Brewing Coffee on Your Overland Journey – What are the Best Methods

“What’s that?”

“French press.”

“For coffee? Real coffee? Not instant?”

“We’re camping, Zorie, not living in a dystopian nightmare.”

From: Starry Eyes, by Jenn Bennett

Coffee is an important part of our daily ritual and while I am by no means addicted (but Karin-Marijke is, hence this topic being part of the Essential Series).

I do like coffee, and I like to experiment with brewing coffee. Over the years we have adopted different styles of preparing our ‘cuppa joe’, depending on availability and gusto.

Here are my tried coffee brewing methods:

From Nescafé to Moccachino

When we started our journey in 2003, minimalism, budget and keeping things simple prevailed over refined and sophisticated coffee-brewing methods for the best quality. So, shockingly enough, I left my iconic hexagonal 9-cup Italian Moka pot (Espresso Maker) in my mom’s attic and we hit the road with a large pot of instant coffee. I know, don’t remind me.

Actually when you get used to the stuff it isn’t half as bad as you might think. The big advantage, of course, is that it is super easy to prepare. Just fill up the thermos with hot water in the morning and at any moment of the day the freeze-dried, rehydrated beans can ‘instantly’ fulfill your craving for caffeine.

Other overlanders taught us how to make a great Moccachino. Mix in a tablespoon of instant coffee, sugar and a splash of cold water in a cup and start stirring. After a while you’ll be getting a light brown frothing or foamy kind of liquid. When it is homogenous, it’s time to add boiling water and voilà you have a perfect moccachino.

The Brazilian Coffee-Brewing Method

After seven years of living on instant coffee, we renewed our contact with Brazil’s highly addictive cafezinhos. Served in tiny – mostly plastic – cups this super dark and sweet beverage is omnipresent in Brazil and offered for free after lunch and at any gas station. There is no avoiding the tasty brew and we found ourselves topping up fuel more than ever. It is especially dangerous when combined with the ever delicious pão de queijo.

In fact, Karin-Marijke loved it so much that she dedicated a separate blog post to Brazilian coffee.

Read here: Small and Excellent – Brazilian Coffee

By the time we crossed into French Guyana, Karin-Marijke – in her inventory/space manager role – had no problem whatsoever storing several packs of her preferred blend of dark roast as well as a coffee sock. So size-wise we now had a few packs of coffee, a Brazilian coffee sock and a thermos.

The Brazilian method takes more time than the instant way, but much more rewarding in terms of taste, and after seven years it felt good to drink ‘real’ coffee again.

How does the Brazilian way of brewing coffee work? You bring water to a boil in a pan, lower the flame, add coffee (and sugar if you like) and start stirring. After a minute or so, you turn off the heat and keep the pan covered for another minute or so for the grounded beans to sink to the bottom of the pan.

Now comes the tricky part: You have to pour the brew into the coffee sock that you’re holding over one cup, then another cup and finally the thermos. It may take a while to master this without spoiling too much of your precious dark liquid. In fact, with our pan it generally did become a mess; it would be better to have a pan with a spout or a dedicated drip pot.

The main downside of this system, I find, is the amount of water it takes to clean it all. The time-consuming factor also meant buying a small quality thermos to keep the brew hot as we progressed through the day.

Italian Aluminum Influences

We rolled quite some time with this set-up until we dropped in on our friends’ house in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where we spent a couple of weeks spending time together and getting things crossed off our many to-do lists. Here my love for the Italian Moka pot was rekindled because in their kitchen stood a beautiful stainless steel classy version of my classic hexagonal aluminum one that is still gathering dust in my mother’s attic.

Weeks after our intermezzo in Bolivia, where we visited a coffee plantation (read here), we drove to Peru. Here we were strolling the aisles of a big box store in Arequip when we both spotted the cheap Moka pot, albeit an aluminum one. That same night we discussed whether we should change our coffee-brewing habit once more.

We bought the aluminum one but didn’t use it much as Karin-Marijke let it sit on the fire too long and the valve exploded. Maybe this was not meant to be the one for us.

Lesson learned is that while it is very difficult to burn a big boiling pot mixture of water and coffee, it is easy to let a small Moka pot explode if you let it out of sight for too long. The poor pot had a huge gash in its side.

Read More: Tips for the Ultimate Overland Shower

The little coffee shop in Salento uses various way for brewing coffee, among which a Coffee Drip Kettle and a Chemex Classic Series Glass Coffee Maker.

While foraging at the weekly Saturday organic market in Lima, I spotted some funky colored original Italian Bialetti Moka pots but was put off by the ridiculously high prices. I understand that quality has a price, but with the high importation taxes most South American countries impose, these Italian Moka pots were way out of our price range.

The Peru Solution

When we camped on the beach in Huanchaco (near Trujillo, Peru), we discovered that Trujillo has a fancy shopping mall, which was just what we needed. High on our list were a duvet, a stainless steel frying pan, a piece of leather, and of course a Moka pot.

Ultimately we found a perfect 4-cup, stainless steel Moka pot resembling the Bialetti Musa and for 15 dollars, it was a steal.

Read More: Road Travel in Peru

We have been using the fake Musa for some time now and I don’t know what they did with the filter gasket, but it looks still as new. When cleaning it a bit more seriously for the first time, I found out that in fact, they had put two filter plates in there. Not sure why that is, but we now have a spare. The filter gasket thing has me worried a bit as the shop didn’t sell the gaskets, only the complete pot. But as it is a clever copy we might find that the original Musa’s gaskets fit?

Improve or Upgrade?

