No more crappy coffee. Pourover is the anywhere global brew, no gooseneck kettle required
Jodie and I love coffee. We have coffee in the morning. We have coffee in the afternoon. I especially have coffee pretty much anytime I bloody well please.
However, during our 2+ years of traveling the world with our kids, we have learned a lot about enjoying a good cup of coffee on the road (black for me, cream for Jodie). If you’ve been wondering how you will get, or brew, a good coffee during your travels or vacations, it’s time to clue you into some secrets and hard truths.
And, hint, the coffee-loving traveler needs a collapsible pourover coffee cone.
Instant coffee has gotten better, but you can still do better
In an absolute pinch, we have availed ourselves of instant coffee. For instance, settling into our rental in Yokohama, Japan, our first day we relied on the packets of Nestle and Blendy instant coffee provided by our host.
In Bangkok, our hotel kept us in an endless supply of red Nestle instant coffee packets. Since we had a kettle in the room though, we soon found a bag of ground coffee at a nearby market, and busted out our handy travel pourover cone. More on that in a bit.
Fortunately, instant coffee has come a long way. We often stash a few instant coffee packets in our carryon, just in case. Today’s instant coffee still tends bitter, but the flavors can be more robust. Typically what I find most challenging about instant coffee, especially in Asia, is finding ones that aren’t pre-mixed with creamer and sugar.
Is instant coffee our preference? Goodness no. But we’ll still take that over no coffee.
Pod and teabag coffees are far worse than instant
In Europe and the USA, we’ve encountered more and more pod coffees. Most of them suck. They’re about on par with the little tea bag-like coffee bags you sometimes find in American hotel rooms. The coffee they brew is about as strong as weak tea.
Pods really singe our nerves. The plastic waste is unnecessary and absurd, and the coffee is sub-par. We’ll drink complimentary pod coffee when we don’t have another option, but it’s one of the few times I’d just about rather go out and buy a cup of coffee than brew it myself.
In some hotels, the tricky part is making coffee.
What to do when your accommodation doesn’t have a coffee maker or a kettle
Sometimes you stay in accommodation that doesn’t have a coffee maker, but only a pod coffee maker. What do you do?
We’ve occasionally run into situations where there isn’t a kettle. Usually that’s only happened in hotels in the USA. Sometimes the hotel has kettles available upon request. All you need to do is call the front desk and ask for one (we did this at a recent Kimpton hotel stay in Seattle).
If we can at least get a kettle, we’ll find a bag of ground coffee (and a container or milk or half-and-half for Jodie) from a nearby supermarket, grocery store, or convenience store. Then we can brew up coffee our way.
American hotels often have complimentary coffee in the lobby. The quality can vary, but typically it’s a decent enough coffee, and superior to the pods or that coffee pillow tea bag nonsense. If we can’t get a kettle, we’ll typically rely on the coffee in the lobby.
If there’s absolutely nothing else, that means there’s likely an in-house coffee shop or some other paid-only coffee option. I mention this because in all our travels, the only time we’ve ever encountered this was once, in Las Vegas. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever be in such a situation again. It also occurs to me that we’ve yet to go back to Las Vegas.
Pourover coffee does not require a gooseneck kettle
The very mention of a gooseneck kettle as being the only path to a good pourover irks me more than the dirty water that comes from coffee pods.
I’ve heard it on public radio, and I’ve encountered it in recommendations from usually reliable publications. There’s always something on the theme of how a pourover coffee requires a gooseneck kettle to be good. It’s usually accompanied by a mention of it taking something like 20 minutes to pour the water alone.
This is pretentious nonsense.
20 minutes to make coffee? I have a business to run, things to write, kids to hang out with, a wife to chat with, and a world to experience. Making good coffee does not take 20 minutes.
Nor is a gooseneck kettle required.
We’ve made delicious pourovers all over the world. Not once have we used a gooseneck kettle
Here are just a few of the water heating devices we’ve used to make amazing pourover coffee:
- Ikea stovetop kettle that was the workhorse in our home
- One-liter saucepan on the stove in Oaxaca (about the only place we’ve stayed that didn’t have a kettle)
- Random department store stovetop kettle (possibly from Target?) that a friend had in the garage of her rental. She gifted it to us, and we have use it to make pourovers when we travel in our motorhome
- Adorable Hello Kitty pink electric kettle in our condo rental in Hua Hin, Thailand
- Cheapy white electric kettles in Da Nang and Hanoi, Vietnam
I’m writing this from Yokohama, Japan. In front of me, sitting on the counter right now, is the black one-liter plastic electric kettle we currently use to make tea and coffee.
