Coffee is life. If you’re like me, you need your cup of joe first thing every morning. There is nothing quite like a great cup of coffee onboard as the sun comes up over your favorite anchorage. Unfortunately, today’s common methods of brewing coffee are harder to come by onboard a cruising sailboat where resources we take for granted in our daily lives – electricity, space, and stability – are limited. And though Starbucks seems to have set up a franchise on every other street corner, they haven’t yet expanded to coastal waters.

So what is a coffee loving sailor to do? You surely have some method of boiling water, and you’ve got some coffee grinds. What’s the best way to brew a delicious cup, without brining along a ghastly contraption or having your glass coffee maker break on the crossing? Good news: I’ve tried just about every method out there so you don’t have to. Here’s my ranking of the available options.

A word on “cups.”

First, a word on “cups.” In the kitchen, a cup is equal to 8 oz. A coffee cup, when advertised by a coffee brewer is equal to 4 oz. When a human being like you and me drink a cup of coffee in the morning, we’re usually drinking out of a mug that is 8 to 12 oz, maybe larger. So when judging a coffee brewer’s production capacity, you need to divide the advertised number of cups by AT LEAST 2, that is, it will produce half the number of “human drinking cups” as the number of “coffee cups” it claims to produce. In reality,  since most people think of a cup as a 10-12 oz mug, and some brewers, (looking at you moka pot), need to function absolutely perfectly to produce the stated number of “coffee cups”, you’re going to get even less than half the advertised amount. Below, when I use the term, “cup”, I’m referring to a human (read: yours truly) drinking a reasonably sized mug of coffee. I use oz or grams to be specific when I’m talking about something else.

The Rankings

#1 Poor Over

• Taste: 5/5 -> Excellent coffee can be achieved with crude inputs, coffee + hot water + filter.
• Ease of Use: 4/5 -> Very easy to do, but requires some practice and patience. Basically needs to be done one cup at a time.
• Portability: 5/5 -> Very compact, particularly the collapsible silicon versions.
• Tested: Collapsible Silicon Poor Over Coffee Dripper with #2 Coffee Filters

This is hands down the easiest way for persnickety coffee drinkers to compactly brew a cup of coffee just the way they like it. All you need are grinds, filters, and a (hopefully collapsible) poor over filter holder. Pro tip: Pick up two filter holders and get a double barrel assembly line going to serve groups of two or more.

#2 Starbucks Via

• Taste: 4/5 -> Taste is very good. Would probably pass a blind taste test as “real” coffee
• Ease of Use: 5/5 -> This is as easy as it gets. Dump the packet into a mug. Add hot water. Stir. Sip.
• Portability: 5/5 -> By far the most compact way to carry a cup of coffee for tomorrow’s breakfast.
• Tested: Starbucks VIA Colombia Coffee

When people think of instant coffee, they usually think of artificial, burnt tasting swill – understandably. But somehow Starbucks was able to figure out how to make them taste good. It doesn’t get any easier than this. Tear open the single serve packet (or two). Combine with hot water in your mug and stir. The Starbucks Via brand comes in several varieties. Other premium brands like Cafe Bustelo also make similar products, but let’s just say, there’s a reason the Starbucks ones cost $1-2 per packet. You get what you pay for.

An added benefit is that they’re packaged individually so you don’t have to worry about using up all the grinds or having them go stale. Throw some of these in your go bag and you’ll never worry about coffee again. Better yet, take these as a back up for those days that you just don’t feel like doing the poor over or you’ve run out of grinds.

#2A Steeped Coffee

• Taste: 4/5 -> Very good. Similar in quality and flavor to Starbucks Via. Maybe slightly better. Has a slight tinge of the “artificial” flavor that attaches itself to a lot of instant coffee.
• Ease of Use: 4/5 -> Slightly more trouble than an instant packet of Via, but not by much. You do have to wait 5 minutes for the coffee to steep, and it can get over extracted if you steep too long.
• Portability: 5/5 -> The bag and packet is about double the size of a normal tea bag. 4×4″ vs 2×2″.  Another good backup option to throw in your go bag.
• Tested: STEEPED Coffee Dark Roast

Steeped coffee is a relatively new innovation. It’s basically a giant tea bag of coffee grinds that you let steep just like you were making tea. At $2 per serving, its about the same cost as Starbucks Via. But you can sometimes get a good deal on bulk packs of Starbucks Via that make them closer to $1 per serving.

