Cowboy Coffee

Have you ever returned to hunting camp after a long day of hunting in nasty weather? If so you know how good a cup of cowboy coffee can be by a warm campfire? Do you remember just how good it tastes? Sure you do. If you’re like me I always thought it just tastes good because of the long cold day and the atmosphere of the camp. Well, it might help with the taste of your cowboy coffee for sure. However, I recently learned that there’s something to that great-tasting campfire coffee. Cowboy Coffee.

Cowboy coffee has been around a long time. It was used in cowboy camps along the trail and still is a simple way to cook coffee in camp. I can remember climbing mountains to hunt bear and blacktails in Southeast Alaska. If you’ve ever been to Southeast Alaska you know how much it rains. It’s cold in those mountains, even in the summer. I could go most of the day without eating, but I always had a blue-speckled cup, a Ziploc of coffee, and another with sugar. When it was dry enough, which was rare, I would build a small fire overlooking a bowl or bluff with a creek below. I enjoyed the view while brewing a cup of cowboy coffee. When it was wet or raining, I hunkered down under an alder thicket and get out my trusted Sterno stove.

Brewing Your Cowboy Coffee

Whether you cook your coffee in a blue-speckled cup or a pot on a campfire the effects are the same. Get your water warm and add your grounds. Amount per your preference. Now bring the water to a boil and let it roll those grounds for a minute or two. This rolling boil really churns the grounds washing them in the process boiling the acid and sending it into the air with the steam.

Remember my mention of how great cowboy coffee tastes just because you were cold and wet? Well according to Cowboy Kent Rollins the heat from boiling the grounds is why cowboy coffee tastes so good. It removes the acid in the coffee leaving a clean smooth waker upper, warmer upper for you and your campsite friends. Take a look at Cowboy Kent’s great video explaining the long-lost art of brewing cowboy coffee.