And each cup, anywhere in the world, has been amazing.
Pourover coffee can work with nearly any grind
If you are a coffee purist, you’ve probably already stopped reading. For those seeking simple yet tasty workaday coffee, I can assure you that while there is an optimal grind for pourover coffee, there is no absolute all-or-nothing grind.
While sometimes you can find whole bean coffee, that doesn’t mean you can grind it at the store (we also don’t travel with a grinder). Off-the-shelf grocery store ground coffee is often ground for the prevailing coffee-making method in that country.
In the USA, most coffee is ground for automatic drip coffee makers. We’ve encountered finer grinds in Morocco. The coffee I’m currently sipping in Yokohama looks to me like it’s a coarser grind, not quite French press coarse, but close, yet the flavor is rich and well-textured.
About the closest exception I can mention from our lived experience is Italy. Most coffee there is ground finer, for moka pot stovetop espresso makers. In the apartment vacation rentals we stayed at in Genoa and Bologna, there was alway a moka pot in the kitchen.
Actually, Italy was the only country so far where our pourover cone stayed packed up. Instead, we enjoyed delicious moka pot coffee for weeks on end.
Odds are, if you can buy ground coffee off the shelf, you’ll be able to brew a good pourover with it.
Pourover coffee can work with any roast (our preference is medium)
We’ve thrown fine, medium, and even coarse grinds into our pourover cone. We prefer the flavor profile of medium roasts, but we’ve made perfectly good pourover coffee with lighter and darker roasts. Sometimes what we get simply depends on what’s in the store that’s most convenient for us to visit.
You can find pourover filters pretty much anywhere
Of course, the cone and the grounds are only part of the coffee equation. What about the filters?
Since we make coffee for two, Jodie and I get the #4 paper filters. They’re available pretty much anywhere, from convenience stores to supermarkets. In a pinch we’ve gotten the smaller #2 filters, but we find #4 easier to use.
The only country where we struggled to find pourover filters was Italy. Then again, with a moka pot in the kitchen, we didn’t need our pourover cone anyway.
Typically we can find pourover coffee filters in packs of 50 or 100. We buy the largest we can find, and pack the extras when we change locations.
Is it safe to use tap water to make coffee in other countries?
Our world travels include countries that do not have water that’s safe to drink straight from the tap. For countries that don’t yet have safe tap water, we boil tap water for one minute. That’s the common standard for killing potential pathogens. From there, we let the water cool slightly, then make our coffee.
Using tap water is also a personal choice. Other folks might prefer to use bottled water. We don’t, and we’ve been quite happy with our coffee.
The pourover cone we travel with
Do we possess a snazzy ceramic pourover cone? You bet we do. It’s also bulky, fragile, and completely impractical for travel.
Instead, we travel with a collapsible pourover cone made from silicone. It’s lightweight, packs down slim, and we can tuck it into the front pocket of one of our carry-on rolling suitcases. Plus, it washes up easily and is always ready to brew when we are ready for coffee.
A collapsible silicone pourover cone, using whatever coffee and water is available, is how we make 90% of the delicious coffee we drink
Let’s recap. The following are often touted as required or optimal for making pourover coffee:
- Gooseneck kettle
- Water at an exact temperature, pH, and chemical/mineral content
- Only one grind
Any of these can help you make more optimal pourover coffee. All of them are optional.
Whether traveling the USA or in any of the dozen-plus countries we’ve visited, our collapsible silicone pourover cone is how we make about 90% of the coffee Jodie and I enjoy multiple times a day.
Being flexible on the coffee, water, grind, and roast has shown us that the pourover is possibly the most adaptable and flexible method of coffee-making there is. Our pourover has never let us down, and a cup of its rich, flavorful, textured brew has kept me company for every word of this wee guide.
In fact, I’m going to make one right now.
