5 Easy Ways to Make a Great Cup of Coffee at Camp

E3 Overland

If you’ve been following
Trail Recon for any length of time…

You know I love my coffee at camp.

Me, getting a little caffeine in the morning.

Just the peace and quiet.  Watching the Sunrise.

And there’s nothing better than having a good cup of joe in the morning. So today, what I’m going to do is share with you five ways to make coffee at camp. Stay tuned.

Welcome to Trail Recon, I’m Brad, and today in this video I’m going to share with you the ways that I love to make coffee at camp.

 

I love getting up early in the morning, the fresh air brewing some hot coffee, for myself, my friends, and my family. And just enjoying the sunrise with a little caffeine. Just makes camp awesome.

Now, first what I’d like to do though, is talk to you about something that I’ve been working on for a long time, I’m so passionate about.

Inspiring people and empowering them to come out and have amazing adventures in places like this.

I wanted to do something to continue to build and grow the overlaying community just outside of YouTube.

So I told you guys at the first of the year that I was working on a really big project.

And today I just want to take a little bit of time and share that with you.

(pic)

Now, first what I’d like to do though, is talk to you about something that I’ve been working on for a long time, I’m so passionate about.

Inspiring people and empowering them to come out and have amazing adventures in places like this.

And I wanted to do something to continue to build and grow the overlaying community just outside of YouTube. So I told you guys at the first of the year that I was working on a really big project.

And today I want to take a  bit of time and share that with you.

Now I’m only able to do this because of the amazing support of all my followers throughout the years.

So I wanted to announce this first, here, on YouTube before anybody else knows about it.

Before we launch and start working with partners, to give you an opportunity to opt-in to become a founder.

There are only a limited number of founder spots.

And there’s going to be some amazing perks for founders.

E3 Overland is going to be such a great way for us to interact in a completely different way, than we can  on YouTube.

But I want to be clear about something. Nothing about Trail recon is going to change.

I’m going to continue to produce some amazing off-road adventure videos. We’re going to do rig  walk-around’s, gear videos, do-it-yourself stuff. And fun things, like making coffee here at camp.

Like we’ve always done. But as a member of E3 Overland.

You’re going to have access to some amazing benefits, some basic and advanced Overland courses.

We’ve created an online digital magazine, and a podcast that I’m creating just for members, and some exclusive discounts to some products from companies that we work with.

And what I’m really excited about is, we’re going to be doing some Overland Meet ups across the country where you can come hang out with me, my friends, and other members of the community, to learn from one another.

I think that’s going to be a lot of fun.

So, I’m going to leave a link down below, so you can opt in and be notified as soon as we launch.

Go to the E3 Overland home page here

Then on the home page, just click where it says “Join the List.” So that’s the big news!

Now let’s make some coffee. I have been drinking coffee for a long time.

When I was in the Navy, it was a requirement to get caffeinated to get your juices flowing every day, because you worked so many long hours. Especially on deployment.

I drank a lot of thick, black, nasty, dark ships coffee. And while that does the job, it is nice to have some good flavorful coffee. Now, I’m not like a coffee scientist. And we’re not going to get too technical here.

I’m just going to show you what works for me.

What I’m going to start off with is do a French press.  We’re going to grind some beans. And I do love grinding beans at camp. I have this little tiny little hand grinder, which works really well. But one problem that I have with this grinder is, it’s a little loud in the morning.

So, I get up early. That’s the military in me. I get up about 5:30 in the morning. And if I start doing this in the morning, everybody around me that’s still sleeping in their rooftop tents don’t really appreciate that much.

So I like to be quiet in the morning and respect everybody’s time. I don’t normally grind my own beans at camp.

I know the coffee connoisseurs are going to say “oh that’s taboo, you have to grind your own beans,” but I usually bring my own coffee grounds with me.

I like a medium to dark roast, and you can brew  whatever coffee you enjoy drinking. I like a variety, I don’t stick with one type. I like to try different types of coffee so I like to mix it up a little bit, but I like to have it fresh ground.

