What's your best tip or hack for camping?
What's your best tip or hack for camping?
Any kind–drive-up camping, backpacking, RV camping, in the woods, at the beach, in a shelter, let's hear it all.
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Coffee. If you are a coffee drinker, get a way to make half-decent coffee.
Or tea, or hot chocolate if you hate caffeine. Nothing beats the feeling of a hot cup of something after a short, noisy, miserable night.
What's your go-to brew method for camping? I find the Aeropress tough to beat.
Although my favourite camping coffee memories are with my parents' beat-up old moka pot and pre-ground beans from the grocery store. I love me a good cup of coffee, but sometimes the best cup isn't about the beans or the brew. It's about the time, space, and people you share it with. Some of my all-time favourite cups of coffee came out of that piece of crap moka pot.
Mine is a small mokka/Turkish coffee pot with a removable handle. On a recent trip, someone bought a portable espresso thingy and it was a really nice alternative to the bottom-of-the-shelf cheap instant coffee we had otherwise. But to be honest, non-terrible instant coffee is fine for me, just don't get the ultra cheap crap.
At the end (or rather beginning) of the day I settle for "hot, caffeinated, does not make me want to spit it out". I'd rather drink the shitty cheapest possible instant coffee on a cool trip with nice people than the other way round.
There are some surprisingly decent instant coffees out there nowadays; a fancy third-wave roaster in my city even does instant now.
I will second this. My wife and I tried all the instant coffees on some review site and one of the mid priced ones was surprisingly good. Originally it was for camping, but it was so smooth and didn’t upset our middle-aged stomachs after we drank a lot of it, so now we drink it all the time.
An all-metal French press is, IMO, hard to beat. Easy, simple cleanup, not too heavy (depends on the press you get), and makes a good cup o Joe.
I use those small paper tea filters. Bit tricky to pour over, but no need for any holders or whatever. Brought an aeropress a couple times too but figured it's not worth it for me, i will use it at home though. I want to save on the "bulk" of an aeropress though, haha.
Moving camps and space/weight an issue (backpack, xc ski, kayak, bike), instant coffee.
Base camp with day trips or car camp.
For the coffee drinkers: https://velo-orange.com/products/soto-helix-coffee-maker?keyword=coffee. We use these as daily drivers with a really good manual coffee grinder. Added bonus: our coffee can be about the same as we get at home.
Moka pot on a camp stove works great.