Coffee on a Boat
If you’re like a large number of people, you’ve got to have at least that cup of coffe in the morning to get the day going. While I only recently starting drinking coffee every morning, my wife needs her coffee every morning or she gets a headache…so obviously, we needed to sort how to make coffee on the boat.
This should be simple, right?
While I’ve got a very nice (manual) espresso machine, which I used to have it on a timer to pre-heat 30 minutes before we might use it (E61 group head, brass boiler), we just don’t use it all that much any more and it’s not set up at the moment. I definitely prefer a latte from good coffee beans I ground myself, but between my wife’s normal working schedule which starts way too early in the am, and my relatively recent drinking a cup each am - simple and quick is good.
Even then, on some particularly low sleep nights, I’ve managed to make coffee followed by starting to pour some sweet tea into my coffee cup - usually just started, but hey - that’s not milk! Indeed, getting enough sleep is a nice thing to do…
The bare essentials for making coffee
are really fairly simple in reality:
Hot water
Some ground coffee and a filter of some kind - or instant coffee
Of course, manufacturers everywhere come up with a million new and improved ways to do, well, anything they can make money on. In a few cases, they even are new and improved - double insulated glasses, mugs, and Thermoses/flasks come to mind as truly being awesome, and lest you wonder - yes, a good Hydroflask or clone will keep coffee warm to hot for a day or so - which actually was becoming an option for us after far too much research on what the heck to get to just make some coffee on a boat. :)
I started out looking for the ‘simplest’ way to boil water, thinking I’d use a French press or pour-over type French presses are an option, but you still need to get that water boiling in the first place, as well as needing to make sure any glass is indeed up to the task of living aboard a boat.
A ‘home’ coffee maker or even a water kettle is also an option, assuming you have a genset/generator - as these are typically 1500W+ appliances - it’s possible to use off an inverter and possibly extra batteries, something I may wind up exploring later, but not right now. Those of you with larger boats and extra battery banks - or a generator - have life a bit easier.
I had thought about using the Magma Kettle grill I’d been considering, as one of the niceties of the round kettle style is you can easily remove the grate and set a pot or wok down right on the element, making boiling water, well, at least less annoying on a grill.
Where’s it going to fit? Materials
One of the fun things about a boat, even a bigger-than-originally-expected boat - is how and where you’re going to store things. Yes, there’s a galley with a small counter, an apartment-sized refrigrerator or even larger, but the reality is we don’t plan on staying in the slip, so more thought is needed than just stocking a NYC or Silicon Vally-sized typical studiio apartment (i.e. tiny) - ideally, you can use it in place, and it won’t go anywhere when taking the boat out, or second best, has somewhere in the relatively limited space aboard that it can quickly and easily go to when not in use.
Further, considering our boat can go a bit over 40MPH, the idea of fragile glass carafes just wasn’t an option.
I was thinking of something that might sit under the ‘ledge’ of the galley shelf. Measurements there were 9 3/4” from the top of the counter to the bottom surface of the shelf, with the shelf being around 4” deep.
I’d prefer to not block off the storage comparement below the shelf of course, but that tends to squeeze the usable space even more, or blocking off the pair of light switches to the right of the counter-top.
I tried to consider things a bit before rushing out to buy something, and came pretty close to saying screw it - we’ll make it at home, put it in a Hydroflask and call it good as it’ll stay warm enough for at least 24 hours or more. The one not-immediately-obvious thing I didn’t think about immediately is while it’s nice to be able to make coffee out on the lake at anchor, well - we generally don’t plan to, as we’ll overnight at the slip, have breakfast and then head out for the day on the lake. So - this makes using a burner or something other than electric a bit less important. I did look at a few smaller coffee makers, those with stainless carafes or something <not glass>, but in general wasn’t able to come up with something right-sized in dimensions or capacity - we usually drink ~16oz coffees each, although that does include milk.
What about Kuerig K-Cups?
Yes, those lovely contraptions that cost more than a proper coffee maker, while increasing the cost per cup from pennies to 50 cents or so per cup.
Hmm, sounds a whole lot like the orginal razor blades (and now worse, disposable razors - which I despise and don’t use), or more modern - inkjet printers. My Mom had a Kuerig at her place in FL, and thankfully other manufacturers got into it, along with bulk boxes at places like BJs and Costco, etc. It worked well enough for her, so I thought we’d at least take a look to see what was out there and trying to put my relative distaste aside.
That was….confusing. Apparently, there is now a Kuerig K-Cup 2.0. Instead of single (small) cups, you can get K-cups that can do a carafe or larger sized cups, convenient when making coffee for more than one. Sounds nice, right? It does. Well, it also uses a bar-code reader in the device (flashbacks to inkjets with ‘official’ cartridges, anyone?) and they’re all a bit on the spendy side, although other manufacturers are making K-cups the 2.0 machines can read and work with.
