A coffee maker that you carry in your backpack or suitcase may seem like the sort of piece only an obsessive would own (my colleague and fellow coffee intensive Chris Morocco even calls his own road coffee situation “extra”). After all, it’s easy enough to make a pot of coffee in the morning and pour it into some astronaut-spec’d vacuum-sealed mug. Voila, portable coffee.
The best portable coffee makers
But if you have even the barest ability to taste the difference between quality coffee and the watery swill that comes from single-serve sachets in moderately priced hotel rooms, if you’ve lost Airbnb coffee roulette one too many times, or if you just hate whatever sits in the urn at the office, then you really will appreciate having a portable way to brew something good.
Before getting detailed about the brewers that make good coffee easier away from home though, it’s worth thinking about what actually constitutes a portable coffee maker (philosophical, I know).
What makes a coffee maker portable?
Technically, if you believe hard enough, any coffee maker can be portable. I was on a trip once, and someone took a Nespresso Vertuo out of their suitcase, but I wouldn’t recommend you try that. To really be convenient to travel with a coffee maker needs a few attributes
It should be small
If you plan to take this on quick work trips where you only bring a carry-on or in your backpack to commute, you need something that will not take up the space otherwise devoted to your MacBook and hotel gym workout clothes. To that end…
It should be self-contained
If you lose a small part that comes with a coffee maker, it may render it inoperable, or at the very least, leave it in need of a MacGyvered solution. So a good portable coffee maker should fit together in a matryoska sort of way inside the brewer itself.
It should clean up easily
Chances are reasonable that if you are somewhere where you need a portable coffee maker, space will be at a premium, and you may not have room to make a mess.
It should be durable
This thing may get bounced around by baggage agents or dropped in the dirt at a campsite, so it needs to be made out of materials that won’t chip or shatter easily.
The best portable coffee makers
I’ve tried more than a dozen portable coffee makers (or at least coffee makers that claim to be portable—sorry, cute, tiny pour-over carafe, I’m not packing glass in my suitcase) and these are the best ones I’ve used.
An unbreakable classic: Aeropress
Why I love it: The classic portable coffee maker, the Aeropress, has been around since 2005 and is beloved for the slightly-more-intense-than-a-normal-cup-coffee cup of coffee it produces. It’s easy to operate. Just add 20 grams of finely ground coffee (or two of the scoops that come with the Aeropress) to the chamber, fill it with hot (but not boiling) water, give a quick stir, let it sit for about a minute and a half, and the push the plunger to fill your cup.
