I have a treat for y’all today! So far during my 7+ years posting on this blog, I have only had 1 guest post and it was my Mom talking about how she retired at 55 🙂 . Well, today I’m breaking that streak!
I’m not a big coffee drinker (I know – “boo! hiss!”), however, my partner is a coffee aficionado and one of the things he did a lot of research on for our nomad life was how to have great coffee anywhere. Once he figured out his preferred method, we thought it might be helpful to share it.
So that’s what we’re doing today – learning how someone who moves every month or so can still get that good caffeine 🙂 . Anyway, I’ll leave you in his capable hands and try to resist adding my 2 cents. Take it away dude!
Hi all, I’m Purple’s Lover Partner [Purple Note: We couldn’t make it one sentence without me jumping in? 🙂 ]. I helped give constructive feedback on blog posts back in the beginning and immediately got fired as an editor for being too detailed in my feedback. I helped with the post about us not getting married, so I’m basically a regular here.
I’m really into coffee lately. I’ve loved coffee since after college, when I first became physically addicted to caffeine, drinking 4+ cups of fairly burnt but very free WeWork coffee every day. I’m just quirky and unique like that.
When liking things (in general), I try to be an enthusiast instead of a connoisseur, with its connotations of discerning the good and the bad. I like bad coffee. I like okay coffee too. I enjoy terrible gas station coffee on road trips.
For years my frugality and enjoyment of coffee were in a decent balance for most of my time in NY and Seattle. I’d try specialty coffee in coffee shops, but most of my coffee was at home, and I’d switch between grocery store (Kona’s (the store brand), some Starbucks, Peet’s), and less often some generally better and fresher local brands (Cafe Vita was a short walk from our place).
I started working on finding really good beans and trying different brewing methods recently – you’ve got to justify your addictions with *flavor*. Now it’s a hobby.
Travel Considerations
For years I made French Press coffee with a blade grinder and a scale for weighing beans and water (the all-important ratio!), which made pretty good coffee, although cleaning it is a bit of a pain. I’d try to clean it the night before so my morning coffee ritual could just be the fun parts.
One of us who won’t be named shattered the French Press carafe because another of us who won’t be named left it on a windowsill next to my gaming pc for easy access. I considered a metal french press for travel, but the size and weight were off-putting. It’s actually been fun to consider all of our possessions in terms of if they’re worth the space and weight in my luggage.
So for a while, I was just relying on whatever was available in our Airbnbs, which was 80% Keurigs (the devil himself! [Purple Note: I’m not saying you’re exaggerating buuut….]) and 20% drip coffee makers (I’ll 100% take it and just buy pre-ground coffee). Oh, can I just say, I get that Keurigs are probably appealing to Airbnb hosts and some guests during a global pandemic because of the nice pre-packaged nature, but come on. I borrowed a reusable k-cup and then discovered that the latest version of the Keurig machine uses a scanner to ensure only Keurig brand reusable cups were usable. DRM-fucking-coffee.
So I drank a bunch of Stok cold brew, which is really good. Super smooth, even for cold brew. But that wasn’t sustainable, so after a bunch more research and trying out an Aeropress that my parents had stashed in a cupboard, I built out my current travel setup.
The Travel Setup
I’m currently using an Aeropress (the regular size, not the slightly smaller travel size, because I need my *volume*), Aeropress mini filters and a hand grinder. The Aeropress is super versatile, and you can do espresso style, regular filter coffee style, and cold brew. It’s much easier to avoid bitter or burnt tastes compared to french press, and the tiny disposable filters prevent any fine grit getting into your coffee and make cleanup really easy (a super satisfying *pop* of the puck of coffee grinds into the compost, and then scrape any residue off the plunger with the cap or the back of a straight butter knife).
I picked the 1zpresso q2 hand grinder (pronounced easy-presso because of a pun in Chinese, according to one reddit user) for travel size and great reviews (it fits into the plunger body of the Aeropress! Which would be useful if I didn’t re-pack it in its bubble wrap for travel anyways). You can get pretty high quality grinder parts in a hand grinder for not a lot of money because you’re not paying for an electric motor. It’s got a conical burr grinder instead of blades, so the grind size is way more consistent, which is important for even coffee extraction to avoid bitterness. Honestly, I should do a double blind taste test of the burr grinder vs a regular blade grinder.
