I have been using the past few months productively. I may not be able to go out much, so why not use the time to finally get around to all those little jobs that stack up? I have washed my down jacket, replaced the zips in two jackets and the cuffs in another.
It is also a good time for various experiments! I love my coffee, and I do mean coffee, not the horrible instant chemicals that masquerade under the name. It seems a great shame that our young men and women risk their lives serving their country and the last thing they may drink is such crap.
While researching how to made a decent cup of coffee in the field, I came across this interesting website. How you go about making coffee (or tea, for that matter) can have a considerable influence on the taste. Relatively recently my coffee machine broke down and I went back to using a cafetiere (aka “French Press”). The first few cups I made were unimpressive. It makes all the difference if you wet the grounds with a small volume of boiling water and let them “bloom” for 30 seconds. This is probably a good technique to try with coffee bags.
Coffee bags seem to finally be becoming more widely available. Your brew kit probably already includes tea bags, so there is not reason not to carry coffee bags instead of sachets of foul smelling instant muck. But what if you cannot get coffee bags?
This page has a very useful description of five ways to “Make coffee without a maker”. This includes ways to improvise filters and coffee bags. Adding a piece of cloth to your brew kit is worth considering.
Many of these methods work best if you have one vessel for boiling water and another for drinking or brewing in. Let us assume you have listened to all my advice on saving weight and just have a canteen cup.
Making Greek/Turkish coffee is a little involved, so the method of choice for canteen cup brewing is “cowboy coffee”.
How I did it was thus: Fill your (metal!) canteen cup to about a centimetre above the second mark. I am using a Crusader 2 and each mark is equivalent to about a mug-full. Try this at home in the kitchen. Put your canteen cup on to boil. I will assume you are only using your canteen cup. If you boil up the water in a more efficient vessel the volume you add to the cup will need to be less.
Wait for your water to boil. If you think a watched kettle takes ages, a watched canteen cup takes longer! Wait for a “rolling boil”. This is the point where the surface of the water gets stirred up by bubbles. Remove your cup from the heat and dump in about two and three-quarter tablespoons of coffee. Some say wait 30 secs before adding the coffee. Good coffee needs water at about 90-95 centigrade rather than full boil. Give each spoon of coffee a good stir so the spoon/ spork comes out clean each time. Cover your canteen cup and let it sit for about four minutes. It needs time to brew and it will be too hot to drink yet, anyway.
And it is ready! Ideally you can decant the coffee into another cup for drinking, but in our canteen cup scenario that may not be possible. Most of the grounds will have settled out. They will not be a problem unless you try and drain the cup to the bottom. In some westerns they mention settling the grounds by adding crushed eggshell to the coffee. Good luck finding one of those out in the field! “Jack Knife Cookery” also suggests you can use “spotlessly clean gravel” to settle the grounds. More practically, a dash of cold water will settle the ground and cool the coffee to drinking temperature. I don’t usually bother, but you may feel different if you have to drink direct from the hot canteen cup. Remember, a little bit of foil over the cup edge can save burnt lips.
“Jack Knife Cookery” gives a slightly different method for making coffee. Take a fistful of coffee for each individual and add cold water. Allow to sit for a while. Then bring your coffee just to the boil. Remove from heat and place the pot at a distance from the fire so that it is just simmering.
A couple of tricks inspired by Greek/ Turkish coffee are worth mentioning. This coffee is often made with coffee ground to very fine powder. This seems to help the grounds settle at the bottom. If you like your coffee sweet, add the sugar to the water before you make the coffee, like the Turks and Greeks do. Stirring and coffee grounds do not mix, or rather, it does!
The Scout Handbook of 1911 gives an alternate method for campfire coffee:
“For every cup of water allow a tablespoonful of ground coffee, then add one extra. Have water come to boiling point first, add coffee, hold it just below boiling point for five minutes, and settle with one fourth of a cup of cold water. Serve. Some prefer to put the coffee in a small muslin bag loosely tied.”