makeshift french coffee press

MAKESHIFT FRENCH COFFEE PRESS


I think that when planning and worrying about the future, it is always a great idea to assume you are going to run out of something or that it is going to break. Some things we can easily eliminate from our worries and others are going to be a constant problem. I don’t think it is possible to store enough food, water or fuel. If I could afford a two thousand dollar metal shipping container, I could fill it with five grand full of grains and beans in two thousand dollars worth of plastic containers and have forty years of food. Unfortunately, nine grand is going to the ex-wife, not into my storage food. She’ll turn that into one third of a car. Not that it might even be a good idea to have the container. A better solution is to bury that six foot down. Then you have a cool storage area and no theft. Water is best left to Mom Nature as I shudder to think of the cost of a storage tank over the size of about 300 gallons. And energy of course will always be a contested resource. But you do the best you can and eliminate the smaller items from your worry list. Two small supplies would be ammonia to treat your weapon using corrosive ammunition and a way to prepare coffee which uses less fuel and is cheap. Granted, both these concerns are minor, but as we take these problems one at a time that is less to worry about later.

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Most of you might not have much of a supply of coffee on hand and thus are unconcerned about how to prepare it. I, on the other hand, have few vices left other than coffee ( my one cigarette a day is not much of a logistics problem and I should have a three year supply on hand in roll-your-own ) and I have gone out of my way to assure a several year supply. I bought metal cans on a regular basis while they were three dollars, then about half again as much while they were four dollars a can ( the 33 ounce size ). Now that it is $5 a can I only buy an extra can or two a year. I have enough to wean myself from it and there is no point taking up any more storage space. Its preparation is what was worrying me. As I shared with you previously, my French coffee presses, about $11 each, didn’t hold up to below freezing temperatures in the trailer-the plastic parts broke. I went to camping perk pots, which makes a wonderful tasting pot of coffee. Very hot and very strong. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of fuel to make it that way. This isn’t a concern currently, as propane is still cheap. In your case, you might live in an area with abundant firewood. But soon propane will become scarce as will wood unless you live in isolation in the forest. Remember our discussion about wood as the primary fuel? The colonies had three million people living in thirteen states, before coal or oil. Now, there are more than that just in a few boroughs of New York City. There are way too many people for the amount of wood on hand in almost every region of this country.

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I wanted to go back to French presses, to conserve fuel. Yet, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on them. Especially since you need more than one and the only affordable ones use too much plastic. I’m talking like $40 for a glass and metal unit. Ouch! There was no way I could conceive of to cheaply duplicate one. So I’ve been experimenting to duplicate the process rather than the equipment. Here’s what I’ve come up with. Please excuse me if this sounds like a peasant inventor inventing gunpowder with no knowledge of chemistry. You know science is not my strong point. At first I was thinking the wire mesh you plunge down to separate the grounds from the water was important. But try making something like that on your own. Then it dawned on me that the secret was keeping the heat in to extract the oil from the grounds. The plunger is a nicety, not a necessity. This made it a lot easier to construct a makeshift unit. You do have several thermos bottles, right? So you can use them as slow cookers to conserve fuel. I took a thermos and placed the grounds in it, then poured in the boiling water, capped, and let sit for ten minutes ( I use one and a half tablespoons of grounds per cup and a half water, but your mileage may vary ). I poured the coffee into a filter sitting over my cup ( I use the re-useable coffee filters, not the disposable ) and it tasted just like the coffee from a French Press maker. Actually, it tasted much better-stronger. No, it isn’t as good as from a percolator, but it sure saves a bunch of fuel. Right now, while fuel is cheap, it is nice to use the coffee maker to help heat the place in the morning ( I assume no woodstove, which has “free” heat to spare for your coffee ). But very soon it will be scarce and the less fuel you need for coffee and meals, hence the thermos bottles, the better. Long term, we might have to give up our coffee if trade doesn’t reestablish itself after Oil Down. But I’ll be damned if I’m giving it up before I have to.

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I think by now it is common knowledge about using ammonia to counteract the corrosive ammunition used in your old guns. Most surplus ammo for bolt actions is corrosive. Even the new Russian ammo. The simple way to combat that is after firing you either swab the exposed metal parts with a household ammonia wet patch or squirt it down with window cleaner. Then clean as usual with gun oil/bore cleaner. Well, of course that gives me something else to worry about. What if I run out of those cleaners and have no replacement? After all, if you conserve your ammo as you should, you might be cleaning your rifle after every one or two rounds. And if you have a thousand rounds of corrosive ammunition, will the cleaners last five hundred times? I’m assuming you are hunting, or sniping, or only taking shots when you have a good target. I am not assuming you get into close quarter firefights and try to use your rifle as a shotgun, filling the air with lead. Gun oil can be improvised. Crankcase oil, vegetable oil, etc. How the heck do you get ammonia? Well, how about peeing in your gun? Surely window cleaner is almost all water with just a touch of ammonia. Wouldn’t urine be close enough in ammonia concentration? Perhaps not after you drank a gallon of water, but surely early in the morning. Granted, I’m just guessing here. Perhaps a minion or two knows his chemistry. Let me know if I’m full of crap.

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So, we’ve solved a number of small problems. Yesterday, a reminder on a lifetime supply of razors for shaving, both for morale issues and for hygiene. A lifetime supply of electrical light. Today, fuel sipping coffee preparation and Windex replacement for countering corrosive ammunition.

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