Coffee on tour
I already went through some coffee-systems(Ulaner always have some kind of system, don’t they?)
About taste:
I love my coffee black and strong. No sugar, no milk, and for gods sake, no instant coffee.
I usually take 1 Big table spoon of coffee for 300ml. *Good Morning*
About powder:
There’s a myth that the coffee powder should be big. This is definitely wrong. The big ones take a much longer time to sink down, so you have to wait for your coffee pretty long. And there is no taste difference.
System 1: The extra coffee pot
You just use a metal container to brew your coffee in. A bear can, or if heavier an “ultralight titanium” mug.
Cook the water in it till a rolling boil, take it of the flame and pour the coffee in it.
System 2: Cooking and drinking from the same pod.
Err kinda works but the taste…
System 3: Using the hot water from your meal to make the coffee
This works pretty good if you take freezer bag food for breakfast. But you need a second container for the coffee.
This can be a heat resistant container. And here we are.
Let me introduce the 7g insulated mug:
After the coffee is in the water:
Let it stand for 5-7 minutes and stir it sometimes. The longer you wait the better/stronger the taste.
Lapland trip, gear review
- KS Bivy: performed very well, the quantum dries in seconds, it protects me from wind and mosquitoes. Great piece of gear. But I will use silnylon again on the bottom and back head area.
- GoLite – Jam 2: It was ok. I could carry the 14kg start weight easily, but I will go for a silnylon pack with net pockets around it. The Jam took hours to dry out and stored the rain very well
- prolite s: Worked well in the temperatures.
- KS Quilt 350: I love it
- KS MiniTarp 3×2,5×1,2: performed well. Was never wet But for more psychological protection I’ll take a tipi next time.
- Stakes: Titanium needle stakes were great!
- Rab Drillium Pants: Great breath-ability, wear it at warm days as only trousers. But it has the typical Rab quality issues: The straps around the ankles broke away.
- Haglöfs Lim: Great peace of gear, nothing bad about it
- Caldera Cone: Just great, very fast and efficient.
- Merino clothes: Stink as fast as synthetic closes.
- Headnet: need to add some sleeves for stakes, small winds blow it against your face where it sticks.
- Aldi Allzweck(Towel?!): Worked great, will never again carry anything else.
- Primaloft clothes: Very bulky but really warm and windproof. Loved them during the breaks.
- Brooks cascadia: Were great for the terrain, had always enough grip and walked on feathers. But they dry out very slow, especially the food-bed and mesh.
Down quilt sewing
Now I add the images of the down-quilt I sewed.
Instructions will follow.
One note: Don’t use the tape as shown in the images, it really sucks, use a pen please.
MYOG bivy bag
I’ll update this article until the bivy is finished. There won’t be any follow-ups.
My next trip will provide me with a lot of wind and mosquitoes.
As I’m tarp camping I need something against these two quilt-sleeper enemies
To make it short, I need a bivy.
After 3 of these prototypes:
I got to the final pattern:
It is designed to fit a side sleeper of size ~1.75cm, a 300g down(6cm loft) quilt and a prolite(2.5cm). It has got a total length of 1.90cm and a mid body(below shoulder, elbow)/shoulder width of 70cm/65cm.
The bottom is silnylon and the top is pertex quantum and nanoseeum.
The estimated weight( size² * weight of material + zipper ) is 205g including a 38g zipper of which I’m not sure if I’ll use it.
I first cut out the silnylon according to my pattern. There’s no secret, but I marked all edges of the pattern with a pen.
The result:
Then I sewed the edges of the silnylon together in order to get the designed cube.
I used double seams to secure the edges.
At the head area I appended two loops to tie out the bivy:
The next step was to sew the noseeum and quantum together.
Now for the interesting stuff, the zipper.
I first secured the edge of the quantum with needles to the side of the zipper.
Then I turned it around to double the quantum and secured it with yarn.
After sewing the zipper I sewed the two pieces of quantum/noseeum together (the zipper was not full length).
I started sewing 2cm away from the ends of the zipper. I sewed the 2cm’s by hand to ensure that it is midge-proof
The final step was to sew the top piece to the bottom piece, this was done with one simple seem and one insurance seem before the first one(so 4 layers of fabric were secured).
The sad thing is, when I finally took this bivy out to test it, I got a lot of condensation were the silnylon was. In fact it was so much that my sleeping bag was completely wet on its sides. The quantum was no problem and worked fine.
I now make a second bivy consisting of quantum only with the same pattern.
The final weight of the old bivy was 200g without lines, 217 with elastic lines.
The new bivy will weight(estimated again) 178g. I’m really looking forward to it, because it offers full bug protection and I can turn and toss in it. It also offers wind protection
