Introduction

It’s been about seven years since I first wrote about traveling with coffee, and five years since the second update. I’ve also written about improving US hotel room coffee in the meantime.

After all that experimenting, I’ve mostly converged on a setup that works for me, so this post is less of a survey and more of a summary of where I’ve landed.

The Kit

My current setup (pun intended) boils down to a few things: A UL-listed immersion heater, an OXO mini-squeeze measuring cup, a Nanopresso, a few Nespresso pods in a carrying case, a small espresso cup, and a small scale.

OXO Mini Squeeze Measuring Cup

The biggest change is that I’ve replaced the dedicated travel kettle with an Norpro immersion heater and an OXO mini squeeze measuring cup. It’s made of silicone and plastic that can handle boiling water, the squeeze design makes it easy to pour precisely, and it doubles as a measuring cup, which I’d been carrying separately anyway for pour-over ratios. The immersion heater fits inside the measuring cup and looks sketchy but is safe in practice because it has a non-replaceable fuse that will render it inoperable before it starts a fire.

The big advantage is that both pieces pack down smaller than any dedicated travel kettle I’ve used. I just boil water with the immersion heater dropped into the measuring cup, then use the cup to pour.

In-room Pour-over

When I don’t feel like dealing with pods, I’ll do a pour-over using whatever coffee is in the room. I covered the specifics of this in my post on improving room coffee, but the short version is that I use a 1:15 ratio of coffee to water by weight, and the results are usually better than what the in-room machine produces on its own.

If you don’t travel with a scale, a reasonable rule of thumb is that a lot of the hotel packs are around 8g of coffee, and so that’s around 120mL (4 fl oz) of water to extract them at a 1:15 ratio, and since usually the cups are around 240mL (8 fl oz), about half the cup will get you in the right ballpark. This usually means you’ll need to use two of the packs in the room to get to a full cup, but it’s so much better that way.

Nanopresso

In the last update, I was lukewarm on the Nanopresso. After using it more, I’ve come around on it.

I think something I didn’t initially appreciate is that while both the Nanopresso and Nespresso rely upon pressurized extraction, the Nespresso machine seems to mostly rely upon small holes in the brew group, while the Nanopresso uses larger holes and a spring to achieve the right level of pressurization. I think the spring-based approach results in a better extraction than the Nespresso, despite it being third party.

On Your Own Pods

The other thing that is interesting about nespresso is that it looks like there are modifications that were made to Nespresso machines at some point to make it less likely that they will seal with the capsule properly, meaning that everything without those changes (the Nanopresso included) will work better with third party pods, including those that you’ve filled yourselves. I’ve done a little bit of experimenting here, and I’ve found that around 6-8g of coffee seems to work pretty well (though you’ll need to play with the grind to get it just right), and the little papers are really important to put at the bottom of the capsule so that it stays together when it’s been punctured.