coffee – These Vagabond Shoes.

Gear Review | Aeropress Go Coffee Maker

Starting my day with a coffee is really a non-negotiable, and where possible it has to be freshly-brewed real coffee. When I’m backpacking I enjoy taking my time over a good coffee in the morning. It gives me the opportunity to spend a few moments preparing for the day ahead, going over the route for the day, assessing the weather conditions, and reflecting on how things have gone the day before. It’s a wee bit of time for appreciating the place I’d spent the night, and a little bit of luxury to keep morale going when the weather looks grim, or there’s a tough day in the schedule.

Waking up to a freshly brewed coffee on a winter camp by the coast

What am I looking for in a travel coffee maker for backpacking trips? It should be simple to use and easy to clean afterwards. It should be lightweight and small enough to pack into my travel bags, and robust enough to handle being stuffed into a rucksack. And the coffee has to taste good.

How I tested the Aeropress Go

I borrowed an Aeropress Go from my friend Josh to make a round of coffees for our group as we travelled back from South Georgia to the Falkland Islands on a Royal Navy ship, and was so impressed that I ordered one for myself once I got back home. When it arrived, I tried it out immediately in my kitchen and it quickly became part of my morning routine.

I took it with me on a two-night wild camping trip, a shakedown for taking part in the TGO Challenge, a self-sufficient coast-to-coast crossing of Scotland in May 2022, and kept it in my kit for the event. My TGO route on this occasion took 13 days to complete, walking between 25 and 30km a day, with one rest and resupply day scheduled around the halfway point. I carried all my equipment, including a Jetboil Flash 2.0 to heat water for hot drinks and prepare dehydrated meals.

Breakfast and a brew before walking the length of Loch Affric on the Affric Kintail Way.

For most of the TGO Challenge in 2022, I camped overnight in locations remote from local shops, cafés or pubs, so there was no alternative other than to brew my own coffee in the morning before starting to walk if I wanted it.

Product Description

The Aeropress Go is a portable coffee maker designed for outdoor use, expeditions and frequent travel. If you’re familiar with the original Aeropress, the Aeropress Go is a slightly smaller, more streamlined system, which packs into a dual-purpose storage container travel mug.

It can be used to make hot or cold brew coffee, producing around 250ml of espresso-style coffee which can be topped up with water or milk to make a long black or a latte, in less than 30 seconds.

The components are made from lightweight, tough plastic, with a silicone seal on the plunger and silicone lid for the travel mug. The stirrer and scoop have been redesigned to fold into the plunger, and the kit includes a case that can hold around 20 filters.

The complete Aeropress Go system weighs 326g, including the storage container/ mug, scoop and stirrer, and the dimensions when packed inside the mug are a similar size to a Pot Noodle. If you didn’t bother with the mug, the coffee press itself is a similar size to a small can of beer.

The only waste produced by the Aeropress Go is a small “puck” of ground coffee and a used filter. According to the website, the paper filters are both recyclable and compostable and can be rinsed and reused several times.

Field Results

After setting up my Jetboil to heat water, I put a paper filter into the filter cap of the Aeropress Go, twisted it on to the chamber, and added the ground coffee. Once the water was ready, I balanced the chamber on the mug and added the hot water, gave the coffee a stir, and pushed in the plunger to produce a mug of espresso-style coffee. I topped my brew up with more hot water to make a long black coffee, and it was lovely.

There’s a range of techniques for the Aeropress Go to brew coffee to your personal taste, and it’s worth trying a couple, but there are a few things to bear in mind. It isn’t suited to making massive mugs of coffee, if that’s your usual poison, but it does produce small, concentrated cups of consistently good quality, which can be diluted with water or milk to your taste.

The Aeropress Go is really simple to use. There are no complex parts that could break while being used or while rattling around inside my pack, and the materials are pretty robust. I think it’s as close to indestructible as something can be.

Coffee on the coast after swimming in Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight

The tight fit of the plunger means it’s essentially self-cleaning. This is one of the best features, and the convenience shouldn’t be underestimated. There’s no faffing around to clean it between uses, the used grounds pop out and can be collected in a bag for disposal, and it means there’s no additional water required to wash the coffee maker, compared to something like a Mokka pot.

