Your Cart is Empty
Join OUR MAILING list. Get 10% off your first order.
Some people will tell you there is a right way to make coffee outside. We are not going to be those people.
We have watched one customer pull an AeroPress out of this bag at a trailhead, another pull a percolator out of it at a river camp, and a third pull a jar of instant out of it at five in the morning in a ski area parking lot. All three of them got coffee. All three of them were happy about it. How you brew is your business.
What we care about is the other half of the problem — the half every article about camp coffee skips straight past.
Search for how to make coffee while camping and you will find a dozen genuinely good articles comparing brewing methods. Pour-over versus press. Percolator versus Moka pot. Which grind, which water temperature, which ratio.
Not one of them tells you where to put any of it.
Every method needs the same three things: a flat surface, a surface that doesn't move, and somewhere to set the cup down while you deal with the next thing.
That is the part that actually goes wrong. A tailgate is flat until you lean on it. A camp chair armrest is not a surface. The ground means grit in the filter and a kettle that tips the moment you look away. And the bin — the bin is where the coffee gear goes to disappear under the pans, so that the one morning you are in a hurry is the morning you cannot find the filters.
Try this once and you will know what we mean: a pour-over needs two hands and about ninety seconds of steady pouring. Count how many surfaces you touch before the water goes in. That number is the real review of your camp kitchen.
Here is our honest read on the common methods, and what each one asks of the surface it sits on. We do not have a favourite. We have a lot of customers, and they do not agree with each other.
The one that most rewards a real surface. Cone, filters, a gooseneck if you are serious. Two hands for ninety seconds, which means everything else has to already be where you can reach it.
The most forgiving in wind and the easiest to clean — the puck comes out in one piece. Wants a surface it can be pressed down on without the whole thing sliding away.
Great coffee, worst cleanup. The grounds have to go somewhere, and “somewhere” should not be the campsite you are standing in. Bring a Stash for the wet ones.
No filters to forget and no paper to pack out. Runs on the same stove as breakfast, which is either efficient or a queue, depending on how many of you there are.
Small, hot, and unforgiving about a level burner. If your stove sits on the same surface your cups do, this is the method that cares most about it being flat.
No judgment here at all. Some mornings you want to be driving in four minutes. It still needs hot water and somewhere to set the cup while you find the lid.
Six methods. One requirement in common — and it is not a grinder.
That list is why the Workspace exists. The bag is the storage and the lid is the surface — it unzips and folds out into 12″ × 18″ of bamboo, which is a cutting board at dinner and a bar at six in the morning. The panels hold the gear upright and in place whether the bag is open on a picnic table or hanging off a tailgate. There is an internal loop for a camp light, which sounds like a small thing until it is dark.
Unclip the bag. Set it down on a flat surface, or hang it — the straps are built in and the vehicle mounts come in the box, so it works off a tailgate, a bed rack, factory roof rails or a barn door with no drilling. Unzip. Fold the surface out.
That's it. Nothing to assemble, no legs to level, no second thing to carry in from the truck. The grinder, the cone, the filters and the mugs are already in their places because you never took them out.
Packing up is the same in reverse, and this is the part people underrate: the gear goes back where it already was. No repacking a bin in the dark with cold hands.
A coffee setup, in our experience, looks roughly like this:
And when you are done with coffee, nothing about that bag is only a coffee bag. The same panels hold the knives and the cutting board at dinner, and the whole thing works as the camp kitchen the rest of the day.
Off a tailgate at a trailhead. On a picnic table at a river camp. Hanging off the back of an SUV in a ski area lot with the skis leaning against the bumper. On a kitchen counter in a rental, because a coffee setup that's already packed is a coffee setup you can take anywhere.
Make a cup outdoors once, properly, with everything where you can reach it and the steam coming off it while the light comes up. You will keep doing it. That is the whole pitch.
Designed and prototyped in White Salmon, Washington, where a lot of this was tested at six in the morning in a parking lot.
Comments will be approved before showing up.