#3 French Press

• Taste: 5/5 -> Get the method right and this will produce an excellent cup of coffee, on par with any high end coffee shop.
• Ease of Use: 3/5 -> I’m rating this a bit low due to the fact that people generally don’t bring kitchen scales on sailing/camping trips, as well as the potential mess of dealing with all those spent grinds.
• Portability: 3/5 -> Glass is no good. Even some of the plastic models look like they could crack under the wrong scenario. You pretty much need to keep it in the original packaging to be safe. Not exactly something you can casually throw in your go bag. There’s also the sheer size of this thing. Even the small version I got is pretty cumbersome.
• Tested: Bodum Brazil French Press, KRUPS GX5000 Professional Electric Burr Grinder (for pre-cruise prep at home).

Brewing the perfect cup of French Press is a whole topic in itself. I followed the method here to dial in my process. I used a burr grinder to go for the maximum grind size. Got out my kitchen scale and measured out the water [500 g] and coffee [35 g] by weight per the instructions. Stirred, let brew for 4 minutes, skimmed the solids, and pressed. The amount of coffee measured by weight turned out to be A LOT more than I would have expected just by using “tablespoons.” The result was a very smooth and rich cup of coffee. Yield was about 12-16 oz. I filled my mug twice when sipping it. The first cup was excellent. The second cup was bad. That’s another drawback of this method: you can’t let the coffee sit in the press or it will over extract.

This is a lot of people’s favorite method under any circumstances, and it’s definitely possible to make it work on a boat. But to me, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. A traditional French Press is made of glass, which makes portability more difficult. On a business trip to India some years back (don’t get me started on adding chicory to coffee) I found a great little “one cup” French Press in a convenience store, and used it to brew coffee in my hotel room. It was absolutely perfect, and I’ve never seen anything like it since. Unfortunately it was converted into shards of glass on the plane trip back to the U.S. There are now French Presses that are made of plastic or even metal, but you need to shop around.

Another drawback is the size. Most of these yield enough coffee for 2 or so people. So if you’re travelling with a group, it’s going to be a lot of rinsing and wiping of the pot to serve everyone. Then there’s the fact that unless you brew the perfect amount, the leftovers (i.e., your next cup) is going to be sitting in the grinds and over-extracting while you drink the first cup. It’s great to precisely measure out the ratios and get the brew time right for that perfect cup, but forget about the 2nd cup being good regardless of what you do on the 1st.

#4 Percolator

• Taste: 4/5 -> With practice, you can produce a large pot of good quality coffee.
• Ease of Use: 4/5 -> Fairly simple to use, but requires practice to get the brew time right. It’s easy to let it go too long or take it off the stove too soon.
• Portability: 4/5 -> Durable but large.
• Tested: Camping Percolator

A percolator is similar to a moka pot (see #5 below), so can be expected to produce a similar result. If you’re into high school analogies, a moka pot is to espresso what a percolator is to drip coffee. A moka pot forces water through the coffee grinds once and then keeps the brewed coffee separate from the remaining water. A percolator, on the other hand, continuously drips boiled and condensed water over the coffee grinds. The brewed coffee is combined with the remaining water in the single reservoir and this mixture continues to percolate until the desired coffee concentration is reached.

With practice a percolator can produce a very good coffee that is on par with a home drip coffee maker, but somewhat gritty due to the lack of a paper filter (Note to self: try fashioning a filter and see what happens). The main advantage of a percolator over other methods is that it can brew a large pot to serve several people. The flip size is that percolators are quite large, so portability suffers.