Worth the money?

The Aeropress Go costs between £28 – £35, depending on the outlet where you find it, slightly more than the original Aeropress system which retails for £24 – £27. A pack of 350 replacement paper filter discs will cost around £6, while a reusable metal mesh filter compatible with either Aeropress will cost around £13.

The Aeropress Go kit actually weighs a little more than the original, by around 100g, but that includes the robust multi-purpose mug/storage container and lid. Weight could be saved by leaving out the coffee scoop and stirrer if you’re already going to be carrying a spoon or spork, and substituting the mug for something more lightweight that doubles as a cooking pot.

Otherwise, your camping coffee maker options could be a coffee press compatible with a stove system like the MSR Windburner or JetBoil Flash, for between £15 and £20 (plus the additional cost of the stove) or Sea to Summit’s collapsible X-brew for pour-over coffee, for around £15.

Conclusion

After seeing how many people used the Aeropress Go while working in South Georgia, I was already sold on getting one for myself. It’s now something I use pretty much every day at home, and has quickly become an essential whenever I travel.

Coffee and birdwatching from a shepherd’s hut in Northumberland National Park

It’s a brilliant bit of equipment. Simple to use and very easy to clean, compact enough for travelling and robust enough to pack into a backpack or kit bag. I think I’ll look at getting a reusable metal filter to replace the paper filters I’ve used so far, further reducing the small volume of ground coffee waste created.

With a change in my work schedule coming up that will include a lot more travel in the future, and a few more backpacking trips planned, I know I’ll get plenty of use from the Aeropress Go, making it well worth the investment.

Disclaimer: I bought the Aeropress Go with the money I had left over after all my bills were paid. This is my honest review after a few months of use.

If you’ve got any questions about making coffee with the Aeropress Go, leave me a message in the comments below.

Why not pin this to your hiking and camping boards for later?

What I’ve loved this season | Autumn 2020

Where I’ve been and what I’ve done

Autumn in the Cairngorms is absolutely sensational. The honey-scented, purple heather-clad hills of August fade to rust-brown as slowly the trees become the main attraction. Birch and bracken glow gold against the dark of the pines, and the woodlands blaze with reds and oranges.

Autumn in the Cairngorms, on a woodland walk near Keiloch.

I had a little holiday around the area with friends that came to visit, staying in a holiday cabin on the other side of Braemar from where I live, and taking a campervan tour of the eastern Cairngorms and Aberdeenshire. I also arranged a couple of wildlife watching trips, going on a beaver watching trip in Perthshire (great success), and visiting Spey Bay to search for dolphins (no luck, though there was some great birdwatching at the river mouth).

Bow Fiddle Rock on the north Aberdeenshire coast.

My 40th birthday in September was a small family affair, the only opportunity for us to get together this year before Scotland’s COVID guidelines limited the size of groups we were able gather in. It was a joint celebration with my Dad and nephew Joe who had their birthdays in August, when the City of Aberdeen was in local lockdown and they were unable to have any visitors themselves. We had a BBQ in my parent’s garden to give enough space for physical distance between households, and fortunately the sun shone, and the windbreak I spent most of the morning constructing held up.

The final day of September was a golden respite from the first of the autumn storms, which left the signs of winter etched on the mountains. I made the long stomp up to Ben Avon and Beinn a’Bhuird from the Linn of Quoich on a frosty morning, arriving early enough to find a skin of verglas over the granite tor of Leabaidh an Daimh Bhuide and tiny pockets of snow behind tussucks on the plateau, sheltering from the low autumn sun.

The Glas Allt *Mór* waterfall below *Clach* a’ Cleirich.

Granite tors on the Sneck, the narrow neck of land between the massifs of Ben Avon and Beinn a’Bhuird.

My seasonal job with the Cairngorms National Park Authority came to an end at the beginning of November, which left me with some free time of my hands. I’ve been out exploring more of the areas that lie on the periphery of my usual patrol routes, making the most of the fair weather and trying to keep up with the amount of walking I was doing during the summer, usually between 10 and 15km per day. It’s going to be a bit of a challenge with the lure of the indoors in wet and wild weather.