Never change a winning horse they always say, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t try a different flavor once in a while. It may change the way you think about brewing coffee, or it will confirm your initial choices. In light of this, I made a sidestep as Julie Schwietert, one of our New York friends send us a Handpresso as a gift.

I opened the package and found my long cherished dream come true when I held yet another beautifully designed piece of coffee culture in my hand. You might see it as a small bicycle pump on steroids as it uses a whopping 16 bar to produce a true espresso without the whole shebang you normally associate with an espresso machine.

It took me some time to figure out a good strategy and the perfect coffee grind. This might pose a problem on the road as it is not that forgiving as the Moka pot when it comes to finesse of the grind. But once I had overcome the initial challenges and found my way with the Handpresso, I thought it brewed a pretty hefty albeit very small cup of delicious espresso.

It is the perfect way to enjoy a cup out on the road. You fill a small thermos with boiling water and while on a hike or bicycle ride you sit down and pressurize the Handpresso to inject a powerful black creamy liquid in a small cup.

Now the not so fun part started, as we are two and generally I like two small cups this meant I had to brew three consecutive cups of espresso. Quickly cleaning, pressuring and refilling the Handpresso prove not to be very successful and after the initial euphoria, the joy of brewing coffee slowly faded away.

The Handpresso has found its way to my motorcycle friend Edwin, who will give it a try and see if it can spice up his solo motorcycle travels. As for us, we have gone back to our trusted way of using the Moka pot. For now we’ll stay with it but who knows what the future might bring.

Brewing Coffee the Jordan Way

We thru-hiked the new, 400-mile Jordan Trail. Apart from surreal landscapes, incredible lovely and hospitable people, we quickly became addicted to the delicious brew that people offered us throughout the country. A mixture of finely ground coffee with cardamom makes for a superb smelling and even better-tasting coffee.

“This is what we want in our Land Cruiser,” I said to Karin-Marijke.

We ended up with a couple of packs of Jordan-blended Turkish coffee with cardamom flavor in our carry-on backpacks. But that’s not all. In order to prepare this coffee, we’d need a typical Turkish coffee pot with a long handle, often called ibrik. It’s unpractical in the Land Cruiser so we may ditch it once the special blend runs out. Meanwhile we’re enjoying our Jordan coffees in Mongolia.

Now you have to let your coffee sit for a little bit as the coffee needs to settle.

Enjoy! And remember don’t drink you cup all out. There will be a thick deposit on the bottom.

Introducing a new coffee sensation

And now for something completely out of the world of luxury. A brilliant piece of machinery that magically turns gloomy morning faces into bright smiling persons.

I think it was a few years back, around 2019, when we first saw a similar machine in the hands of other overlanders. Our first thought: what utter nonsense to buy a battery-operated espresso machine when we are perfectly fine with our Mocca.

But as of late we discovered that both can perfectly live side by side and both have gained their own spot in our daily rituals. Let me explain why and how it works.

THE PRESSO X

Obviously the Mocca pot has been extensively tested and keeps being our main coffee ‘machine’, but there are times when it is not convenient to unpack the big Coleman petrol stove in order to brew a nice coffee. Think a quick stop along the long and dusty unserviced roads of Kazakhstan or the walks in National Parks for which we pack our daypacks for a few hours of hiking to a nice picknick spot. Or, even today, when we find ourselves in a hostel for a couple of days.

In comes the Presso X. A small enough gizmo to find a place in our daypack easily. Because of the integrated battery it is not ultra lightweight, but the 780 grams are a small sacrifice to pay for the luxury of a real cup of espresso. The battery is mainly used for the 18bar pressure pump as well as a heating pad for when there is no access to hot water. Note that the battery is mostly drained by the heating system. The extensive use of the pump itself barely makes a dent in the charge.

Thus, these days, we make sure to fill our thermos with hot water in the morning, so that when we are in need of a heavenly shot of espresso, out comes the Presso X and we fill the small holder with dose of fine ground coffee. The machine also accepts original Nespresso cups, but for simplicity sake, the none-existence of these cups where we are roaming around (not to mention ridiculous waste), we stick to our locally-sourced, ground coffee.

Screw the different elements together and hold the button to force the pump to use the (hot) water at its current temperature or a short, double press of the button activates the heating of water.

A nice espresso with an excellent creme jets out of the machine, conveniently into the transparent container underneath. While convenient, we love to use our pre-heated stainless steel espresso cups that seem to be especially made for the occasion.

The only downside, like most systems, is that cleaning up takes a bit of practice and when you want to quickly enjoy two cups of espresso, you will get your hands a bit wet.

Charging is done via USB-C and a small thing, inconvenience if you like, is that the machine will not operate directly on a charger. You must have it charged to use it.

Are we happy with it? This is possibly saying it all: Karin-Marijke is always insisting on minimizing. Two coffee makers, would she agree? To my pleasant surprise she soon became the person to prepare most of these delicious cups of coffee. I take that for a ‘yes’. 

We like to thank Caffe2go for providing us with another level of coffee making and we blame them for doubling our daily caffeine intake.

Now of course we can’t blame you if you now also want a portable coffee machine! Let us know your thoughts on your particular mobile coffee machine.

What’s Your Coffee Story?

What’s your coffee brewing method on the road? We might end up trying your set-up as well.

Originally published in 2015 / Updated in July 2022

Check it out: the Landcruising Adventure Coffee-Mug Collection

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More on Cooking Equipment:

Coleman Camp Stove – How to Install the Leather Pump Cup

How to Make a Wind Protector for the Coleman Two-burner Stove

Pressure Cooker 101