It takes about 45 seconds to hand grind my 15g dose, unless you want to grind really fast while making weird eye contact with somebody, in which case I can do it in 25 seconds. Grinding enough for a french press would take longer and require multiple re-fills because of the small chamber size, but it works perfectly for making a single cup of Aeropress at a time. This has the added effect of making every extra cup I drink very intentional, so I can’t just stumble into 5 cups of coffee in a day.
We’re still toting around the digital food scale, which is well worth its weight. There’s a joke there somewhere. Note to editor, insert a joke there. Thanks.
I’m now wondering if I could fit a collapsable electric water kettle in my luggage too. We ended up just buying a real one in Mérida and leaving it behind after 9 weeks.
Coffee Tasting!
The best tip I’ve picked up is tasting two different coffees side by side, not even double blind, because a lot of the language used for coffee tasting notes describes differences that are pretty subtle and way more of a “this coffee evokes the sweetness and acidity of blueberries” than “this coffee tastes like blueberries”, so you pick up on those differences way more easily in the contrast between coffees.
An aside, and to always give credit, I watched a very large number of literal hours of James Hoffmann‘s coffee videos on YouTube. He’s a delight, and all about exploring your own preferences rather than teaching you *the right opinions*. But his ubiquity does make it more likely that in talking about coffee with somebody else, you both discover you’re just referencing things you both learned from the same video.
Also based on his videos, I now instinctively slurp some when drinking coffee (it aerates the coffee over your palate). Purple loves this. [Purple Note: I do not.]
I’ve gone deep on the light roasts and single origin specialty coffees to try experiencing the unique coffee flavors, because dark roasting highlights the roasty Maillard reaction and chocolatey flavors, but mutes the distinctiveness of the flavors. I’ve also started spending more to get local and fresh coffee beans from roastaries or coffee shops.
It’s a hobby now, whereas beforehand I had to deprive myself to honor our leanfire forefathers (Purple says I should change this to “frugal” to avoid unending debates on what counts as leanfire (I will not)).
Conclusion
And that’s it! It’s Purple again. That’s how my partner perfectly brews delicious local coffee everywhere we go. One of our first tasks in a new location is scoping out the local roasters that let you buy large bags of whole beans. It’s a fun scavenger hunt 🙂 . Anyway, I hope this helps you if you’re looking for alternative ways to meet your caffeine needs. Until next time!
How do you get your caffeine?
I don’t drink coffee but I love the smell of a fresh grinded coffee. Found ethnic shops with country/ old fashion coffee beans… One day I will travel to a coffee plantation during harvest and roasting.
My husband drinks coffee similar to you: beans, grind, hot water etc. and each time someone is coming I am waiting for the answer for ” would you like a coffee?” Just for the smell ,😂😂😂
That’s really interesting. I personally don’t like the smell or taste of black coffee – I know I’m weird 🙂 . I do love a little coffee with my cream though haha – that tastes like chocolate.
– Purple
Absolutely love the aeropress. It gets you the best brew with minimal efforts. And the best part is it’s extremely difficult to mess up the brew 😂
There are grinders which fit well in the aeropress itself making it awesome travel coffee set up.
Yep totally. And this grinder fits in the Aeropress – my partner just doesn’t pack it that way.
Great post on keeping your habits travel-sized and accessible no matter where in the world you are. Inspiring! Loved the inline banter too. Thanks for the fun post, Purple and Mr Purple!
Confession: not a coffee-lover here. I learned how to drink it and now I partake when caffeine is needed to function (and there isn’t an alternative around). I do love an icy, milky, sweet, vaguely coffeeish monstrosity on hot days like now though 😀 iced Vietnamese coffee ftw. Please don’t ban me from the blog XD
Haha we’re so glad you enjoyed it! And I’m with you on the love of monstrosities 🙂 . I don’t like black coffee either. And YUM Vietnamese coffee – now I want one 🙂 . And of course you’re not banned!
– Purple
How to trick the Keurig (mostly like the video for the music).
https://youtu.be/9e0yCq1AEeY
Haha this is amazing (including the music). Thank you for sharing!
Yeah we are definitely coffee soulmates. I was mentally screaming aeropress!! atcha for the first few paragraphs until I got to ‘oh, he already knows’. Phew! Grinding is going to be my next frontier, but, I still, dream of a completely automatic (including the all-important cleaning) latte machine…
Haha I’m glad we got there in the end 🙂 . And oooh that sounds like an awesome dream.
