Percolator

5:30AM. First light, but sunrise not yet chasing the frost off your tent at 4500 feet. But you planned ahead! Water and ground beans in your Cauldryn, within arm's reach of your mummy bag. You reach out, flick the power on your jumbo battery and wait for the steam aroma, smug as a Prius driver in traffic. Living the dream! Well.. don't wake up just yet. The water comes to a boil, making that satisfying growl. The smell of coffee fills your tent (because you remembered to open the vent, right?). After a few good perc's you cut the power and prepare to enjoy. Now you have some decisions to make.. You can't just Drink the fresh coffee.. first, it would scald the tastebuds off your tongue, second, the percolator is still in there. Removing the percolator is not as easy as it might sound. The whole device is a single piece of Silicone Rubber. You can't pull it out by the center, because it's trapped by the rim, so you have to pick at the entire circumference while pulling up on the silicone nipple. If you don't moderate your pressure, your day begins with a fresh face of coffee grounds, as the device acts like a rubber band when stuck. I just haven't figured out this step.. I feel like this COULD be a great experience, but every time has resulted in grounds where I don't want them, and a hot mess. I've tried seating the percolator lower (don't go all the way, just on the lip or it doesn't perc right), and high -- which is hard because the lid will push it down deeper. Once you manage to wrestle the filter and grounds and contraption out of the Cauldryn, you have about half a mug of super-hot coffee. This is the part where it gets back to being fun... the coffee is actually really good, and will banish the thought of Instant from your groggy mind. The construction of this single-piece silicone part is smart -- it's smashproof, easy to rinse, and easy to pack. There aren't many holes in the 'filter' area, so you can't go nuts boiling coffee -- you have to boil and back-off.. I found it did best at around 205F, really, naturally cycling. The battery, even the jumbo beast of a battery, could only make ONE batch of coffee starting from 35F water. It expired before bringing the second batch to a brew, with no other use. That's... disappointing. The thing is this.. you already have a nice big Cauldryn. Wouldn't you rather fill it all the way up with water, boil that, and make two cups with your Aeropress? Easier to clean, easier to control, more and your tentmate might make your day brighter for making her a cup as well.

I love this cup. Use it both with battery power and AC adaptor with amazing results. But this percolator... I have yet to brew coffee with it. Follow instructions to the letter, boil, let sit, reboil, etc... and nothing but hot water. Not even tinged brown. Could be me, probably is me, but how hard can it be??? I would love to hear feedback from others telling of their success. Give me an incentive to try again. But for now, I'll continue to keep my coffee hot for hours, something it does like a champ.

At first I didn't get it. You must make sure it seats in the lower part of the mouth of the bottle, and use the boil function. On the app I used "brew coffee" and I couldn't get it to work. When I used "boil" it worked great. Also remove it slow with a piece of paper towel to grip it, wiggle it and use caution. Cant wait to give it a go on the worksite.