...continuing thoughts...

I've really liked this method and have found I prefer it to the other options available. I love the convenience of instant grounds, but the "coffee" produced is often bitter and unpleasant. Those tea-bag things do nothing other than turn your water brown. (Okay, to be fair: some of them do add a foul, un-coffee-like flavor to your drink <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> ).

That leaves drip methods and french press. I've never had much success with drip systems on the trail. A french press makes a great cup, without a doubt. The downside is that you need some sort of extra equipment, and after breakfast you have a big mess and the grounds to deal with.

The beauty of the concentrate system is that it has all the convenience of instant, with no extra equipment (baseweight) and no clean up. And if you use the guidelines I provided above, you can approach or even surpass the weight of dried coffee grounds.

It's counterintuitive, I know, because usually we do everything we can to get the water OUT of the food we carry. In this case, however, brewing the coffee beforehand into a concentrated form makes it usuable in an "instant" fashion at a reasonably light weight.

The 0.67 oz figure for a 10-12 oz cup is the same as the weight of dried grounds you would normally use for a french press--and, again, there's no real baseweight for your system. Just the container to store the concentrate.

You could try to use more coffee and/or less water than the guidelines recommended by the formula above, but my (admitedly unscientific) trial and error suggests that it's a lost cause at a certain point: you need a certain amount of water just to moisten the grounds, and if you go below that it just feels like you're wasting coffee.

A couple of final notes: the cold-brewing method has some distinctions that I consider benefits. It tends to be really low-acid compared to hot-brewing methods, and the caffeine levels are a little lower. It makes a really nice cup--full-flavored but still smooth and easy-drinking.