#5 Moka Pot

• Taste: 3/5 -> A decent cup. Bitterness may be overcome by adding water and/or milk/sugar. Practice would likely refine the flavor. Grainy at the end. This can be limited by controlling grind size, but some grinds will inevitably “float” up with the boiling water and get into the coffee since there is no filter.
• Ease of Use: 3/5 -> Fairly easy to use, but due to the low yield would need multiple brew sessions to serve a group.
• Portability: 4/5 -> Pretty compact in size and it’s not going to break. It looks kind of like a medieval metal hourglass.
• Tested: Imusa USA Aluminum Stovetop 6-cup Espresso Maker

A moka pot is also known as a stovetop espresso maker. For my testing, I followed expert instructions and used a “6 cup” unit. The yield was about one about one 8 oz mug full of coffee. It was very bitter, not quite espresso, but darker than a really dark coffee. I added a bit of water to smooth it out and it was still good. I probably could have increased the yield to 12 to 16 oz by adding water and still had a fairly good cup of coffee.

Based on my experience and from what I’ve read, the yield on these, is always way lower than advertised. By 1 “cup”, the manufacturer means 1 shot of espresso. Although the moka pot produces an intense coffee that can be diluted a bit, it is by no means espresso. The intensity is simply limited by the amount of coffee grinds that can be fit into the filter basked, and according to the instructions, you’re not supposed to tamp down the grinds like you do when making espresso. A shot of espresso uses 6-8 grams of coffee. A top-of-the-line 4-cup Bialetti moka pot can fit 15 to 17 grams. Do the math. That’s 2 shots of espresso with a perfect brew. About half of the advertised 4 cups. If my pot really produced 6 shots of espresso, then I drank 6 shots of espresso in one sitting, and would probably have been pretty wired. I was not. I’d say I was 2-3 shots of espresso wired.

#6 Instant Coffee

• Taste: 2/5 -> Tolerable is the nicest thing I can say about this coffee.
• Ease of Use: 4/5 -> Almost as easy as possible, but takes some practice to get the amount right for each person’s preference.
• Portability: 5/5 -> Make sure the lid is on tight, throw it in a bag, and you’re good.
• Tested: Taster’s Choice House Blend Instant Coffee

I used 2 heaping teaspoons with about 8 oz hot water. The result was a very bitter, burnt flavored coffee. It was not good, but it was tolerable after I got used to the taste. Hey, if you need your caffeine fix, this will give it to you. Just don’t expect much flavor.

I also tested some single-serve packets of various cheap brands, thinking that maybe after Starbucks developed the technology for Via, other brands had figured it out too. I was wrong. But the packaging is nice.

#7 Coffee Concentrate + Hot Water

• Taste: 3/5 -> Based on my attempt to make a hot cup, I’d give this a 1 or zero, but it’s fine if you like cold brew, so I was a little more generous with the taste rating. Mixing it with 1:1 water produced a watery cup. Drinking straight (cold) or with a little soymilk isn’t bad. Fine for cold brew fans, but if you’re looking for a hot cup of joe, this isn’t going to cut it.
• Ease of Use: 5/5 -> Open the bottle and drink it.
• Portability: 3/5  -> Takes up a bit of space but otherwise it’s a no-brainer, unless you need to keep it cold, that is.
• Tested: Gevalia Cold Brew House Blend Iced Coffee Concentrate

My thought here was to mix concentrated coffee with hot water to produce a hot, tasty cup. Let’s just say it didn’t work out so well. In fairness, there may be better options on the market that will yield a better result using this method. I believe “house” (i.e. cafeteria) coffee on cruise ships is made this way. It’s not going to wow you, but it’s passable coffee.

Honorable Mention: Cold Brew

• Taste: 4/5 -> Smooth and sweet. Nice flavor.
• Ease of Use: 5/5 -> Pop the top and swig.
• Portability: 3/5 -> Needs to be kept cold.
• Tested: Starbucks Doubleshot, Espresso + Cream

I like my coffee hot, but if you’re a cold brew fan, the coffee problem is a lot simpler. Just throw your favorite brew in the cooler. You do need to keep them cold, which is a use of ice box space and energy (stored or generated), but they certainly don’t take any effort to prepare. Even if you’re not a cold brew fan, these are another good back up option for those times when your preferred method fails for some reason and you still need that caffeine fix.

The Bottom Line

If your priority is the highest quality cup of coffee and want something you can take on the go, pick up a collapsible silicon poor over coffee dripper. If you want to serve a group, get two so you can have a couple mugs brewing in parallel. If your priority is convenience, but you still need a high quality cup of joe to start your day, pick up some Starbucks via and have someone else make it for you so you can get over your “instant coffee” fears. You will not be disappointed.