Okay, let me show you how I do a French press. So once the water gets to about 195 to 200 degrees we’re going to go ahead and pop this guy open.

What I love about this little French press is it’s really good if you’re on the go, when you just want to make coffee and then you’re going to hit the trail. You can drink right out of this little French press.

There are some larger French presses, I have two of these which work well. The only problem with the French press, is it doesn’t make a lot of coffee, unless you get one of those really big ones.

I like to be able to make a lot of coffee.

You do get the best tasting coffee out of a French press, so inside here there’s a little filter. What we’re going to do is fill this up, there’s a line here for water.  I think this is 16 ounces and they usually do 2 tablespoons per 8 ounces of water.

I mentioned that I’m not that scientific. I usually just take this and it seems to work well for me. Just about that much right there.

So you let that sit in there, give it a good stir, just let that soak in. Then we’re going to let that soak for about 4 to 5 minutes and just let that coffee soak. It’s hearty, smells so good. Oh that’s just such a good smell, I love that.

Then we’ll just put this here, that way our water doesn’t get cold, and this just screws on  and we’re  going to let that sit for a little bit.

Then we’re going to have a nice hot cup of coffee, French press is a good way to go.

Now that our coffee has been in there letting off all those awesome bean juices and oils, we’re  going to slowly press this down. So now the grinds are all the way to the bottom, we’re ready to drink this.

That is delicious. I love that.

Now one thing to think about, you don’t want to leave those grinds in  for a long period of time, because that bitterness will start to come out front and start to extract from the beans. So you want to drink this within a reasonable amount of time.

I love a French press I think it’s a great option. But it’s not the primary way I make coffee at camp.

Let’s go percolate some coffee.

Alright, I have been making a percolated coffee at camp for a long time. It’s actually my favorite way to make coffee. I just love the way it tastes. There’s just something pure about it. If you have never percolated coffee before, I’ll show you how to do it here in a second.

But, the reason I have three percolators is,  I started out using the small one. I had this one for a long time, but I found that it’s not large enough to make coffee for my friends or family, or even if I want multiple cups of coffee, it just doesn’t do it for me. So I bought this one which is a little bit larger, but then I needed one that was bigger.

So, I have this guy now.

The big thing about this one is if it is really cold outside it will take a long time for the coffee to get going, but when you have this thing full of coffee, it’s enough to caffeinate your friends.

Which works really well if you’ve never percolated coffee before.

It is a really simple process now. They recommend one tablespoon per cup of coffee that you put in the basket.

First we talked about the water, you fill the water level up to that bottom hole in the spout, because what you don’t want to do is fill it up too high and have the water sitting in the basket.

Because if that happens, your coffee grounds will get bitter, so you put your coffee grounds in here, one tablespoon per cup, and then the great thing about this thing is, it’s so simple.

As the water heats up it pushes water through the tube and then that water comes over and drips through the coffee grounds and just starts to permeate that water with that delicious aromatic coffee.

It’s so amazing. And usually that takes anywhere from about four to six minutes to get the coffee to the right consistency.

Now, you don’t want to let it run too long, because you don’t want to get it too bitter or too dark, so you have to keep an eye on it so you can watch through the little glass. It allows you to see what looks like a good color, usually about four to six minutes. It works really well.

Okay we’re still waiting for the water to eat up to start percolating. It does take a little bit of time, and it’s only 45 degrees out, but the wind is blowing, so it’s taking a little bit of time. That’s one of the cons, it just takes a while.

Let’s talk about the drip, I know a lot of coffee connoisseurs love this method, and you know you don’t need a  lot of gear. You can have a small, tiny filter like this. It just hangs over your coffee cup. There’s even ones that are super-flat like this. You  assemble this and it comes in a little triangle,  you put a little filter in there.

