Coffee association probably doesn't have data on campfire coffee

I learned last week there is an organization called the National Coffee Association.

Each spring it releases a “National Coffee Data Trends (NCDT) report,” as it did earlier this year.

In skimming the highlights from its press release, I discovered that I’m among the 67% of Americans who drink coffee on a daily basis, which they claim is “more than any other beverage, including tap or bottled water.”

Coffee wasn’t a regular part of our family life when I was growing up. We typically made it if we had overnight guests, an early morning crew coming to brand calves, or company out for a Sunday meal.

Before inexpensive automated coffee makers became available, we made ours in an aluminum stovetop percolator that could brew up a dozen cups at a time.

I was too young to know exactly how it worked or to have any responsibility for it except for watching and being the one to shout, “It’s percolating!” when the liquid first appeared in the glass bubble atop the lid, so our mother could come and lower the heat for the remainder of the brewing process.

I don’t know when I had my first taste, but I do remember as a little kid being told by my dad that “drinking coffee grows hair on your chest,” which he meant as a deterrent, but which I found strangely intriguing.

Later on, when we could have an occasional sip, I was enamored with an older family friend who doctored his coffee with generous amounts of milk and sugar, and then crumbled a couple of saltine crackers into the cup where they dissolved into soggy bits of detritus that floated in his brew.

Naturally, I followed suit. It sounds awful, but I remember it being surprisingly tasty.

We also now and again reached up to a high dusty shelf to retrieve a squat and blackened pot that was used exclusively for campfire coffee.

That pot came with us every Fourth of July to our sandhill cookouts, or saw duty for the campfire breakfasts my dad fixed after taking folks to see prairie chickens in the spring.

After a mountain of mesquite roots was subdued to glowing coals used to grill steaks, the pot was filled with water and a generous measure of coffee and nestled into the remaining embers.

By “generous measure,” I mean a lot. No actual measuring took place. The end result was tough stuff. If one had successfully grown hair on their chest by drinking coffee, this viscous liquid could probably burn it off.

The old cowboy poet S. Omar Barker penned a poem called “Buckaroo’s Brew” about the making of campfire coffee.

His “time-tried and true” recipe called for adding “water and coffee in equalized parts,” followed by the directive to “boil hard for two hours.”

After two hours, a rusted horse shoe “from a clubfooted hoss” was tossed into the pot to test for doneness.

“Gaze into the pot for a few minutes steady,” Barker wrote. “If the hossshoe ain’t floatin’, your coffee ain’t ready.”

I wonder if the National Coffee Association data reports include campfire coffee.

I’ll bet you a rusty horse shoe that they don’t.

Betty Williamson loves her morning coffee, but without crackers these days. Reach her at:

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