Sunday, October 13, 2013

Coleman Camping Coffee Maker



Great product - works better than I had imagined!
I recently purchased this coffee maker for car camping/mountain biking trips around Wisconsin. I always wished I could have coffee on the mornings that I woke up at the campsite. Percolators do not work well (in my experience) so I had basically given up until I saw one of these at a sporting goods store. I did some review checking online and all I read was good reviews on this particular model (apparently some of the earlier models had some minor issues). It really does work great! I have been using it on my old 2-burner coleman camp stove (coleman fuel) that my dad gave me (it's probably 30 years old). Contrary to what some people have said about it taking a long time to brew, some saying as much as 45 minutes, it took me about 10 minutes to brew a pot of coffee with cold water. I just cranked up the flame to high and it only took a couple mintutes for the water to heat up enough to start making it's way up to the basket and start dripping into the pot. Makes coffee as good...

Field test versus old-fashioned percolator pot
I am a boy scout leader and I camp from 20-30 nights per year. The troop purchased one of these and used it daily for several weekend campouts and week-long summer camp, for a total of about 10 days with an average of 3-4 coffee drinkers. We drink about 2 pots a day (not each).
Durability:
The pot broke right away. We purchased a steel pot.
Plastic around the filter area seems to be brittle...it cracked and a piece broke off.
Cleaning:
The filter basket needs to be easily removable for cleanup. You have to carry the whole unit to your water source to rinse it out. You can take it out, but it requires a multi-tool to do so.
Quality of brew:
Good cup of coffee; just like your drip pot at home.
Speed:
For three consecutive mornings, we conducted a side-by-side field test with an old-fashioned steel percolator pot. Both the Coleman product and the perculator pot had the same amounts of water. Both the Coleman and percolator were lit on...

Great, once you figure out the design flaw
The first two times I tried to use it the coffee did not drip through the filter into the carafe. I finally realized that its "pause and serve lever" is not well designed. At least with my device, when the filter basket is opened and then closed, the "pause and serve" lever does not always line up with the the trap door under the filter basket. So even when the carafe was in place, the trap door was not opening to let the coffee through. Once I figured that out, it worked quite well.

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