I’ve always found it a bit harder to do things at this time of year, with the combination of short daylengths and wilder weather making me feel like curling up in bed and hibernating for the rest of the season. I’ve got a natural daylight lamp for the time I spend indoors on the computer, and I’ve been making the effort to spend at least some time outdoors every day this month, as I know how much benefit it brings me. I’m aiming keep it up all through the winter.

A few minutes on the beach at Benholm watching the surf at the turn of the tide.

My Autumn Love List

Books: This season, I’ve dived deep into history, reading up to improve my knowledge of things that happened locally, across the country, and how they interconnect with things happening further afield. My recent reads have been The Cairngorms: A Secret History by Patrick Baker, Scotland: A History from Earliest Times by Alastair Moffat, and Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga.

My other interesting reads from this season can be seen here.

Podcast: January this year marked the 200th anniversary of the first sightings of Antarctica, and the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust had planned a programme of events to celebrate the occasion. Due to the pandemic, those which could go ahead were shifted online and a new podcast, A Voyage to Antarctica, was created, with contributions from filmmaker Ruth Peacey, writer Sara Wheeler, and UKAHT’s CEO Camilla Nicol.

Clothing: In anticipation of winter, I’ve splashed out on a pair of the toastiest wool slippers from Glerups. After a day out walking in the hills, they’re a delight to slip my feet into to pad around the house in the evenings.

Self-care: I’ve picked up a lipsalve from Burt’s Bees to last through into the winter. It’s a lovely, tingly peppermint flavour.

A few of my favourite things from autumn 2020, preparing for a cosy winter.

Equipment: I started using a natural daylight lamp, the Lumie Vitamin L lightbox, in early October to help with seasonal affective disorder. I put it on for half an hour or so after my alarm sounds in the morning, and read a few pages of my book soaking in the light before getting up. And now I’m not going out to work everyday, I’ll put it on for an hour or so in the afternoon while I work on the computer.

Treat: It’s got to be mince pies. As they appear in the shops in late September, usually the week after my birthday, I try to get a selection of the different supermarket varieties for a taste test, to work out my preferred brand for the rest of the season. Currently in the lead position are the ones from the Co-op, although the proximity of the shop has also had a big influence. The ideal accompaniment, for a wintery weekend afternoon, is an amaretto-laced coffee, with my favourite Bird & Wild blend.

What’s Next?

My plans to visit the New Forest and the Isle of Wight in November, then catch up with friends around the south of England have been put on hold again with the COVID lockdown in England. I’ll keep my fingers crossed things might improve by the New Year to allow me to reschedule.

I’ve got my fingers crossed for a bit of work in January, joining the refit of one of the boats I’ve worked on previously. And hopefully that will also bring the opportunity for a short holiday afterwards, though again that all depends on open travel corridors from the UK to Portugal.

In the meantime, I’ve thrown myself into planning a few long walks in my local area and further afield, completing a few online courses, and appreciating winter comforts close to home.

What have you been up to over the last season? How are you affected by the current COVID guidelines where you are?

Remember I’m always here if you need a friendly ear to listen; I’d really love to hear from you.

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*Maybe enough for a coffee. Not enough for a yacht.

What I loved this season | Autumn 2018

A round-up of everything I’ve been up to and the things I’ve enjoyed over the last season.

blue_clipper_1_small — Making repairs to the mainsail on Blue Clipper while alongside in Molde, Norway

Where I’ve been:

I’ve just returned to the UK after several weeks at sea on Blue Clipper, crossing from Norway to England, and on to Portugal, followed up by a few weeks of maintenance work based on the Algarve coast.

blue_clipper_2_small — **Preparing to leave Ålesund, Norway, as dusk falls**

Norway is my favourite country and I loved visiting new places on this trip, starting with Bodø, and crossing the Arctic circle as we headed south to Ålesund. I also revisited familiar ground around Haugesund and Karmøy, when we ended up storm-bound in Skudeneshavn for a week longer than expected.