Yet Another Coffee Maker

An influx of orchestrating work and rain have conspired to stall progress on the super-cool, most-terrain, go-just-about-anywhere adventure vehicle over the past day or so, though I did manage to crawl underneath early today and spray rubberized undercoating over the screws bolts that are securing my new subfloor. A miniscule baby step, but rust never sleeps, so an important one.

I figured I'd take advantage of a slow news day to write about the latest gadget to be added to my rolling arsenal. I've been on a mission for quite some time to find the best means of making coffee in a rolling home, and believe I have finally found the Answer. Behold, my new Clever Coffee Dripper:

First, let's look at the quite-reasonable criteria for my search:

1. Must use zero electricity
2. Fast clean-up using minimal water
3. Makes not just good, but great coffee
4. Chicks dig it

I had been using a basic Melitta single-cup pour-over jobbie for a while now, but have never been wild about the fact that it begins decanting as soon as you start to pour water through it. Putting more grounds in the filter helps avoid coffee that's too weak, but there's a limit as to how far one can go with this. It beats instant coffee though, clean-up is a total snap, and the chicks do seem to dig it (mine was actually given to me by a groovy one).

I've long thought that a French press makes the best coffee, mainly because it allows you to control how long the joe brews before serving, but clean-up is tedious and not practical for those of us with a finite fresh water supply. I tried one briefly last year, but tossed it after a couple of days, so never got a sense of what the ladies thought.

Some of you may also recall the Toddy brewing mechanism that I dabbled with a while back. This worked by making a large supply of coffee concentrate that was then stored in the refrigerator for a week or two. While both the concept and resulting coffee were promising, the need to remain stationary for a day while it did its thing was problematic for a guy who lives on wheels. The honeys were mostly indifferent about it too.

Enter the Clever Coffee Dripper, which I stumbled across on Amazon about a week ago. It functions very similarly to the Melitta, but has a mechanism on the bottom that prevents the coffee from decanting until it has been set atop one's mug. Downright clever, indeed!

As shown above, this allows the caffeine-deprived among us to pour in hot water, cover it to retain the heat, and then let the concoction sit and brew for as long as desired. When ready, simply set the device on top of the mug, and within seconds, a perfectly brewed cup of coffee streams out: 

It remains to be seen what the babes think of all this, but confidence is riding high. And yes, I do like a lot of cream in my coffee. Heavy cream, actually, because for us paleo types, coffee is first and foremost an effective fat-delivery mechanism.