how to make coffee without a coffee pot

How To Make Coffee Without A Coffee Pot – 4 Simple Tips

There are many reasons why you need to know how to make coffee without a coffee pot . And they include the following:-

  • Faulty coffee maker
  • Power outage
  • You are out camping or roughing it out somewhere outside civilization

So many coffee addicts take pride in saying that they are coffee snobs and would never take instant coffee. If you are in this class, then pay attention to these tips. You never can say when they’ll come in handy!

You may have been putting off the invitation to go camping with friends just because of your phobia for instant coffee. Or just a pain in the butt for people around you when you travel to a place where you can not get your coffee fix. Handle all that now with one or more of the methods we would share today.

And the good news is that all these methods are very easy to implement!

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The Stovetop/Pot Method Plus Strainer

In this method you’ll need the following materials and ingredients. The great thing about this method is that you’ll most probably have all the materials in your pantry or camping gear.

Ingredients and Materials Needed

Small pot or saucepan

Water

Coffee grounds

Spoon

Scoop, dipper or ladle

Strainer

Coffee mug

Preparation

  • Place a small pot or saucepan on the stovetop with more water than the quantity of coffee you want.  

  • Put the quantity of coffee grounds that you would normally use in your coffee pot into the water and stir very well.

  • Place the mixture on the stovetop and bring to a boil. Don’t forget to stir intermittently so that the grounds would not stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. 

  • Allow the coffee to boil without covering the pot for about 2 minutes. Then remove from the heat and leave to stand for about 4 minutes.

  • After the 4 minutes, the coffee grounds would have settled to the bottom of the pot then you can use a ladle, scoop or dipper to fetch the coffee into your mug.

  • If you are using a strainer, you don’t need to let the coffee stand, just go ahead and strain the coffee into your mug. Remember to use a fine mesh strainer.  

  • If you don’t have the utensils to fetch the coffee, you can also slowly pour the coffee into your mug without getting the grounds into the brew.

People who love their coffee piping hot may not like to leave it to stand for 4 minutes because it would have lost some steam. One way you can salvage the situation is by reheating the coffee for a minute or two.

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The “Tea Bag” Method

Ingredients and Materials Needed

Hot Water

Coffee grounds

Food safe string

Coffee filter

Mug

Preparation

  • Spoon your coffee grounds into the coffee filter, close it and tie it tightly with the string to form a pouch. Ensure that one end of the string is long enough to hang over your coffee mug.

  • Place this pouch with coffee grounds into your mug. Slowly pour the boiling water over the pouch.  Do not over fill the mug.

  • Leave the coffee pouch in the mug to steep for upwards of or lower than 4 minutes. The timing would depend on how strong you want your coffee to be.

  • Remove the pouch and enjoy your coffee.

If you do not have the inclination to go through all the above, you can buy coffee bags. With these coffee bags, this method of making coffee without a coffee maker is a breeze. Just place the coffee bag in a mug, boil hot water and pour over the bag. Leave it to steep as you would a tea bag and you have your cuppa!

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The Handkerchief or Cheesecloth Method

Ingredients and Materials Needed

In this method of making coffee without a coffee maker, you’ll need the following:-

Hot water

Coffee grounds

Clothespins or paper clips

Clean handkerchief or cheese cloth

Mug

Preparation

  • Place the cloth or hanky across the top of the mug, then press in the center to make a pouch that can hold one serving of coffee grounds.

  • Hold the hanky or cloth in place with the clothespins or paper clips.

  • Spoon your coffee grounds into the pouch and pour a little hot water over it. Let it sit for about 30 seconds so that the coffee grounds is totally soaked.

  • Then carefully pour the remaining hot water over the soaked coffee.

  • Voila! You have your coffee!

When using this method,ensure that you use enough clips so that cloth would not fall into your brew. Another tip is to make sure that the hanky is at least double the size of the width of the mug. That would also enable you to clip the hanky properly around the mug.

