Why would you even mention that hideous word! Sugar?…
Dave: You're using pregrounded, preroasted coffee…why bother with the coffee ceremony then, it's like worshipping a plastic god…

The most important thing when stuck with Via is to make a small cup. One package is for LESS than 2 dl.

[Ken Thompson]

"when stuck with Via "

Life is full of choices. I choose to not Via

I forgot to mention creamer. A little bit of coffee with cream and sugar.

They all bought Decaf by mistake after Starbucks redesigned the package. Nobody noticed it said decaf. Hilarious.

I want more than a tiny cup of coffee. It's not Europe. This is the land of the never ending cup. Via gets way too expensive at 2-3 pkgs. per honking big cup.

[Nathan Watts]

Peter,

I was waiting for someone to say that. Everyone's spending a lot of effort preparing old ground coffee if they're not packing a grinder.

Also I was wondering if there are issues with seeping ground coffee at altitude. I know you need a fairly high water temp to extract properly – though that temp may be well below what's achievable up high. Can't remember.

I'm happy enough with my Via Italian roast in the backcountry for the convenience. I'll keep the French press at home.

[Cole Crawford]

@Mark: Just wanted to throw it out there. It all comes down to your ultimate purpose in making coffee. I personally like coffee, but there are some people who don't like it but still want the benefits of caffeine while on the trail. It's not feasible to bring soft drinks, etc so caffeine tabs are the best bet. If your purpose is to get caffeine intake, those are the lightest, easiest solution.

[Jerry Adams]

You could put a teaspoon or two of instant coffee in a granola bar or such. Maybe something with chocolate in it. You might not notice any bad taste of being instant coffee.

[Alex H]

Been all around the block, filters, presses, MSR filter, Via. If I am not going to go all the way to fresh ground then the Italian Instant Espresso is the best, way better to me than Via. Ferraro is what I can get here but Medalia d' Oro is also really good.

[Lachlan Fysh]

The Vietnamese use a style of drip filter / press called a phin, which will replace my aeropress for lightness. The coffee produced is short and strong and designed to be had with sweetened condensed milk (which I always have a tube of anyway :))

http://instagram.com/p/aWzIduHTsF/

Requires a smallish cup, and preferably one you can see through (to see when dripping is complete). I need to find a little plastic translucent one before I take this camping. Branded coffee is available in 2x250g bag boxes, and you use about 25 grams a hit I'd say (tablespoon or so), similar to most approaches involving grounds. Obviously you don't need to use the vietnamese coffee, anything with a medium course grind should work.

Now the important part – the whole thing is very thin aluminium, and a solo one like this weighs in at only 50g with a 100ml or so max capacity. They also do bigger ones for group use into a pot for pouring that would probably make 250ml or so (of strong espresso). You could easily cut this coffee with more water if you prefer a longer coffee…

Even looking in a very vietnamese part of town I had to shop a bit to find the solo aluminium ones – group aluminium and stainless steel solo were much more common. The stainless is marketed as being 'better' for some reason (more weight on the grounds I guess, less flavour from the metal too perhaps..), but obviously I had different priorities. Anyway, I found them in the end for $3 each :D

If anyone is interested I could probably source more, but shipping to the US would make it less cheap ;)

[Ken Thompson]

i wondered when that stuff would be brought up. Never tried it. Should give it a go.

[Jeffs Eleven]

Yaa Via is light, easy, tasty, potent enough to blow the doors offa any other system when also considering weight. Only bother is creamer. We usually buy the little single creamer sauces,but longer than a night or two its too much volume, weight, worry about popping, so we take the Trader Joes instant coffee which is much cheaper than Via and has creamer mixed in, but its less potent so we supplement it with a via packet.

We may just take Via and some flavored powder creamer.

In any case I believe that a french press+ beans, while better in quality, is not worth the weight when compared to the reasonably lower quality, but significantly lighter instant mixes. YMMV

FWIW I live in a coffeecentric area and am therefore, by default, a quasi-coffee snob, and Via gets the job done for me.

