Part One of a multi-part series:
Alright, let's make some things clear up front: I am not a coffee connoisseur, I don't care about subtle notes of flavor, I'm not interested in competing in brewing competitions, and I've consumed A LOT of horrible coffee over the last few decades of life. Coffee is fuel, it gets me through the morning, it makes meetings before 10 am bearable, it transforms me from an incomprehensible, grumbling, jerk into the delightful human I am on most days. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be hot, strong, and drinkable. I am finding that the older I get the "drinkable" criteria has been changing. I am not a connoisseur, but I have come to the conclusion that life is too short to drink the swill that I've been living on up until now, particularly when camping. So I'm on a quest, a quest to brew a decent cup of coffee in the backcountry. No electric kettle. No Chemex. No scale or timer or disposable paper filters. Just ground beans, hot water, some kind of brewing device, and a vessel from which to quaff.
When crawling out of an ice encrusted tent on a freezing October morning NOTHING beats a hot mug of coffee in the hand. I've tried instant powder, I've tried a french press, I've tried cowboy coffee, I've tried disposable all in one filter/grounds combo thingies, all have pros and (lots of) cons. The most recent experiment has been: Aeropress, metal filter disc, and ceramic burr ground beans, we'll cover all of the elements in following posts. First, transforming beans into dust.
The first step: grinding some roasted beans into a shape more fine than "bean" so that some hot water will have the desired effect. I'm not about to roast my own raw beans while backpacking. I'm not insane. Freshly ground beans do make a difference though, so I am willing to put that work in as opposed to grinding them all up at home electrically, or (the horror) using preground from the store. I measure out the beans before my trip into individual "snack" sized zip lock bags. One per morning. Experiment with how many beans by weight you need to get to the strength you're after. On our last outing I went with 28g of the beans I was on per zip lock. Do your experiments before you leave civilization, you want to have the process down before you're on the side of a mountain shivering in the pre-dawn darkness.
The GSI Outdoors Javamill is the best muscle powered grinder that I have used so far. It is sturdy, light, and effective. I have broken other brands of grinders before the GSI. This thing is tough, it survived 11 days of my abuse. The adjustable cone outputs your grounds in an infinite spectrum of coarseness, from ultrafine espresso grind to chunky coffee minirocks and it does it consistently. Once set, the grinds come out the same day after day.
It is currently $29.95 from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2NNpq25 it shipped quick, arrived complete, and has proved to be a great piece of gear. My kitchen scale says it weighs 275g empty, a little over 9oz.
The handle (shown in stowed mode above and right) slides out of the housing on the top, you move the orange grip from long end to the short end, put it back into the top housing, add beans, and crank. Once your grind coarseness is set, you just leave the adjustment alone. The bottom section fills up with the ground beans, once you're done grinding you pop it off and dump the coffee into your brewing mechanism of choice.
The Javamill fieldstrips down to four main components for cleaning without any tools. Cleanup is minimal, as long as you keep it dry there's really nothing to do. A quick wipe out/tap out suffices. You're just going to put more beans in it tomorrow morning and grind them to dust. So that you can make some more coffee that doesn't suck.
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