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 travel coffee kit comes down to two things: a portable kettle and either the in-room coffee (for pour-over) or a Nanopresso with pods. That’s it.

OXO Mini Squeeze Measuring Cup

The biggest change is that I’ve replaced the dedicated travel kettle with an OXO mini squeeze measuring cup. It’s not marketed as a kettle, but it works as one for my purposes. 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 big advantage is that it packs down smaller than any dedicated travel kettle I’ve used, and since it’s not a kettle, it doesn’t have a heating element to worry about. I just boil water using whatever’s available in the room and use the measuring 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.

Nanopresso

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

The thing I didn’t appreciate at first is that the Nanopresso doesn’t just rely on the small channels that a regular Nespresso machine uses to puncture and brew the capsule. It also uses a spring to pressurize the capsule, which seems to compensate for some of the shortcomings of a manual machine. The crema still isn’t quite what you’d get from a real Nespresso machine, but the results are consistently good.

Filling Your Own Pods

I’ve also started experimenting with filling my own Nespresso-compatible pods. These work noticeably better on the Nanopresso than on a regular Nespresso machine, and I’m pretty sure that’s down to how the pods seal. The Nanopresso’s spring-loaded mechanism seems to form a better seal around refillable pods, whereas the regular machine was designed around the exact dimensions of official Nespresso pods and doesn’t clamp down as well on third-party refillables.

Conclusion

After trying a lot of different setups, I’ve landed on something pretty minimal: an OXO mini squeeze measuring cup for heating and pouring water, and either an in-room pour-over at 1:15 or the Nanopresso depending on whether I want espresso or regular coffee.