My long road to mobile coffee cup enlightenment began with a ferry ride, a white shirt and a lousy O-ring seal. It was a beautiful spring morning, and I was heading over to the Toronto Island Airport for a flight with the Red Bull air race team. What could add to this perfect day? Coffee. And mounted in my Honda’s cup holder was a brand-new travel mug, filled with fresh-brewed Colombian.
The cup had been an incredible bargain – only $7 at Wal-Mart. It looked good, with a stainless steel body and a lid that had the reassuring look of a submarine hatch, with cam-style latches and a thick rubber O-ring seal. Then I took my first sip – and the entire top came off, dumping hot coffee over my white shirt. So much for reassuring looks.
That was just one in a series of coffee cup malfunctions that launched my quest to find the perfect travel mug. I’m a lifelong gear head and former mechanic who researches equipment with fanatic thoroughness, but I’d never given much thought to coffee mugs.
The ferry disaster was my wake-up call. I realized that it was time to research cups with the same care that I apply to aircraft and scuba-diving gear. I decided to start by crowd-sourcing – I wrote a column about my coffee cup woes to see what you readers thought. That brought hundreds of messages and a long list of cup suggestions. I tried many of them, plus some others I found along the way. I ended up with a lot of mugs. Some were great. Some weren’t.
As I learned, you can go wild with a travel mug. You can get fancy handles, a vacuum-sealed interior and trick drinking ports. You can even get a mug with a built-in screen basket that lets you brew loose-leaf tea. But I wanted to keep it simple. All I wanted was a serviceable, trustworthy coffee mug that fit in a cup holder. I was tired of leaks. I didn’t want any more dodgy tops. How hard could it be?
After trying a lot of cups, I came to several conclusions:
- Screw-on tops are the most secure, but only if they have a properly-designed O-ring (the rubber seal that keeps liquid from leaking out).
- Double-wall construction gives the best insulation – coffee stays hot, and the cup is cool in your hand.
- Tops need to be foolproof. If a top can be improperly installed, it will be – and it will leak.
- Stainless steel holds up better than plastic.
On to the road test. I’ve tried out more than two dozen cups in the past months. Here’s the rundown on six that illustrate the good and bad features I found:
Thermos Elements Mug— Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
Thermos Elements Mug
At $27.99, this had the look and feel of a BMW, with a stainless steel body, an ergonomic handle and a top that threaded in like the bung on an industrial cask. The Elements mug was well-insulated, and kept coffee hot for a long time. But the handle that impressed me so much at first glance turned out to be a curse, because it prevented the Elements from fitting into some car cup holders. And the threaded top wasn’t foolproof. The ports that allowed coffee to flow out only work at one angle. When the top is threaded down tight, the cup is completely leak-proof. But to drink your coffee, the top must be unscrewed at least one turn – and if you go too far, you could be in for a major spill.
The Clearance Bin Special — Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
The Clearance Bin Special
I found this cup in a Loblaws clearance bin for $2.99. In the spirit of bargain-hunting, I bought it and took it on a road trip to Guelph and back. Using the Clearance Bin Special (CBS) reminded me of driving a Trabant, a smoke-belching East German car that I once included in a list of the worst cars ever built. The CBS was a cheap, nasty-looking piece of moulded plastic with rough edges galore. There was no insulation, so the coffee went cold fast. The top had no O-ring, and it didn’t thread into place – instead, it simply snapped on like a hubcap. On the upside, the CBS didn’t leak a single drop. (Since my coffee was stone cold, this wasn’t such an advantage.)
