There's nothing like rolling out of a tent at dawn, brewing a fresh cup with hand-ground beans while the lake fog lifts. After years of testing manual coffee grinders on backcountry trips across the Pacific Northwest, the Sierras, and desert canyon camps, our team has strong opinions about which hand grinder deserves a spot in […]

I learned this the hard way on a backpacking trip in the Sierras: pre-ground coffee in a ziplock bag tastes like cardboard after day two. By day four, I was begging a fellow hiker to share his hand grinder beans. That single taste of fresh-ground coffee at 9,000 feet ruined me for instant forever. I […]

Good coffee on the trail used to feel like a luxury I couldn't justify. Every ounce counts when you're walking 15 miles a day, and most "camp coffee" setups either weigh a ton or taste like dishwater. After 4 months of testing 8 different backpacking coffee filters across the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades, I […]

I've been brewing coffee in the woods for the better part of a decade, and I still remember the morning I unpacked a wobbly glass French press onto a rocky picnic table in Yosemite and watched it shatter before the water even boiled. That single disaster sent me down a rabbit hole that turned into […]