The ultimate camping travel mug
Sarah and I have been using cheap stainless steel/plastic coffee mugs for camping now for about 5 years. They’ve done insanely well all things considered, but they started to fall apart, and cause us problems. Time for some new camping gear!
My mum found out, and did some research on coffee cups for us, and came back with it as a suggestion for our Christmas presents. At $50 a cup (now $30), they’d better be good!
Seriously though, I don’t know how we’ve lived without these. They are made by Contigo, and are called the West Loop. You can purchase them from a variety of places including eBay and Kitchen Warehouse.
We’ve had them for a couple of years now, and they’ve been dropped, abused and well used.
What’s so good about them?
They keep your drink hot
Now, when I say hot, I don’t mean just a little. They are incredible. You can make a hot drink, and sip it an hour later and it will still scold your lips.
You can comfortably still enjoy a warm drink a couple of hours later. The best part? Its completely cold on the outside
You can’t spill them
These cups come with a button that you press to sip. Yes, it might seem a bit weird, and it does take a few drinks to get used to, but they are spring loaded, and if you knock the cup over (or your toddler decides running off with it and shaking it all over the place is a good idea) it wont leak a drop.
This also means that nothing can fall into your drink. Iven lost count of how many bugs and bits of dirt have ended up in my coffees while camping. I’m all for getting close to nature, but that’s taking it a bit too far.
They hold a lot of fluid
Seriously, the normal size is pretty much half a litre. Half a litre of coffee will have you kicking for hours! You can even get larger ones, if you please.
Cleaning them
I will point out that cleaning these takes a bit more effort than a normal mug, but you soon get used to it. We normally rinse ours when camping, and wash them carefully in between water as soon as there is hot water available.
Make sure you wash the sealing mechanism out well, and you flip it open. We’ve found that pouring boiling water into them every now and again and leaving them sitting upside down is helpful to clean the muck out.
After owning them for a while, Sarah noticed her’s started to taste different and she soaked it in vinegar and water overnight, which seemed to clean it. The idea of muck building up inside is less than ideal, so wash them well!
Would we recommend them?
100%. I’m not sure if there are others on the market that are good, but these are fantastic, and Sarah’s actually just purchased another one for use at home. You can’t go wrong with these, especially if you have little kids who are guaranteed to knock your drink over and potentially get badly hurt.
Hey Adam,
I’m glad you like them too. You had me chuckling about the soft drink fizz going up your nose. I’ll have to give the cold drinks a go. They certainly do make a great present, and hadn’t thought of engraving them before.
Take it easy
Aaron
Right up there with you on these mugs Aaron, I definitely average at least an hour or 100k’s before I can safely drink a hot coffee out of the Contigo and they sit OK in the cup holders.
Just add cold water if you want to drink it sooner but I like to sip slowly on a long drive and am pretty content having a brew staying hot to the last drop.
There not bad with a cold soft drink or juice in them either as it keeps it cold for a bit and no spillage, just release the pressure button when you have your mouth on it, as a softy can bubble up a bit with vibration and you don’t want a bit of fizz up your nose.
Make sure you always have 2 if your with your better half and being metal they’re easily engraved so you can pass them off as a prezzie if a justification for ‘we don’t need more mugs’ is an issue.
Cheers