I thought I would pass this info along. I love coffee and I hate instant coffee. In the past I have used peculators, Press Bots, cowboy coffee, etc...

I have recently started using the Mini-Minit one cup coffee filters:
http://miniminit.com/

These things are great. A pack of 40 filters weighs about .5oz including packaging and a little plastic stick used to suspend the filters over a cup. The filters are about twice the size of a standard tea bag, maybe a little bigger.

I use 1.5-2 large tablespoons of grounds to make a nice, strong 10-12oz cup of coffee. Filter would probably hold 4 large tablespoons of grounds total. They work great and make a darn good cup of coffee (or tea), and clean up is a snap because all the grounds stay contained in the filter.

They are pretty cheap also. You can get a pack of 40 filters for a 1.75 from here:
http://www.coffeeam.com/minpapfil.html

Best of all, some grocery stores carry them as well :) You have to look really hard, but sometimes they will be hidden way on the bottom shelf.
When I ran a coffee house couple years back, I had those in our store. They were popular!
Btw, if you lose the plastic stick, a chopstick works well.

I like the Cup.pour.ri as an alternative to wet paper filters:

http://www.cheneyart.com/Diane_Cheney/html/cuppourri.htm

Just another real coffee option on the trail!

Question for the experienced:

How do you get a strong cup from either of these? I've tried both and just can't make them work. What am I missing?

Rick, make sure your grind is powder-fine, just a notch below Turkish on those grocery store ginders.

Actually, now that I think of it, why not just go Turkish? I have been using these Mini-Minit filters for years now, but I think the real answer is to go Turkish and scrap all the filter paraphernalia!! Try to find some packaged Turkish coffee which has the cardomom spice blended in. When you make it just add sugar and it's excellent!

That reminds me of this:

http://webshop.montbell.jp/common/images/product/prod_k/m_k_1124510.jpg

It tips the scales at 5 grams and isn't disposable.

Not bad! I've tried presses and gold screen filters and went through more water and time cleaning up the mess than I did making the coffee in the first place. The paper filters can be packed out with the grounds, as they should be. I've used the Melita #2 and #4 filters for car camping for years. FYI, using the Melita on the top of a thermos bottle makes for a good supply of hot coffee.

I'll bet that doubling up on filters and suspending them clear of the water level would improve on the strength of the coffee.

My buddy uses Pres n Brew empty tea bags and fills them with flavored coffee and it works great. You can get them really cheap from: Mountainroseherbs.com. You just seal the end with an iron after you fill it with you favorite coffee or tea. I think I got 50 for $5.

Here is the actual link the site is confusing:
http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/tea_tool/infusers.php

This is a recycled post from another thread.
Dave.

Rick,

I use these at work because I don't like the weak office coffee. (And because a lot of the aromatics leave coffee within 60 seconds of grinding -- but that's the subject for another thread!) My co-workers call my coffee "Mud".

I ruined lots of them at first due to fine grinding. Fine (or even "drip" ground) coffee clogs the filter and makes a kind of a muddy slurry in the filter. You can try to harass it and stir it and watch it go through the filter two drops at a time, but eventually the glue on the filter will fail and you get a big mess.

The answer for me has been to grind coarse. Not quite "french press" coarse, but getting there. This creates a nice clean cup which can easily run through the filter paper.

Next, pour the water in two stages. Fill the filter once, then let it drain out. (Stir the slurry a bit to make sure everything gets wet.) Once the filter has "drained", you can do the full pour.

Also, use a burr grinder rather than a blade grinder. Commercial grinders are all burr grinders. Blade grinders give uneven particle sizes, meaning that you get a bunch of boulders giving you weak acidic coffee and a bunch of powder clogging up your filter. A blade grinder also heats the beans; actually re-roasting them and destroying all the hard work the professional roaster put into them to make them perfect. Blade grinders should be outlawed!

...I am from a coffee city; kind of like the Seattle of Canada...

Edited by bjamesd on 06/10/2007 23:50:35 MDT.