We have brought a truly unnecessary amount of coffee gear camping over the years. We like good coffee, and apparently we once believed enjoying good coffee outside required recreating half our kitchen at the campsite.
Then, before one camping trip, I realized that we already had a batch of cold brew sitting in the fridge (to be fair, we almost always have cold brew in the fridge).
I poured some into a smaller bottle, stuck it in the cooler and went camping. No grinder. No kettle. No brewer. No bulk.
I’ve since become convinced that bringing premade cold brew like this is one of the easiest ways to have good coffee while camping. I actually wrote about my cold brew camping conversion for REI’s Uncommon Path, but here’s the shorter, more practical version.
Why bring cold brew camping?
The biggest advantage is pretty obvious: You make your coffee before you leave home.
Normally, making fresh coffee at camp means bringing some combination of a lot of gear — a coffee brewer, filters, maybe a kettle or camp stove, grinder. And of course, coffee! But then you need to heat the water, brew the coffee and deal with wet grounds afterward.
Cold brew eliminates almost all of that.
Make a batch of cold brew concentrate at home, pour it into a leakproof bottle and keep it in your cooler. When you want coffee, pour some into your mug and dilute it with water or milk. Voila.
» Learn more: How to make coffee while camping
There’s a lot less coffee gear to pack
This is probably the biggest selling point for us. We enjoy the ritual of making coffee, but camping already involves packing 700 objects.
Bringing premade cold brew means your coffee setup can basically consist of:
- Cold brew concentrate
- A leakproof bottle
- Water and/or milk
- Something to drink it from
That’s a pretty dramatic reduction from our regular coffee setup at home, and even a step back from our fave portable coffee makers for travel.
Coffee is ready almost immediately
There are mornings when making an AeroPress next to the tent sounds absolutely marvelous. There are other mornings when a toddler is asking for breakfast, nobody can find their shoes (ask me how I know), and we’d really rather have caffeine before beginning any of those negotiations.
It’s especially good for group camping
Making one beautiful pour over at camp is fun, but making six of them is a job.
If you’re camping with several coffee drinkers, a large bottle of cold brew concentrate lets everyone make their coffee whenever they wake up.
6 must-have items in your typical camping coffee kit »
You can still drink it hot
“Cold brew” doesn’t necessarily mean “cold coffee.”
If it’s 42 degrees outside and you’re questioning all the decisions that led you to sleeping outdoors, you can dilute cold brew concentrate with hot water instead. We generally use roughly equal parts concentrate and water or milk, then adjust from there depending on how strong the batch is.
Of course, you’ll need to heat water if you want it hot, which eliminates some of the convenience.
How to make cold brew for camping
The easiest approach is to make your cold brew at home the day before your trip.
You’ll need:
- Coarsely ground coffee
- Cool or room-temperature water
- A jar, French press or cold brew brewer
- Something to strain the coffee through
For concentrate, I generally use somewhere around a 1:4 or 1:5 coffee-to-water ratio. Combine the coffee and water, cover it and let it steep for 12 to 24 hours. Then strain out the grounds, transfer the finished concentrate into a leakproof container and put it in your cooler.
Read our full guide to cold brew »
Can you make cold brew at the campsite?
Absolutely. If you forgot to make it ahead of time — or just prefer making coffee at camp — you can make cold brew with almost no specialized equipment.
Around dinnertime, combine coarse-ground coffee and water in your cold brew coffee maker. Let it steep overnight, then strain it through a paper coffee filter, cheesecloth or even a clean bandana the next morning.
Personally, though, I think making it at home is where the whole cold-brew-for-camping idea really shines. If I’m going to wait 12 hours for coffee, I’d rather do that waiting while I’m sleeping in my own bed.
Ways to make cold brew coffee while camping
We’ve tried a couple of dedicated cold brew coffee makers that make sense (or not), depending on how you camp.
- Toddy Go Brewer: Uses the same basic immersion method as regular cold brew, so you’re still looking at an hours-long steep. The advantage is that it’s designed as a portable system.
- OXO Outdoor Rapid Brewer: This cold brew coffee maker takes almost the opposite approach. Instead of waiting 12+ hours, its hand-pumped vacuum chamber can make about 4 to 5 ounces of “concentrated cold brew” in around five minutes.
- French press: If you already own a French press, use that.
- A jar: Perhaps the cheapest camping cold brew maker is the canning jar already sitting in your cabinet.
Try cold brew for your next outdoor adventure
Cold brew isn’t automatically the best camping coffee.
If waking up, heating water and slowly making a pour over while staring at a lake is part of why you like camping, please don’t let us talk you out of it.
Fresh brewing also gives you considerably more control over the final cup. If you brought a beautiful light-roast Ethiopian coffee and want to pick out all its fruity and floral flavors, cold brew probably isn’t how we’d choose to brew it. Cold brewing tends to produce a smoother, more balanced cup while muting some of those more distinctive flavor notes.
But that’s not always the goal. Sometimes we want to go slow and brew coffee by hand. And sometimes we just want the dang coffee.
For the latter, it’s pretty hard to beat opening the cooler and pouring it into a cup.
If you want the longer version—including how we stumbled into this setup in the first place—I wrote about why you should bring cold brew camping for REI’s Uncommon Path »
