Best Camping Coffee Makers

The AeroPress Go is the AeroPress shrunk to fit its own mug. The brewer, filters, scoop and stirrer pack inside a microwaveable mug with a silicone lid, so the whole kit is one small cylinder in a pack, and at camp you unpack it, brew into the same mug and drink from it. The coffee is the AeroPress's: add grounds and water, wait 30 seconds, press, and you have a clean cup with no grit in under two minutes, hot or iced. It's plastic, so a dropped pack doesn't end your mornings, and cleanup is popping out the puck and rinsing.

This is the lightest way to drip coffee at camp: a silicone cone that pops open over a mug, a wide-mouth bottle or a small pot, takes a standard #4 paper filter, and folds back to a disc about an inch high and 5.6 inches across. The clear base shows you the cup filling, so you don't pour over the brim, and the snap-on cover doubles as a place to set the wet cone down. It makes one or two cups at a time from water you heat on the stove. GSI covers it for the life of the product against manufacturing defects.

The percolator is the camp coffee pot for a reason: it sits on whatever heat you have, a two-burner stove, a grill grate or the edge of a fire, and keeps cycling hot water through the grounds until you take it off. The Bozeman is stainless steel with a glass knob on top, so you watch the coffee darken and pull it when it's the strength you like, and nothing in the pot is plastic or aluminum. Nine cups is about 45 oz, four big mugs. It rinses clean at camp and goes in the dishwasher at home, and filters come in the box to keep the grounds down.

If the coffee you want at camp is the coffee from your kitchen, this is the machine that makes it there. It's an ordinary drip brewer, a basket, a filter and a ten-cup glass carafe, heated by a 4,500 BTU propane burner instead of an element, so there's nothing to learn and the pot tastes like home. Coleman puts ten cups at about 18 minutes and a 16.4 oz cylinder at up to 4.4 hours of burn, and its regulator is built to hold the heat steady in cold weather, at altitude and as the cylinder runs low. The push-button igniter means no matches. It's the heaviest and dearest way to make camp coffee here, and the one for a group that wants a real pot.

If your French press needs to survive a truck bed, a campsite, or three teenagers, the Stanley is your pick. The double-wall vacuum insulated stainless steel keeps coffee hot for up to four hours (or cold brew cold for nine), the 48oz capacity brews enough for a small crowd, and the whole thing is built like the thermos your grandfather had — because it basically is. The mesh filter isn't as refined as Espro or Fellow, so expect a bit more sediment, but for outdoor use and batch brewing, nothing else comes close. Every piece is dishwasher safe.

The Nanopresso is the way to pull an espresso where there's no power: pour hot water into its 80 ml tank, load finely ground coffee tamped firmly into the basket, and pump. WACACO rates the pump at up to 18 bar, more than most home machines run at, and the shot comes out with crema. It's about 6 inches long and 0.74 lb, comes with a protective case, and the cup that covers the tank is the cup you drink from. It asks for espresso-fine coffee, so pair it with a grinder that goes that fine or bring pre-ground espresso.

This is the green bottle from job sites and campsites. It holds 1.1 quarts, about four mugs, and Stanley rates it hot for up to 24 hours. The lid is the cup, the stopper is leakproof for the bag, and the handle folds flat. It's 18/8 stainless steel with a powder-coated outside. For a full pot carried out for the day, nothing here costs less.