The super-short answer of a not-too-short-reality of dozens of tabs and reviews is there were a few cool and reasonably priced devices out there. However, out of those I was considering, only one would fit below the shelf - a Chulux Single Serve with 12oz Reservoir. On the plus side, it would hold 12oz of water or more, had nearly 10,000 reviews on Amazon, came in normal colors (e.g. Black), and is BPA free. It was also $40 or under, so going to have to give it a try.
primarily to let them know we’re finally going to be in the water, and that we’d need to know where to put the trailer, as the owner had said to leave it somewhere and let them know, and they’d move the trailer to wherever my spot might be.
While we were up there, I saw a dock box sitting out as one of the marina workers was talking to us (who was not wearing a mask, came within 6’ and I stepped back and asked him to back off - this seems silly, but my wife and I are pretty much hermits at home during this mess other than taking an occasional ride top-down…
The COVID situation kind of feels like dating and STD considerations - sorry, I just don’t know where you’ve been! Hopefully he got it, really wasn’t trying to be rude, but I don’t look kindly on the possiblity of someone infecting either my wife or I, even though we had masks on ourselves.
What about Kuerig K-cups?
Yes, those lovely contraptions that cost more than a proper coffee maker, while increasing the cost per cup from pennies to 50 cents or so per cup. Hmm, sounds a whole lot like the orginal razor blades (and now worse, disposable razors - which I despise and don’t use), or more modern - inkjet printers. My Mom had a Kuerig at her place in FL, and thankfully other manifacturers got into it, along with bulk boxes at places like BJs and Costco, etc. It worked well enough for her, so I thought we’d at least take a look to see what was out there and trying to put my relative distaste aside.
ry.
That was….confusing. Apparently, there is now a Kuerig K-Cup 2.0. Instead of single (small) cups, you can get K-cups that can do a carafe or larger sized cups, convenient when making coffee for more than one. Sounds nice, right? It does. Well, it also uses a bar-code reader in the device (flashbacks to inkjets with ‘official’ cartridges, anyone?) and they’re all a bit on the spendy side, although other manufacturers are making K-cups the 2.0 machines can read and work with.
The super-short answer of a not-too-short-reality of dozens of tabs and reviews is there were a few cool and reasonably priced devices out there. However, out of those I was considering, only one would fit below the shelf - a Chulux Single Serve with 12oz Reservoir On the plus side, it would hold 12oz of water or more, had nearly 10,000 reviews on Amazon, came in normal colors (e.g. Black), and is BPA free. It was also $40 or under, so going to have to give it a try.
As it turns out, it was a pretty good selection, as the Chulux (yeah, never heard of either, but let’s face it - unfortunately your Mr Coffee and many others things aren’t exactly made in the US any more, either.. :( ) also fit in snugly alongside the right hand side of the stove’s glass top, like it was meant to live there. That turned out to be a good thing, as while the unit does slide underneath the shelf, it does need to come forward in order to open up the lid…note at home, we use 20oz double walled glass mugs, which are awesome at keeping coffee warmer for longer as well as generally looking pretty decent, and the reservoir seemed to have no issue taking on ~16oz of water, allowing for a bit of mile or milk and sugar after it’s made. Of course, we don’t use the glass mugs on the boat, but will likely wind up with cups > 12oz anyways, so this should work out well enough for us.
In reality, it works out pretty well - although I’d prefer the power button on the left hand side (you do need to pull it out a bit to start it), it literally couldn’t be made any better to sit between the KISS and the bulkhead and sits there nicely when not in use, or slid back.
In the event as summer humidity subsides and we want to overnight out on the lake, We can always go ahead and make a Hydroflask full for the next morning and call it good.
I still need to sort some air-tight storage for sugar and spices on the boat, and was thinking of asking my wife to rinse out a smaller plastic container to bring milk to the boat, but hey, I love Hydroflasks and their kin, and dislike plastic containers and single-use stuff in general wherever realistic, so ordered a smaller white vacuum-insulated bottle to dedicate to ‘boat milk.’
Boat Milk container
I own a good number of ‘official’ Hydroflask bottles, but had come across a Japanese company, Takeya, when looking for various bottle spouts/lids, so decided to give them a try, as they had a good assortment of sizes and I really dig their lids in general. One ‘milk bottle’ from Takeya coming up…
The bottle fits well in the refrigerator door, I like the built-in carry handle, which I can and do snap to my backpack via carabiner or Grim-Lok when going to/from the boat, and nothing negative so say - their bottles are great
I also ordered a box of organic coffee K-cups to get us going, which yes, means yet more plastic, but also ordered a couple of refillable K-cups to hopefully phase out the plastic cups and use normal coffee grounds in…for the time being at least, a pretty good number of K-cups can fit into a used ground coffee container, so good enough for now on that one. I also added an order of bleach-free K-cup mini filters to the mix to experiment with the K-cup refillables.
Now to sort what the heck to keep sugar and silverware in...