BIG NEWS! We now have our own version of this amazing product! Check out Freshdrip – Awesome Coffee, Wherever, Whenever.

Let’s face it. We’ve all been there, right? You are on holiday or on a business trip, you walk down to the hotel’s breakfast room and you begin your hunt for coffee. But quickly you realize that what they’ve got is probably very little more than intensely flavoured sock water, yet you resign yourself to the situation and ladle lots of sugar and milk in there to make it drinkable. You NEED caffeine.

To avoid this kind of debacle, some of us real coffee nerds take our coffee travel kit on the road, which is of course not always very practical, let alone usable. For example, while you’re on the plane for 12 hours (my travel kit is always in my checked luggage for fear of having my grinder confiscated at security), or when you’re only traveling with hand luggage on a quick weekend break.

Sure, at The Coffeevine we also try and point you in the right direction of the best coffee bars wherever you are, but there may not be one near you in times of need, or you just don’t have the time to go there before your 9am meeting.

Luckily, there is a solution to this problem, and a rather good one we must say. Truth be told, it’s not entirely new to us, indeed we have tested a few different ones from various suppliers before we found the one that blew us away. The single serve Café Drip bag from Weekenders Coffee Roasters in Kyoto.

Now, you may wrinkle your nose in disgust but let us assure you that these pre-ground coffee bags are a real godsend, and the coffee tastes really damn good.

The best bit? They are so small that they literally fit into your pocket or wallet. Gone are the days when you had to settle for bad coffee because you had no choice. The only bad bit? Well, there are not enough roasters doing this yet. WHY?

This particular example from Weekenders Coffee Roasters came with a natural Ethiopia Yirgacheffee. Upon opening the wrapper, we immediately smelled the beautiful aromas of a very high quality coffee waiting for us to be brewed. You just add hot water. It couldn’t be easier.

Take the bag out of the wrapper, get yourself a mug and place the bag in the mug using the little handles that you can fold out to hook the bag onto the sides.

What’s crucial with these bags is that the coffee shouldn’t just be really, really good, but that it is also ground medium-fine, in other words the grind level used for a V60. Other samples that were sent to us before contained very dark roasted and too finely ground coffee that resulted in the bags getting clogged before you could even brew a full cup. And the coffee tasted rather bad. Not this one though!

Once you’re all ready to start brewing just add hot water, keeping a steady pour until you see the cup getting 3/4 full. That will roughly translate to 220g of coffee. The bag came with 12g of ground coffee, therefore making it very easy to get the right ratio and yield.

When you’re done, just discard the bag like you would with a tea bag and start enjoying your cuppa Joe. This really is one of the best ‘on the go’ coffee products we’ve seen so far.

Update: Since writing this article, we went out and created our own brand of drip coffee bags called Freshdrip. For more information on Freshdrip and how you can order, visit our website.

Naturally, we will continue our hunt for more of these great Café Drip bags, also from European roasters so that you have better access to them. For now, Weekenders Coffee Roasters makes the best we have tasted so far.

So, next time you’re on a long haul plane and the stewardess comes by to offer coffee, you say: “No thanks dear. I’ll just have your hot water can for a minute please.”