Campers And Survivalists Swear By This DIY Fire Starter That Also Keeps Bugs Away

The heart of many people's camping trips is a roaring campfire — the place where meals are cooked, hands and feet are warmed, and stories are told, long into the night. But starting that dreamy campfire is not always as easy as it looks, especially in damp weather. Many outdoor lovers can remember a soggy camping trip or two when even supposedly foolproof campfire-starting methods (like stacking wood log-cabin style) failed to yield results. And who wants to resort to dumping petroleum-based accelerants on your carefully arranged logs when you're out in nature? Not us, that's for sure. These chemicals can create dangerous flare-ups when overused and also produce toxic fumes.

To avoid these unpleasant scenarios on your next camping trip, be sure to bring a natural fire starter with you. You can even make one yourself with something many of us throw away every day: used coffee grounds. When mixed with melted wax, coffee grounds can be poured into molds and allowed to harden. The resulting discs or bricks not only act as effective fire starters, but they're also compact and easy to carry, even in a backpack. Surprisingly, even a small Dixie cup of coffee grounds fire starter will burn for around 15 minutes —  enough time, hopefully, for your damp wood to catch fire. 

What's more, burning the coffee grounds fire starters may have an unexpected but pleasant side effect: keeping bugs away from your cozy campfire. It's an underrated tip beloved by camping and survivalist social media influencers, though the science is unclear on whether it's the coffee grounds or the smoke from burning them that's repelling insects. In any case, the fire starters seem to have a dual purpose — one more reason to learn to make them yourself. 

There are a few different recipes for coffee-grounds fire starters circulating online, but the main steps are similar. After gathering your used coffee grounds, dry them by spreading them out on a cookie sheet and baking them at 250 degrees Fahrenheit, opening the door on occasion to vent any trapped moisture. Next, carefully melt some paraffin or unscented candles in the oven.

YouTuber The Camping Post used a disposable bread pan for this step, which we thought was a clever way to avoid getting wax all over a favorite pot or pan. After the wax fully melted, they added the dried coffee grounds to the bread pan, stirred, reheated the already hardening mixture, added more coffee grounds to ensure the highest density possible, and stirred again. They then spooned the mixture into muffin tins to make small disc-shaped fire starters. While the Camping Post used the muffin tin as a mold, other sources used small paper cups or even egg cartons and suggested inserting matches or jute twine into the still-soft wax to act as wicks. The wicks weren't something all the sources recommended, but we can see how they'd be useful. 

After the fire starters were completely hardened, YouTubers like The Camping Post and Appalachian Andy Outdoors showed one final step: They wrapped each one in wax paper and tied it with a piece of twine, noting that the paper would keep the hardened mixture from crumbling into a storage vessel or backpack. It would also serve as a fuel source to make ignition easier. Voilà! With your DIY firestarters, starting your campfire should be a breeze, and you can enjoy s'mores and other mouthwatering camping desserts without swatting at pesky mosquitos.