Travel is fun. The sense of adventure and promise of new experiences can be exhilarating. But your coffee should not be a gamble. Here are the top five reasons travel coffee sucks and what you can do about it.
Fill up your gas tank, not your coffee cup.
You won’t make it very far on your road trip without a full tank of gas or a recharged battery. Go ahead and buy a bag of chips or a candy bar, but don’t put any of that pump station joe in your cup to go. Unless the gas station attendant is making fresh coffee right then, the coffee was most likely sitting, getting cold, in coffee machines that haven’t been cleaned in too long. When coffee sits in dispensers, it picks up the oils that have built up on the inside and starts to taste bitter and burnt. While the coffee sits, it gets cold and the more interesting flavors evaporate away. We say fresh brewed coffee is the best for a reason.
If you bring a portable coffee maker like an AeroPress Go Plus along with you, you can make yourself a fresh cup of coffee, anytime you want it. You won’t risk old or cold coffee when you travel.
Fast, cheap, and disappointing.
Gas stations and truck stops buy the cheapest coffee beans they can get away with. When it comes to coffee quality, you get what you pay for. Ground coffee turns stale fast. To keep prices low, gas stations buy pre-ground coffee in large volumes. The grounds are stale before they get anywhere near the brewer. Same thing goes for pods. The coffee has no hope of tasting fresh.
When you travel with an AeroPress Go Plus, you get the added benefit of bringing along any coffee you choose. You can even search "coffee shops near me" and try some beans from local coffee shops while being able to control the way you make the coffee. (Bonus: the price per cup is best when you make your own.)
Paper cups are things of the past.
Coffee is better in a real cup. Sure, paper cups are convenient, but they cool off so quickly, can make your coffee taste like paper, and are destined for the trash can. Have you ever taken the lid off a paper cup to add some milk or sweetener, then had a hard time getting the lid back on, only to crumple the cup or the lid? Not so fun.
A quality vacuum-insulated stainless steel tumbler, like you get with the AeroPress Go Plus, will keep your coffee at the right temperature and does not add strange tastes to the coffee or take up space in a landfill. You can also take the lid off and on without a worry. (Bonus: you can customize your travel tumbler with stickers.)
Portable, but not convenient.
So, you’ve decided you don’t want to get gas station coffee. Great choice. You decided to travel with one of those portable electric coffee makers – one of the ones that plug into your car. It costs more than you thought it should. When you stop and pull it out to make some coffee, you are startled by a loud horn and drop the carafe, leaving shattered glass all over the parking lot. Or, maybe you got one that works off a cordless drill battery, built rugged for use at a job site. It takes a lot of energy to heat water, so the battery goes flat or only heats the water a little, and you end up with a disappointingly lukewarm cup of really bad coffee.
Instead, bring an AeroPress Go Plus. It doesn’t need any electricity. If you happen to drop it, it is near indestructible. All you need is a way to get some hot water. If you are camping, you’ll probably have a camp stove. You can also get a cup of hot water from a gas station for just a few pennies.
Portable, but not compact.
Maybe the portable coffee brewer you bought didn’t run out of battery or the glass didn’t break. That’s great! But it took up so much room in the back of your car just to ride along with you. You almost need an entire box just to hold the brewer and the power adapters. Then you need to hope the filters don’t get smashed in the trunk. You had to bring all this extra gear that really only does one thing (and not as well as an AeroPress). If you are staying in hotels or flying, the portable coffee maker will most likely just stay in the car.
And if you're thinking of a French Press or Pour-Over as portable, you're right, but do they truly travel well? Not really. They're fragile and heavy, and don't offer much in terms of an all-in-one travel coffee system - they don't include a cup.
The entire AeroPress Go Plus brewer fits inside its own stainless steel tumbler. It truly is the ultimate travel coffee system. You can bring it into the hotel without a second thought and skip the sketchy, stale pod coffee. At the airport, you’ll be effortlessly making the best cup of coffee Terminal E has ever seen.
How can I travel with coffee that doesn’t suck?
The answer is simple: the AeroPress Go Plus.
Finally, a travel system that combines delicious coffee with portable design. You can brew, enjoy, and repack your coffee maker all into the same tumbler you drank from.
You can make the best road trip coffee ever, whether or not you have hot water. Hot water is easy. If you are camping, you are already bringing a camp stove. If you stop at a gas station (or even a coffee shop) you can just get a cup of hot water for a few pennies. And if you can’t get hot water, AeroPress Go Plus makes fantastic cold brew with cold or room-temperature water.
You can pack your own whole bean coffee along with a small hand grinder and you’ll have fresh ground coffee from a roaster you know you like. If you don’t have a hand grinder, you can grind your own coffee just before you leave on your trip. It will be miles fresher than what was at the gas station. No need to search "coffee near me" every day of your trip.
Done. You’ll be making a fresh cup of hot coffee, brewed directly into your reusable cup, in less time than it takes to fill your gas tank or charge your battery.
Happy travels!
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