travel coffee

TL;DR: If you’re like and demand great coffee no matter where you’re traveling to, learn how to do pour-overs and bring a kit with you.

Having good coffee is really important to me.

As someone that travels a lot throughout the year, access to good coffee on the road is harder than you’d think.

there’s good

When I’m home, I brew with an Origami Dripper and Chemex filters. I used to use Hario filters since that’s The Standard™ for V60 brews, but I’ve found that the Chemex filters remove a lot of the harsh oils that coat my throat after a session without sacrificing flavor.

I get my beans (always single origin) from [BlendIN Coffee Roasters](https://blendincoffeeclub.com here in Houston, which I’m okay with because they prevent me from going full snob by being infinitely better at coffee than I’ll ever be.

The beans are ground with a Fellow Ode Gen 1 Conical Burr Grinder. I’ve considered replacing the blades for a more dialed-in grind, but that feels like a lot of work for maybe 5% improvement in clarity and flavor and I’m lazy, so no.

Why, yes, thanks for asking, I’m almost forgot; of course I use my own distilled water treated with Aquacode’s mineral mix. I haven’t measured the water’s purity but the TDS meter is in the mail. And, to close this loop of absolute pretentiousness that I felt kind of disgusting putting to print, I use a Fellow Stagg EKG kettle…with Wi-Fi, because I do computery things and why the fuck not. (The Wi-Fi adds basically nothing to the kettle. Not worth the extra cost.)

and then there is “good”

I obviously can’t bring this stuff with me, as I would need a huge bag to bring it in and the TSA would probably flag it to allow some senator’s gun to go through or something.

Consequently, I lower my “good” bar a lot when I’m traveling.

In this context, “good” means “not a bitter cup of stale water with spent grounds on the bottom to remind you of what you’re drinking.”

Getting good coffee is hard because I’m just as likely to get hit with the coffee equivalent of a warm Miller Lite ¹ at a random gas station² as I am at a $250/head client dinner.

Sometimes I’m working in a city that has numerous excellent coffee shops that brew actual pour over coffee and not espresso-based sugar milkshakes ³. Those are great, and I’m thankful when I’m in that situation. but in the battle between patroning the shop for a good cuppa and “your client threw an 8AM on-site meeting on your calendar and you’re 30 minutes away, and it’s 7:15”, the client’s gonna win (or get mad if you told them you were late because you stopped at a coffee shop for their rare Indonesian single-origin that just dropped).

So I did a thing.

yes, i’m that guy

I bring my own pour over kit. The picture above is an old version of my portable coffee setup.

Yes, I’m that guy. I’m an absolute riot at parties.

Here’s my setup. Hope it helps you if you’re thinking of doing something similar.

bom

• Kettle: LOUTYUO Portable Collapsible Kettle. I’ve tried to find a kettle that isn’t from an anonymous offshore seller on Amazon, but this is the best I could do. It boils water and has a short spout. Good enough. It will even reheat the water once its temperature reaches 165 deg F. $41.

• Thermometer: KIZEN Digital Meat Thermometer with Probe. Built-in thermometers on kettles can be crazy inaccurate. This can result in a bad extraction which throws off flavor. Using a probe thermometer helps a lot with this. I leave it dipped in the kettle above as water’s boiling, with the lid closed, of course. $16

• Dripper: SOTO Helix Coffee Maker. Finding a dripper was difficult. There are a lot of silicone drippers out there, but they take up a lot of space and have bad flow (or at least the one I had did). I like this dripper because it’s metal, has a hole at the bottom of the cone like a traditional V60, and collapses really thinly into itself. It’s not strong enough to support the Hario Drip Assist I use (below), but the positives outweigh that negative. Also, super easy to clean. Rinse and you’re done. $19

• Drip Assist: Hario Drip Assist. $19. I love this thing, but it requires some explanation.

  Because the kettle has a short spout, it is very difficult to control water turbulence over the grounds. I’ve found that this can cause fines to clog up within the compacted grounds, leading to overextraction and bitterness.

