ProView – Hikers Brew Coffee

Coffee is as essential to outdoor pursuits as a good pair of boots and a backpack. Maybe even more so for the early alpine starts to get the goods or trying to rally after working all day. Having convenient REAL coffee (not instant!) to make on the trail, in the back of the truck, or in the tent is a real game-changer. 

Hikers Brew pouches offer an easy way to take delicious coffee wherever you go. Each pouch gives you 24oz of coffee and comes in a compostable package to reduce your impact. With six different varieties available (four flavored and two regular) there is a coffee for every adventure within easy reach. 

Pouches

My wife and I found each pouch to give us the perfect amount of coffee to fill our thermoses- 12oz each- and enjoyed the different flavors for different activities. The Mile Marker and Yurt Dirt roasts were ideal to get going in the morning. We found that both blends brewed well in the aeropress, the pour over, and the moca pot. The grind was not ideal for our espresso machine but still made a surprisingly good shot if we had some left over. 

Flavor

Each of the flavored coffee options had a distinct flavor and we had fun pairing them with different activities. The smooth, chocolatey, hazelnut flavors of the Hazy Hiker went well with cold days ice climbing in the Ten Mile range. The Red Rocks blend had a salted Carmel flavor that was perfect for relaxing in the truck after being in the cold all day. Especially mixed with some Bailey’s and whiskey for après ski. All our friends loved the chocolate and toasted marshmallow flavors in the Some Mores and the four of us would split a pouch during cold belays on fall sandstone and granite. Van Life was my personal favorite and was my go-to in the afternoon when motivating for a run or hike after work. The Vanilla flavors made the early sunsets and headlamp adventures a little easier. 

Brewing

Allowing the flavored blends a little longer brew time helped the flavor come out and kept them from being to bitter. Our preference was to use a whole pouch in our medium-sized pour-over and add 2-3oz of water at a time. Keeping the water as close to 200 degrees as possible (recommended by Hikers Brew) also helped keep the coffee consistent. 

Eco-Friendly

Far and away our favorite feature of the Hikers Brew coffee was the easy to pack pouches. We usually shy away from individually packaged items because of all the waste they produce. Having easily compostable packages made us feel good about using them. Each pouch would go right into our compost when we got home and break down quickly. The convenience of being able to keep a pouch with our Jet Boil meant that we always had coffee when we needed it. 

The Final Word

We loved the Hikers Brew pouches. It was fun to have different flavors to experiment with and pair with activities and friends. The packaging was convenient and compostable so we didn’t feel guilty about the individual packaging and the coffee was friendly to brew using a variety of different means. It will be our go-to coffee for adventures from here on.