What’s cool is, all you do is take your little filter, put it over your coffee cup and we’re going to put some grounds in there and we’re going to start adding water.

It’s super fast. The only challenge is, we’re only making one coffee cup at a time. For the pour-over method, you need to add about three tablespoons of per cup of coffee, but that’s just depending on how strong you really like your coffee. And again you can see here, I didn’t really measure anything out.

Then you want to wet the grinds and let them soak for about 30 seconds, then slowly pour the water over the grinds a little bit at a time until you fill up your cup. It should take just about two minutes.

Now that the coffee has dripped through, we can go ahead and pull this off and clean that out.

That’s another kind for this one, we can only make one cup of coffee at a time, so you have to do this with a little bit of a mess that we’re going to have to deal with.

I’ll give this a try, I have actually haven’t had a cup like this in a long time. Oh my gosh, that’s really good. I wish I could share the aroma that’s going on with you, with the coffee percolating, and the grounds.

This cup of coffee smells so good that is definitely a great delicious way to make coffee.

Alright this is almost done, and then I’m going to show you two more methods that make coffee at camp.

So this was probably the longest that’s ever taken me to percolate coffee for whatever reason. The wind was just killing it, but it’s finally done and yeah that’s right, that’s the right color right there.

I know other people like other types of coffee for whatever reason the percolated coffee, it does it for me.

The next coffee method that we’re going to try is something I’ve only started using it recently, and I’ve only used it a couple times and that’s a little conventional one.

This is not an electric coffee maker. This is a Coleman that you can put over your gas burner, so it’s got this metal bottom on it and it heats up just like a regular coffee pot. You have  filters in here, you put your water in here,

Let’s go ahead and brew pot. I have definitely had my caffeine this morning, this is fun. I’m having a blast here.

While we’re waiting for this to brew, we do have one more method that I’ll show you here in a minute.

I want to mention that my son Jordan is actually behind the camera, and if you remember he was the one that helped me start the channel way back when he just came home. Yes. Today, he’s home from Okinawa Japan, and he’s going to be stationed here in California. Buddy, it’s so awesome to have you home again.

I can’t wait to go hit the trails, but we’re going be doing something here first. As soon as we can, going shopping. Jeep shopping.  You sure you want to get a jeep, or maybe like a Pontiac Aztek or something?.

We’re going to go Jeep shopping. We’re going to film that and I will let you know what we come up with. Then we’re going to build it up a little bit and go hit some trails. That’s coming, I just thought I’d share that with you. It’s really great to have him home.

All right, come on brew. Okay, so this is just about done now. This took a while, as well that wind is really killing me today. One thing to mention about this is, it’s really nice, it makes a good cup of coffee, but this is pretty bulky, and you have to worry about the glass here.

So that could be a problem if you’re out off-roading. You want to make sure you protect that. It would be nice to have a nice stainless steel one, but it’s still a good cup of coffee.

Now, that was the other method for coffee I mentioned. There were five methods. I’m probably going to get a little flack for this fifth method, but it is one that I do often.

Usually when we are in a hurry, sometimes when you have to get up early in the morning, sometimes you just have to do the instant coffee. It’s not my favorite, though today’s instant coffees are a lot better than they used to be. You can have a good quick cup of coffee in just a couple minutes. Heat up some water, put that in there, yeah.

Look, that’s not my favorite cup of coffee. Today in fact, if I have to choose one, it would probably be the percolating coffee, but I love a coffee, and I just wanted to take a few minutes today and share with you some options you have.

Because I know there’s a lot of new folks out there that are camping and getting into it for the first time. So there are some options. We’re getting your caffeine fix, next time you’re out on the trail.

Hey, thank you so much for spending the time with me today. Please check out that link here:

Here’s the link to the E3 Overland home page again.  Go there now. Then join the list

I would love for you to become an E3 Overland Member when we launch. I’m really excited about the opportunities that are going to come with that whole project, it’s so exciting!

Thanks for watching.

 

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