  The Drip Assist solves that by having two flow-controlling reservoirs around it: one in the center with a bigger hole for fast flow during the initial bloom and an outer one with smaller holes for a controlled soak.

  The end result is a theoretically-consistent cup of coffee regardless of the conditions the cup was poured in. Which is exactly what I get most of the time.

• Filters: Hario #2 filters. You can find these anywhere. Melitta filters, which are more common, work as well.

• Grinder: VSSL Coffee Grinder. The star of the show. It’s a burr grinder with 50 grind settings in a stainless steel, super easy to use package. The thing is indestructible and grinds an mostly-even set of grounds with very little effort (aside from hand-cranking the grind). My only complaint is that the grind size adjustment knob has no markers telling you where it is, so the only way to know what grind size you’re going to get if you change it is to do a test grind beforehand. this wastes coffee. $160

• Dopp Bag: Cotopaxi Nido. Super functional Dopp bag. Neatly organizes everything and fits all of this stuff nice and compactly. Nobody will know that you’re a complete coffee snob asshole until you open the bag. Well worth the purchase. $40.

• Water: Yeah, I don’t treat my water when I’m on a trip. Too difficult to get distilled water in anything less than a gallon, and all of the solutions are packaged for use in a gallon or more. Instead, I purchase a few bottles of bottled water at a gas station (they always have them). You can get, like, 24 for $5. If you’re spending more than that, you’re probably getting jipped.

• Scale: Joseph Joseph Tri Scale. Absoute legend of a scale. Folds up super nice, is reasonably accurate, and doesn’t try to be more than it is. Also good for folks that track calories/food consumption. You can put it in your pocket and sneak in a weigh-in without 30 minutes of the “oh, so you’re dieting” conversation. $33

honorary mentions

aeropress go

I started with an AeroPress, of course. I wasn’t happy with it, though. Several reasons.

First, it takes up a lot of space. The Go is “portable” in the sense that the original takes up a fuckton of space (relatively speaking). Both are still demanding space-wise.

Second, I wasn’t a fan of the overly bold coffee it would produce. I couldn’t find a way of controlling for this outside of adjusting grind size. The coffee always came out too bold for my liking.

Third, the Go only produces 8oz of coffee and I usually drink 12oz.

Fourth, and most importantly, is that the AeroPress exploded on me once while I was using the inverted method.

Grounds went FUCKING EVERYWHERE.

It was a disaster, and getting a new hotel room was a whole ass ordeal that I’d prefer to not repeat. Yes, you can get a Prismo ($36) to solve that problem, but that’s more hardware that you have to clean and I only carry one bag.

silicone drippers

The first dripper I got was a silicon dripper. Hario filters didn’t fit well (though I think Kalitta Wave filters would have worked) and because it only had two small holes on the bottom, flow was pretty bad when the water got backed up. Also, space.

giving up and using hotel coffee

triggered

Not happening. Here’s why.

1. You can’t guarantee the kind of coffee maker your room will come with. Will it come with a cheap old plastic CVT maker that hasn’t been cleaned since Sheratons were still in style? Or will you get a NESPRESSO machine with some decent pods? You have no idea, and your travel booking software doesn’t either, most of the time.
2. THEY NEVER GET CLEANED. Ever. So you’re going to spend at least five minutes running hot water through the coffee maker to try and get maybe 40% of the cruft out. You’d definitely need vinegar for the job, but you got into your hotel room at 11pm because your earlier flight was delayed and all you had was Panda Express and a hope of a nice evening that was robbed from you. No, you’re not getting fucking vinegar, and you still have that on-site meeting at 8AM.
3. [1] and [2] apply to the coffee downstairs in the breakfast area, though that coffee is usually better. Usually. Sometimes.
4. I don’t know…pouring over my coffee is fun? It’s nice to bring home traditions with you, even if they’re small. You’re already on the road sacrificing so much; simple things like this remind you of why you’re doing this.

Footnotes