Love my aeropress and the intentionality behind every cup of coffee! Makes it more of a ritual for me which I like. I recently got a reusable metal filter too and like it so far! One less thing to worry about running out of while traveling. This is the one I got on Amazon: https://a.co/d/iOqepi1
Totally 🙂 . And thanks for the heads up about the metal filter – my partner has heard of them, but also heard they’re a bit more work. Fair point on not running out though!
I appreciate the review and the inclusion of the hand grinder. i’ve been looking at some ever since one of the big windstorms knocked out power and I ended up grinding coffee beans with a mortar and pestle. Making sure every cup of coffee is intentional is a great part of this process. it allows you to have fewer “rules” to keep you from drinking too much mindlessly but there’s enough friction to ensure you have to really want it to go to the effort.
I also noticed the trend toward Keurig machines in nearly every air bnb a few years ago and made an emergency trip to the QFC to pickup a travel pour over dripper which now comes on all trips.
WOAH I’ve never heard of grinding coffee beans with a mortar and pestle – that’s hardcore. And smart on the pour over drip!
Good post! Having good coffee while traveling is a worthy challenge. If I’m traveling solo or in a small group, I find a lightweight pourover setup and paper filters to be handy. Is it just me, or is the Aero Press REALLY hard to push down?? I feel like I’m about to pop a muscle when I try. I don’t know if I’m doing it wrong…
Cool on the pourover and this is Purple, but I’ve never had trouble pushing the Aeropress down (and I don’t have great arm strength – I’m currently struggling to do multiple push ups). My partner said maybe try grinding the coffee beans more coarse if your grinder allows it. That should make it easier to push down.
Thanks for the tip! I bet that’s it.
Check if you accidentally use more than one paper filter. I made that mistake when I first started using it, the filters are crazy thin!
Thank you, yes, they are very thin!
I really wish I could drink coffee without the jitters. Even decaf does it to me. I think it would be fun to be a connoisseur lol. Instead I drink hot chocolate or tea latte. On occasion, we use a V60 drip method. It is simple and tastes good.
By the way, this was a fun read and your partner is a good writer as well. Maybe an FI post someday?
Yeah I’m with you on the jitters – I haven’t really gotten them since I’ve stopped working with caffeine, but my heart used to feel like it was trying to imitate a hummingbird’s. No fun lol! Hot chocolate or a tea latte sounds awesome.
I asked my partner about doing another post around FI and he said “maybe.” To be fair, it took 6 months to get him to do this post so settle in for a wait if he decides to do it again 🙂 .
– Purple
My mother always told me not to learn to make coffee because, as a woman in the workplace, I’d be expected to make it for my boss or the office. This was not a skill that would get me promoted, and rather would keep me in everyone’s mind as someone to whom they could delegate personal tasks. Her wisdom paid off when during my first job I was asked to make my boss coffee. I explained I didn’t know how and he responded that since I was smart, I could figure it out. I tried, and after one sip he told me never to make his coffee again. #momwisdom
The downside was I like coffee and therefore relied on my local barista with my one morning cup #lattefactor
With the pandemic and (temporary) closure of my local coffeehouse, I learned to make coffee and also became a bit of a brat about it.
Supplies: Local beans, medium to dark roast – currently enjoying wood roasted from Pacori (www.caffepacori.com), and big fan of SO Blend from Coava (coavacoffee.com) even though it is contrary to their single origin focus.
Equipment: Aeropress + hand burr grinder (TIMEMORE C2 has a textured exterior, easy effort grind, and so far very consistent results) + Fellow Stagg EKG Kettle (you can judge, but I feel good about it because it is well balanced, setting water temp does influence my brew, and I’ve stopped scalding myself from steam release on the Miroco kettle).
I am usually a one cup a day, but may stretch to two if I have a lot of meetings or a piece of coffee cake shows up in the kitchen.
That’s interesting! I (Purple) understood about 50% of what you wrote since I am not the coffee aficionado, but I read this to my partner and he smiled 🙂 . Thank you for sharing!
I enjoyed this post! My family loves coffee. We’ve recently had good luck with a burr grinder and a Chemex. The coffee is so much better and more consistent than or old drip machine. Nice to learn about the Aeropress as a high quality travel setup….and nice to hear from Purple’s partner!
Yay all around 🙂 !