[Marko Botsaris]

"Also I was wondering if there are issues with seeping ground coffee at altitude. I know you need a fairly high water temp to extract properly – though that temp may be well below what's achievable up high. Can't remember. "

Good point. Espresso, which I think needs the hottest temp of all is best with around 185-190 F. On top of Mt Whitney water boils at 185. Yes I just checked, and yes I'm worried about the fact I just checked. So fortunately we are covered in the lower 48! Hooray!

My hardcore coffee books says you *must* make your espresso within 2 minutes of grinding the beans. LOL

Also the fresh roasted beans start to loose their flavors, and oils go rancid, after 2 weeks or so. Plus you should rest the coffee a day or two after roasting or it will be a little "fizzy" – it has to outgass a bunch of CO2.

However I think grinding just before you leave on a trip, and storing properly should come up to non-snob wilderness standards.

On the other hand I have a really nice miniature Japanese-made manual grinder with a ceramic bore (6 oz) on my wish list! I expect at some point there will be an article on how to achieve the ideal grind in the field by somehow using tent stakes, a UL swiss army knife and a rock. Maybe Mike is ready for a follow up article.

[John Hillyer]

I make do with a couple of spoonfuls of instant each morning; but last year when I was experimenting with no cook I ate chocolate covered espresso beans.

[M G]

"You gotta watch out for the Crystal lite Energy. We called it crystal crack. I don't know if it was the caffeine or the sugar or some mystery ingredient but it reduced a group of relatively able bodied thru hikers into to a bunch of night-hiking twitchy tweekers."

My last big trip we mixed that Crystal Lite stuff with Everclear for some very special sunset cocktails.

[Dena Kelley]

Another Starbucks Via user here- plus I carry a small bottle of Bailey's to kick it up a notch.

[Richard Lyon]

Mark – I've used mine for years without a problem, at least in making very strong coffee. It is messy, as is any French press, and sometimes when I'm careless the oatmeal I hydrate immediately after has a coffee flavor. I tend to buy local roasters' strong beans and grind them at home. Best and easiest way to have strong, real coffee on a solo trip. With a group one of us will carry a plastic large FP for group coffee. Not exactly UL but there's nothing like fresh-brewed coffee on a backcountry morning.

[Peter S]

After a nice day with a steady intake of coffee, i'm ready to dive into this passionate thread again!

Ken: cream too?? You're pushing it now…. well, if you prefer a bowl of coffee, then i agree, too expensive for sure. I have a friend like that…I would not want to deprive him of his black bowl of morning coffee when on a hike with him…dangerously! Actually, been there myself – i used to drink almost 3 large cups of coffee each morning. Hard work to get down to one cup!
BTW…done the decaf-mistake myself one morning…not pretty..

Nathan: Somebody had to state the obvious ;-)

P.S… for me, the single cup packaging of VIA is a part of the whole ehm… package. Perfect for fastpacking, like the 4g esbit cubes.

[Tom Lyons]

Like others, I use single serving instant.
I don't use Starbucks Via, but I use another brand.

[Erik Basil]

We prefer to fresh grind our home-roasted beans, using granite from the Ahwahnee formation, a Colombian pestle and the ceramic filter from recycled Jarvik 7 pumps. This, combined with cold-filtered Sierra stream water and the 7-gram french press constructed out of a RedBull can, titanium mesh and tent stake with a desmodromic ring gasket, produces the most pure essence of coffee possible.

I realize that lower forms of human may settle for less, and one of the great things about Pax Americana is that you are free to do so.

[Marko Botsaris]

"We prefer to fresh grind our home-roasted beans, using granite from the Ahwahnee formation, a Colombian pestle and the ceramic filter from recycled Jarvik 7 pumps. "

Excellent. I'm interested in adopting this same method, but only if it can be modded to be 10 lbs or less.

