Good coffee - the holy grail. It's okay to eat mucilagenous sluge out of a baggie - but don't mess with the bean!

I'm with Phil on the cowboy coffee. Back in the days when pots had bails (remember?) I'd do the side-arm swirl to settle the gounds; centripedal force is the ticket. Now I add a drab of cold water and then bang the side of the pot to settle the grounds. If you're careful decanting, you don't get more than trace levels of grounds in your mug. If you're less than careful, it builds charactor and provides an extra jolt.

When I don't want to bother, I use an Italian instant expresso (Medaglia D'Oro), which I think is about as good as instant gets at a price that doesn't demand selling the gold mine.

Regarding disposing of grounds - I always blend them into forest duff...same with tea leaves. I'm curious about people's thoughts about disposal.

Like drip coffee that tastes great...use these...they are very geeky cool..best for those that have a kettle as some sort of directional flow control is necessary to pour water into the filter and not collapse the sides...I buy the "mug size"...
http://www.onefreshcup.com/product.asp

Sorry, double post so I edited it to mention the sale...by the way, I like both the Sumatra and Antigua...

Edited by Mataharihiker on 05/11/2007 06:06:57 MDT.

So we used the pods this week in Coyote Gulch and the consensus is thus: Use two pods for a very good cup of brewed coffee. You can get a pretty good 2nd cup with a refill of hot h20. No fuss, no muss!

-Kim

P.S. I LOVE Medaglia D'Oro. I grew up on it and I use it for car camping. I add ground cardamom and a wee bit of sugar to the can for an excellent turkish coffee. Boiling the coffee to a head three times settles the grounds at the bottom of the pot and you get a very, very smooth cup of espresso style coffee. Boiling makes the flavor a bit rough and bitter, but a hint o' sugar smoothes it out -- says a die-hard black coffee drinker.

Edited by Kimberlymae on 05/16/2007 13:23:45 MDT.

Cool---thanks for being the lab rat on this, Kim. :-)>
I must try it.

Crack open two of these and dump the vacuum-sealed "freshly ground" beans into 12-16 oz of boiled water and wait 4 minutes. Use a fine-screen french-press (i.e. jetboil) or filter thru a bandana.

Much better than java juice, but about 2x the weight + hassle of clean-up and grounds disposal.

I like this approach if traveling in bear country because there is no (human) detectable smell until you open the foil pouch.

You end up with foil pouches and (unless burned) little filter-paper circles to pack out.

For long trips your better off with Java-Juice or an instant coffee, but you can throw a few of these in for "special cups"

Instead of the pods take a look at a product called T-Sac. Thi is basically fill your own tea bags for loose tea. The advantage here is that you can get large ones. I used to use these at work with coffee. Basically it helps if you get the side 3 T-Sac's and fill with enough coffee for a cup. Put the bag in the cup you are going to use. Don't tie of close the end. Pour the hot water into the T-Sac slowly to get the grounds wet and loose in the bag until the cup is filled with water. Let sit a while. It helps to use the finest ground you can make. You can cheat a little for extra kick and throw a little instant espresso in the bag.

These work really well for coffee if you must have real beans and don't want to go so far as a french press or a cone filter on top of cup plastic thingy.

This is rather late but I also enjoy coffee. Like what was reported above the bags work very poorly so I investigated coffee making techniques. "Cowboy" coffee is one alternative but can produce quite a bit of acid and is only useful for larger groups. I found Turkish coffee and the coffee maker called an ibrik which is very small. You can do a search for Turkish coffee and find articles. I am planning on trying this the next time out. Thanks for all the research.

In my experience no matter what coffee maker you use if the coffee has been ground for a couple of days it'll never be that good. I been playing with putting it in Aloksacks I have bought on this site. They seem to help but the zip lock clogs up with the coffee grounds and you can't seal it. Next I going to try putting the coffee in a slider type zip lock and then in an Aloksack, we'll see. By the way I use an AeroPress coffee maker, not the lightest but it makes great coffee or very good espresso.