Handpresso - wilderness expresso maker review

Wanted one of these puppies for a while now. Here's for why

The punters have to trust us not to take pictures of their hideous taste in interior design and post them on the internet (heartily pasted in disparaging remarks), and we have to trust them to lay on an acceptable minimum standard of recuperative. Sadly even your pal the bushwacker AKA London's gentleman plumber is unable to consistently find customers worthy of the customer service they are treated to. 

Face facts: 
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INSTANT COFFEE. 

You might drink that filth, but madam, we don't. End of.

I've often though that we should get an expresso machine and flight case it, so we could set up our own coffee bar where ever we are, train one of the apprentices as a barista and improve our working conditions. So I was intrigued when I saw the Handpresso wilderness expresso maker in a french hunting magazine. Once again the internet came to my rescue and I was able to buy one at an 'unwanted christmas gift' price.

Let the Un-Boxing commence

After the customary new product dismay - as is usual today the packaging had been designed almost thoroughly as as the product it's self - I finally wrestled it from its box[es] and got to work. 


It's quite a chunky beast  - you wouldn't really call it 'wilderness equipment', but I'm not sure how many they'd sell if they called it the 'Handpresso builders expresso maker'. 


It really couldn't be much easier to use, if fact its a lot more straitforward than a lot of the counter-top expresso makers i've used. You set the release valve to closed, give it 30 pumps pressurizing it to 16 BAR [or 240 psi], pour a little boiled water into the clear plastic dome, tamp coffee grounds into the little hopper, drop the hopper into place, click the lid shut and you're good-to-go. 


Out squirts a very convincing Expresso, just the kind of required recuperative that puts a spring in your step, widens the eye, fires the synapses, and lifts the human spirit. In summation a great bit of kit for picnics, beach casting, and car camping. Not really the kit of a backwoodsman. But as i've reported before if a little 'Glamping' is the price a purist such as myself must endure to have my sleeping bag warmed by the likes of the Ex Mrs SBW, well so be it.


Design, build, and the end product, defiantly put it in the category of 'things that don't suck'.


All the best
Your pal
The Bushwacker.


EDIT It's stopped working - Company declined to fix it - new review on the way

Shimano STC Travel Rod Review

"The rod is a bamboo weighing seven ounces, which has to be spliced with a winding of silk thread every time it is used. This is a tedious process; but, by fastening the joints in this way, a uniform spring is secured in the rod. No one devoted to high art would think of using a socket joint."

Charles Dudley Warner 1829-1900

Long before this blog was born or thought of I took up fishing, but living an hour or more from the sea and hating the tyranny of long sticks in a small car or the hassley long-sticks-on-the-train. I looked around for a travel rod - same idea as before, One Rod For Everything. Some people (who own fishing shops) say there's no such thing, but I did find a rod that does it all.

The Nine Foot Spinning Rod.

You can spin with it (obviously), you can ledger with it (a 1oz+ weight holds the bait to the bottom), you can freeline with it ( using a shimmering slice of fish as a spinner), you can float fish with it, and it's much better than a boat rod for fishing off a pier.

I've got the Shimano STC 330 (which has now been superseded by the 3033H6) it's a really great rod with a medium action (the speed it springs back to straight) and its tough. I've lost count of the times I've bashed it into trees or dropped it onto the rocks. Keeps on keeping on.

The rod accompanied myself and The Northern Monkey on our 'fishing trip of shame' where we successfully had fish 'under observation' on both sides of north america - They sneered at our bait in the east (until the hook had been removed when they chowed down like they'd been starved) and from Venice Pier we were treated to piscine mockery of the worst kind - a whole posse of table size fish literally swam 'round my Yo Zuri lure laughing, as a particularly handsome specimen wiped the tears from his eyes he guffawed 'HA HA You paid a tenner for THAT!'

Lots of companies make something equivalent to this rod. Some for more money - some for less, but I've never been tempted, and I must have had it for about 6 or 7 years. It's in six sections, casts 20-50g (very cool for big lures - and freelining), packs up into a 700mm tube that can survive being sat on, and at the time was less than £60/$100. The full range is here. Total Thumbs Up from me.

The worldseafishing.com forum posts are pretty typical of the reviews the range has had over the years.

I guess Chad would give it Things That Don't Suck status.

Your pal

SBW