Coffee and camping, part 1

I thought that I'd put together a little summary of the coffee making equipment that I take camping and backpacking. I'll start with the stove and the kettle. In the next post I'll cover the coffee specific equipment and describe what I bring for different situations.

Stove: I use a homemade alcohol stove constructed from an old cat food can. The stove has a lot going for it. It runs on denatured alcohol, which is cheap and easy to find just about anywhere (HEET from the gas station works if a hardware store or camping supply store is not easily accessible) It is light at less than half an ounce. It is cheap and easy to make. Most importantly, in my opinion anyway, is that it never clogs or fails. This stove is slower than many gas stoves but not unbearably so. 1 cup of water takes about 4 minutes to bring to a boil and 2 cups takes about 7 minutes to bring to a boil. It is important that you use a good windscreen as the stove is sensitive to the wind. I use a cut down oven liner. You will also need a small container for fuel; I use the small squeeze bottle pictured below:

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for more info on the stove see http://www.andrewskurka.com/advice/technique/fancyfeaststove.php 

Pot: I use a GSI Hae Tea kettle for all of my cooking and for heating water for coffee. The kettle is reasonably light at 5.5 ounces and it has a wide base which works efficiently with the flame pattern created by the stove. The most important feature for coffee making is the spout. The small spout allows for a surprising amount of control over your pour. I've actually used the kettle at home with my Hario V60 with reasonable success.

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Kettle, windscreen and stove (unseen) in action in the Emigrant Wilderness, CA