[Casey Jones]

"We prefer to fresh grind our home-roasted beans, using granite from the Ahwahnee formation, a Colombian pestle and the ceramic filter from recycled Jarvik 7 pumps. This, combined with cold-filtered Sierra stream water and the 7-gram french press constructed out of a RedBull can, titanium mesh and tent stake with a desmodromic ring gasket, produces the most pure essence of coffee possible."

Home roaster here too. I'm curious to see some pics of your setup if you have any. That sounds like quite the contraption.

[Peter S]

Now, you would not be using any thing else than Kopi Luwak beans? Otherwise don't even bother…

[BlackHatGuy]

"Now, you would not be using any thing else than Kopi Luwak beans?"

Meh, overrated. They taste like crap …. (I know, too easy…..)

[Tanner M]

I figured he was speaking satirically and meant he just ground his beans against whatever stone formation was at hand along the trail. Shouldn't be any need to carry the mortar. Although that leaves you at mercy of local rock… Sandstone, for instance :^| Maybe the pestle could be tied to end of a cord and used as bear defense.

>> "We prefer to fresh grind our home-roasted beans, using granite from the Ahwahnee formation, a Colombian pestle and the ceramic filter from recycled Jarvik 7 pumps. "

> Excellent. I'm interested in adopting this same method, but only if it can be modded to be 10 lbs or less.

[John Almond]

…I figure instant is going to taste like, well…instant. So, enough Cafe Bustelo instant espresso (for the darker roast) to make 3 cups, mixed with one "vanilla" flavor Carnation Instant Breakfast, placed into 12 oz of hot water does me. I pack 'em in the old-style sandwich bags with the twist ties. Two of those, and I'm ready to fight the bears off bare handed (also ready to dig a cat hole within fifteen minutes).

Replaces most of the vitamins and minerals that dehydrating food gets rid of, plenty of sugar to get one ready to hit the trail, and enough caffeine to keep me from killing the first five people I have to interact with on the trail.

Works for me, at least.

[brian H]

First I invite all non-coffee freaks to go home…this thread is for us happy addicts!
LOL

I have been a coffee snob for a very long time…long before Starbux branded the name Via, and even before AAA gave its member magazine the same name [out west anyhoo].

For me Via is decent, it is my backup choice for the trail. My #1 trail coffee solution is the only commercially available Organic freeze dried instant coffee I am aware of. It is called Mount Hagen organic instant coffee. It tastes surprising good, such that at home, when I just need a "hit" and am too lazy to grind & brew ;) it jumps in to pinch hit. It is becoming easier to find, 3 diff stores carry it in my small town. So much so that I am a bit surprised it hasnt been mentioned yet in this thread of 70+ posts as of today [at least not by name]. Its why I add my $0.02.

It's also easier to work with than Via, which is a fine powder and is clingy. MH looks like Folgers – large granules, super convenient on the trail – and thankfully to the taste buds, the similarity ends there! With Via you have more garbage headache, esp keeping tabs of the tiny top of the lil pkg if you slice it completely off [and you BETTER NOT leave any behind!]. MH comes in a glass jar. Google it.

Because grinding & brewing fresh beans twice daily is the norm 4 me, I am happy with instant on the trail, especially thanx to this nice tasting organic variety.

[Ian]

On par with cowboy coffee is Turkish coffee. This is what was available when I was in Bosnia (thanks to the Ottoman Empire) and I think it's no coincidence that I didn't have hair on my chest until that deployment.

This is the best technique I've found for Cowboy/Turkish coffee…

Use finest grind available. Unfortunately my grinder sucks but the stuff in Bosnia was like fine powder.

Bring water to a boil.

Add coffee grinds

Bring water back to a boil and then immediately remove to avoid boil over

The grounds will settle to the bottom of the mug and you won't have to filter them through your teeth until the very end.

I'm all for coffee snobbery but there's no way I'm bringing a grinder on the trail.

What’s your cowboy coffee technique?

[Author]

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