5 Ways to Enjoy Your Java Outdoors While Being Sustainable
There’s an old song about cowboys that touches on campfires and coffee and how important they are for a good outdoor experience.
Enjoying coffee in the Great Outdoors can be done in several ways—and you can also help protect the outdoors by using coffee from Canadian companies that give back to the environment.
Here are five different ways to get your java and support sustainability at the same time.
Pour Over Cup Filter
This is the absolute simplest way to brew a cup of coffee in the woods. It’s not only simple, but also probably the best method for backpackers—it’s light, small, very portable, reusable and easy to clean.
Just boil some water, pour it over some coffee grounds in the filter, and let it filter through. The more grounds you use, the stronger the cup of coffee. When you’re done, dispose of the coffee grounds, rinse out the filter and off you go.
A sustainable brew to use: Farm and Forest Coffee in Delta, British Columbia donates 15 cents from every pound to the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
Plunger Pot (French Press)
Almost as easy as an individual cup filter is a plunger pot or French press. You pour boiling water over grounds in the pot, and again, the more grounds you use, the stronger the brew. Let it steep for four to five minutes, then plunge it down into the bottom. Pour into a cup and voila! Coffee.
The AeroPress I use (pictured here) is similar to a French press, takes less time and produces fewer grounds. Some easy-to-read instructions come with it. Not only is it great for camping, but you can also take it travelling and avoid those hotel room coffees.
A sustainable brew to use: Spirit Bear Coffee in Port Coquitlam, BC donates money to wildlife rehabilitation organizations. In the past, it has donated to both OWL (Orphaned Wildlife Society) in Delta and the Northern Lights Wildlife Society in Smithers, BC.
Cowboy Coffee
Probably one of the oldest ways to make coffee while camping is the cowboy coffee method.
There are different schools of thought about the best way to brew cowboy coffee. You can add a handful of fresh grounds to a pot of cold water and boil it or boil it, then add the grounds (my preferred method). Some camp cooks toss in a crushed eggshell or two to help the grounds settle, but I’ve never subscribed to that.
Whichever method you choose, when the grounds sink, the coffee is ready.
A sustainable brew to use: Canadian Heritage Roasting Company in Calgary, formed by wildland firefighters, plants a tree for every bag of coffee sold. So far, they’ve planted 129,000 and hope to plant one million by 2030.
Percolator
Some people still use these devices for coffee at home. This was the best method on all our family camping trips when I was growing up. The first percolators were made in 1825, so it is a tried-and-true method of coffee brewing.
You fill the percolator basket with coffee, the pot with water, boil the water then percolate it until the coffee is as strong as you like it. You’ll need to experiment to determine how long to percolate it to reach the desired strength.
Some people like to place salt in the basket—it’s supposed to dampen the bitterness and bring out the sweetness, but the bitterness is what coffee liqueurs are for, aren’t they?
A sustainable brew to use: Muskoka Roastery Coffee Company based in Huntsville, Ontario, support several environmental groups. They recently supported Nature Canada’s Climate-Safe Logging Program.
Espresso (Or Camp-Puccino?)
I’ve been using a made-for-camping espresso coffee maker for several years now. It’s quick and makes a strong brew—which gives you an excuse for “extra additives.”
Again, it’s simple to make. Fill up the coffee basket completely with fine ground coffee, fill up the pot with water then heat it up until the pressure forces it up through the tube and nozzle and into your cup—which you need to have on there before it starts to spray out.
Once the coffee is out, there is usually still enough steam coming from the nozzle to froth milk if you want to turn your espresso into a “camp-puccino.”
A sustainable brew to use: Reunion Island Roasters in Oakville, Ontarioare planting more than one million trees, and they get power from Bullfrog, a green electricity company.
About Those Grounds…
No matter which method you use to make your coffee, you’re going to be left with coffee grounds. To practice proper Leave No Trace backcountry travel, you really should pack them out with you in some kind of container.
Don’t want to bother with that? You can always go with instant coffee. Then, it leaves no grounds at all—and there’s a sixth method of making camp coffee for you.