The Cold Brew Method

This method of how to make coffee when your coffee pot lets you down, works well in a situation where you don’t have a coffee maker and do not have any immediate plans to buy one.

It also works well for people who like to prepare their meals in advance so that they can just grab and go or have meals ready in a jiffy.

Ingredients and Materials Needed

In this method ,you’ll need the following:-

2 mason jars with wide opening

Coarsely ground coffee

Strainer

Water

Preparation

  • You’d need one part coffee grounds to 5 parts water (that is ratio 1:5). Place the coffee in one of the mason jars. Add a little of the water to soak it and let it sit for 30 seconds.

  • Pour in the remaining water and stir very well before covering the jar tightly.

  • Place this solution in the fridge and leave if for a period of 14 to 20 hours. The length of time it would stay depends on how strong you want the coffee to be.

  • When it has stayed as long as you want, strain the coffee into the other Mason jar. This would make a coffee concentrate which you can store in the fridge for between 7 to 10 days.

  • When you are ready for a cup of coffee, just pour out a little of the concentrate and dilute with hot water as desired. Do not dilute all the concentrate at the same time unless you are serving the whole thing immediately.

If you want your initial concentrate to be stronger, reduce the amount of water that you would add but do not let the brew sit for more than 20 hours. Conversely, if you want a lighter concentrate, add more water rather than let the brew sit for less than 14 hours.

You can also check out this cold brew kit and method below:-

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Expert Tips

There are things you should bear in mind as you learn different methods of making coffee without a coffee maker or pot. These tips and hacks would help you to get a brew that would be as close to what you coffee maker would get you.

Use Freshly Ground Coffee

Coffee beans lose some of its strength and flavor after about 20 minutes.This means that the longer your ground coffee is store, the weaker the coffee you’ll get and it would also not be as flavorful as desired. So use freshly ground coffee if you want to get the best of your coffee beans.

That said, getting the right texture of coffee grounds can be quite risky unless you are veteran coffee maker. You may either have coffee grounds that’s too fine or too coarse.

So it might be safer to buy pre-ground coffee. In order to get the best of both worlds (freshness and the right texture), you can buy ground coffee in single serve packets.  

Insist on Freshly Roasted Coffee Beans

If you are one of those veterans that insist on using coffee beans and grinding them yourself, then ensure you buy freshly roasted coffee beans.

There’s a lot of argument about what constitutes ‘fresh’ coffee beans. The truth is that many coffee connoisseurs are at variance about what time frame is best . But the conclusion is that you should not use coffee grounds that has been stored for months.

Coffee beans stored in a container with tight lid would retain its freshness for a few weeks. This means in essence that you might need to buy your roasted coffee beans in small quantities.

Some coffee buffs have even been known to roast their own coffee beans. Phew! too much trouble for a cup of coffee don’t you think? But hey! different strokes for different folks!

Get The Right Temperature of Water

Use the right temperature of water. If the water is too hot, you would burn the coffee; if it is too cold, you’ll not be able to extract the coffee well. The temperature of the water would depend on the method you want to use to brew the coffee.

A simple way to get the right temperature if you are using hot water is to let the water boil, then let it sit for about 30 seconds.

This tip also comes in handy when making coffee with a coffee pot; click here read our previous post on how to use a coffee pot

Improvise

You can get different ideas of how to make your coffee without using a coffee machine from all these methods that we have shared. All you need to do is find out the purpose of each material and then look around for something you have that can do the same thing.

Once you have ground coffee, water and heat, you can get a decent cup of coffee.

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Conclusion

In as much as we are pleased to share all the above methods of making coffee on the fly(lol) we still think a coffee percolator or machine is bae.

Why go through all that hassle for just one or two cups of coffee when you can get your coffee fix with just a touch of one or two buttons?

There are many great products both online and offline; take out time to search for one that would suit your needs and budget.

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