High Brew Coffee Makes Me a Happy Camper!

Recently, the folks from High Brew Coffee asked if they could send over some samples of their product. Almost all of my adventures are fueled by caffeine (and questionable judgment) — and I always seem to have a shortage of the former and surplus of the latter — so if someone offers to send me free coffee, I’d be an idiot to turn that down. (And now is the perfect time to share my new favorite travel companion since we’ve got Fit Bottomed Vacay Week going on over at FBG!)
I promise you, though — my curiosity about this product went beyond doing stupid things faster and with more energy.
In the summer, my partner and I like to escape the heat of Phoenix by heading up the mountain to Flagstaff, Ariz. There, we spend our days in our cabin up north.

It’s bliss — for the most part. The only thing that’s keeping us from achieving high-altitude nirvana is my longing for my friend Joe. When there’s no electricity, there’s no coffeemaker, and — as Neil will loudly attest — where there’s no coffee, sharing a tent with me is a freaking delight. 
To put the “happy” in “happy camper,” we usually stock a few canned coffees in the cooler to pop open with breakfast. Our coffee preferences are simple: ground beans and water, no weird machi-frappo-latte sugar flavors, please. (Shocking, right?) But as it turns out, that’s a tall order for ready-to-drink coffee options. The simplest thing we could really find at the grocery store was Starbucks Doubleshot Espresso, and … well, it sucks. Though a barista from the chain might make a decent cup of fresh espresso, their canned stuff is icky and acidic.
High Brew Coffee, however, gets it right. The new beverage company makes a coffee product that — gasp! — actually tastes like coffee.

The founder, David Smith, came up with the idea after trying (and failing) to find a ready-made coffee drink that didn’t contain tons of milk and sugar. In an interview with Food Navigator, Smith laid it out plainly: “I don’t understand how the ready-to-drink coffee category is so driven by milk. I love coffee. I don’t want sugar and milk, but that’s what most of these drinks are.” Preach, brother!
Smith developed the High Brew formula with his wife, Elizabeth, after a vacation to the Caribbean, where they learned how to cold-brew coffee. The process, which involves letting the coffee beans soak in filtered water, creates a smoother flavor with lower acidity. In other words, the coffee’s so good, it doesn’t need to be hidden in cream and sugar to be palatable!
And let me tell you: High Brew is good stuff. I enjoyed every sip of the Double Espresso flavor, because it actually tasted like espresso — not coffee-flavored milk. It’s a bit friendlier to my fit bottom, too: High Brew’s Double Espresso has 50 calories per 8-ounce can, compared to 140 calories in 6.5 ounces of Starbucks’ Doubleshot Espresso.
Looks like this happy camper has a new brew.
What’s the one food or drink you always bring on camping trips? —-Susan