Best Travel Coffee Mug

If you love good quality coffee and know that wherever you are headed that day won’t have it for whatever reason, then the best option is to make and take it with you.  To do this successfully and not end up with a bag of cold coffee or a cup of chilled horror at the other end, you need a good quality, reliable travel coffee mug.

These are in the realm of thermal carafes and other thermal flasks used to transport hot liquids but have the added advantage that you can drink straight from them.  They keep the heat, or cold, of the liquid for a good period of time and allow you to sit and enjoy the drink at work or during your commute as if you had only just prepared it.

Variations

There are generally three types of travel mugs on the market; plastic, glass or ceramic and stainless steel.  Of these, all plastic ones tend to be okay for around 30 minutes but after that, don’t retain the heat of the drink.  Ceramic or glass ones were a little better at heat retention but were a big risk to breakage due to the nature of their construction.  Stainless steel is generally regarded as the best of the lot, particularly ones that use a vacuum flask idea to keep the heat in.

A variation of the stainless steel mug is where the inner flask is made from glass or a ceramic material.  This is ideal for those with a more refined palate as some connoisseurs of fine coffee have noted that when the drink is directly against stainless steel, it can alter the taste of it.  However, another way to combat this issue is to pour the coffee from the mug to a normal cup before drinking and this seems to ease the steel flavouring.

Stainless steel is also favoured due to its durability, being leak resistant and also being easy to clean.  Also if you want to use the mug for something other than coffee, such as hot soup for example, then stainless steel is easiest to remove any lingers coffee stains that might taint the other content.

This is an example of a travel mug from the big name that is Thermos and with it comes the reliability of their products.  This mug has a 16 ounce capacity, durable stainless steel outside and inside mugs as well as using the leak-proof Drink lock sealing lid available on many of their products.  This mug will be cool to the touch regardless of how hot or cold the content is and won’t get a sheen of condensation to make your bag damp or slip out of your hand.  It is recommended only to hand wash it but being stainless steel, coffee stains won’t hold out very long.  And for the colour-conscious, it comes in four different colours.

This mug from Keurig follows the same double walled stainless steel concept as the Thermos version but has the added advantage of being the size and shape to fit under all Keurig K-Cup and Vue reservoir coffee machines.  It has their patented Contigo auto seal lid that is leak proof, spill proof and automatically seals after every sip to maintain interior temperature, opening with just the press of a button to release the seal.  It will keep hot drinks hot for four hours and will maintain cold drink temperature for twelve hours.  There is a 16 ounce capacity on this mug.