On the Bloodvein River, Manitoba ? It’s morning on the Bloodvein River, and Ken Gilbertson is making joe. You might call it coffee, but to Gilbertson, it’s “joe.”

Like several others on this nine-day river trip, Gilbertson is serious about his coffee. We are not talking about designer coffee here. There’s no trail-model espresso maker in our packs. This is just good, hot camp coffee from a fire-blackened two-quart pot.

A college professor by vocation, Gilbertson now is presenting a lecture and demonstration on the art of making joe. His speckled blue enameled coffee pot sits atop the breakfast fire. The water inside has boiled. Gilbertson reaches one of his big paws into a zip-lock bag of coffee grounds.

“First, you add your grounds — a couple of handfuls,” says Gilbertson, 49.

That amount seems appropriate for our group of eight, several of whom drink coffee. He dumps the grounds into the pot, which he has removed from the fire. The mound of dark grounds sinks slowly into the hot water.

“Then, you place the pot over the flame to achieve a roil. Not a boil, but a roil,” Gilbertson says.

The distinction between a boil and a roil is hazy to those of us looking on, but Gilbertson is sure he knows the difference. By holding the pot just the right distance over the flames, Gilbertson coaxes the surface of the coffee to a gentle turbulence.

“There,” he says. “That’s a clean roil.”

The correct amount of time for the roil is “just a little while,” he says. The little while appears to be about 30 seconds, maybe 45.

There are those who dispute the roiling technique.

“A roil is a boil,” contends Duluth’s Dave Spencer, sitting nearby waiting for his first cup of joe. “Once you roil it, it changes the flavor.”

Gilbertson ignores this feedback and moves directly to the next challenge — settling the grounds. The scourge of camp coffee is that grounds may be suspended in the coffee. Nobody likes that.

Conventional camp wisdom says that if you break an egg into your coffee, it will take the grounds to the bottom. But the nearest egg is probably more than 100 miles from our camp in the Manitoba wilderness.

A second way of settling the grounds is with centrifugal force.

If you’re using a pot with a bail-type handle, you grab the bail and windmill the pot vigorously several times.

“That’s the Norwegian method,” Gilbertson says.

While he approves of the Norwegian method, he is using a pot with a side handle today. This calls for a different technique.

“You set the pot down and tap it on the side a few times,” he says, clanking a spoon against the side of the pot.

Dick Adams of Superior, Minn., watching Gilbertson’s lecture, suggests an alternative method: “You strain it through your bug jacket.”

Bug jackets are the fine-mesh garments we wear often on this trip to hold the mosquitoes at bay.

But no one would want to take his bug jacket off long enough to use it as a coffee strainer, so the tapping will have to do.

Gilbertson’s demonstration now complete, he lifts the pot and looks for customers.

“Who wants some joe?” he asks.

Every coffee-drinker in the group raises an empty cup. Gilbertson walks from one to another dispensing the mahogany-colored liquid.

Joe is served.