By Kamil Kaluski
Morning coffee is extremely important to many of us. If you’re like 99.875% of population it’s likely that you grab it on the go and not savor it while overlooking a mountain range from your villa. But driving while drinking coffee presents many challenges. A good coffee mug should:
- Be big enough to hold the proper quantity of coffee. For most Americans that’s about 16 ounces. For our European friends, you go and you enjoy your 30 milliliters of tar.
- Fit into your vehicle’s cup-holder.
- Keep the coffee warm for a good amount of time, perhaps two hours if you’re on a road trip.
- Provide resistance to spills.
For years I have been using the popular pictured Contigo Autoseal. It does all of the above very well, with perhaps the exception of keeping the coffee hot for as long as I’d like it to. It’s splillproofness (I just made that word up) is amazing but it’s wider bottom (I like wide bottoms and I cannot lie) makes flimsy in some cup-holders. But I’m on my fourth one (I keep losing them) and I really haven’t seen a mug that’s better yet.
People seem to love their Yeti mugs so much that they put the company stickers on their cars. Hydroflask has a mug with a handle on it, so that won’t work in a car or tumblers with a lid that won’t prevent spills. Same for the RTIC brand. So today we ask – what do you think is the best coffee mug for drivers?
Bonus question – what am I driving?
Jeff Glucker
My choice is the MiiR 16oz tumbler. It keeps coffee hot for about 3 hours. The spout is ergonomic and comfortable. I use it on the street and in my car. It even went with me on a long Montana road trip this month.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/48ab410f9a4c35f3a8b45d721e62980777dfb0a8d8540fb50cf93bde8bad8a42.jpg
Also, Miir does good for the world – at least as far as I know after some quick glances at their mission statements based when I bought a growler off them years ago.
I’m looking for one that holds 30 ounces (I like iced coffee, ice takes up a lot of space) is dishwasher safe (I’m lazy) and NOT a Yeti (Yeti stuck it’s face in the political arena and I don’t need to be lectured by people I give my hard-earned dough to).
Yeti is steadfastly apolitical. An overzealous PR guy made a mistake.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/nra-calls-cease-fire-austin-based-yeti-coolers/
That said, I bought a stainless mug at Starbucks in about 1992 with a simple one-piece lid (no cracks and dishwasher safe) and a handle that has never let me down.
They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
“Fit into your vehicle’s cup-holder.”
My vehicles don’t have those. I guess I’ll have to stick with tea.
Makes sense that vehicles like the KV1 would have flat surfaces suitable for resting a teapot
But…it has a grinding wheel better suited to making ground coffee! Or shaved ice.
The small center console on my Montero is just small enough to keep a cup from flipping over.
I don’t drink coffee. Perhaps that’s an artifact of driving only a steady stream of vehicles with three pedals and zero cupholders during my formative adult years ages 18-25.
I’m no help on this one either, given that I don’t drink coffee, tea, or soda, and the E28 has no cupholders. I’ll pose the question to my five-cups-a-day wife.
How the eff are you guys alive!?
I totally don’t remember where I kept my coffee in my E28 M5.
I don’t bother with taking a travel mug of coffee – I’ll get coffee at work, or if it’s a road trip, I don’t feel like stopping every hour to use the “facilities”
Now, all that being said, something that I really, really enjoy – is going for slow drives around the countryside. Checking out the fields and looking for deer/bear/moose/birds, etc with just a regular old ceramic coffee cup. It cools off pretty fast, and obviously you can’t drive fast or you’ll end up with a lap full, but man it’s just one of those things that brings absolute joy. A little Patsy Cline or Marty Robbins playing quietly on the stereo, sun rising just above the trees, hot cup of tar black coffee, sharp tails or partridge dawdling along the edge of the road…
…not savor it while overlooking a mountain range from your villa
Hey, I’m the .125% of something. But I definitely don’t get why people need to take any beverages with them into cars or public transport. Seems stressful.
It probably takes me longer to drive to work now that it would take to drive from one side of your country to the other. Combination of thirts and the need for caffeine.
Hm, I had to look this up. East to West would be 8h28m non stop, South to North is 29h36m, but through Sweden because we have so shitty roads. Double the time on the Norwegian side.
I would recommend moving closer to work.
/seeing myself out.
Guess I’m used to interstates and couldn’t remember exactly which Scandinavian country you were in. My commute now is 3 to 3.5 hours round trip. It is a temporary contract job, so I’m not moving.
How big IS Sweden? According to Google (who are supposed to know everything) one can drive from Portland Maine to Miami Florida in 23 hours (may require tolls); a distance of 2550 kilometers.
The bottom-of-Norway to top-of-Norway-trip through Sweden is 2399 km. Pretty surprised myself here that the distances are so similar. Sweden has a form of interstates, Norway…not really.
This was shown on TV monday and shows my commute, also features some of my colleagues:
https://tv.nrk.no/serie/norge-naa/201909/ENRK10092319/avspiller
This is the main road between Norway’s two biggest cities, mostly known for frequent landslides around here. Awesome for enthusiasts though.
Sorry for the distraction from coffee mugs btw…
I had no idea Norway was so very long. But to be fair, the original comment may be accurate in certain situations. It appears to be about 1 hr, 30 minutes from coast to border (passing through Mo I Rana). In any case, many games of Geoguessr tell me your country is definitely a place to visit. Simply beautiful.
Yeah, on the slimmest part of the country you’re through pretty quick. It’s definitely worth a visit if you like great scenery and can cope with bad weather.
Someday, I think I will. The wife and I have talked about going to Iceland, and that sounds awesome, but from what I’ve seen the coast of Norway is even more amazing. I’ve always had the thought of buying a Euro-only LHD car to drive around there, then ship home, but it looks like Norwegian prices are a bit extreme for that plan.
Yes, Norway is among the priciest car countries overall, but there are a few classics that are still relatively cheap here – like British and Italian cars and a few Japanese.
Iceland and Norway are hard to compare. Iceland is amazing with its black beaches, geysirs and sulphur smelling water sources. Vegetables grown on Iceland taste pre-salted. Western and Northern Norway are dramatic and there’s endless stuff to see. The Lofoten especially are breathtaking. But both countries have seen wild spikes in tourism that make them best to visit in off season, I guess…
The Googletron thinks it just over 21 hours from Malmö to Riksgränsen. That’s an average of 93 km/h or 58 mph. That’s time equivalent to driving from San Diego to Houston, though I-10 gets you an average speed well north of 70 mph.
One non-ridiculously sized cup of coffee (say, the size of a Dunkin XL or smaller) won’t last me long enough to need any kind of insulation to stay warm. I have a drinking problem, that is, if I have a beverage within arms reach, I typically consume it nearly as fast as I can, just short of what you might see at a college house party involving funnels and a piece of hose.
I used to a Fiat Cinquecento, which I loved but bemoaned its lack of even a single cup holder, until a friend put it into perspective: “an Italian don’t need nowhere to keep his espresso”
In Norway, a filling station chain is offering a nice steel cup including a flat rate for a year. They change the design annually. The price is about twelve coffees.
You can buy just a rubber strap, too, to signal that your old cup is licensed for the current year, so that’s pretty sustainable.
Getting in on this way late but I have one from MallWart. Fills every criteria and is actually really well made.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Ozark-Trail-20-Ounce-Double-wall-Vacuum-sealed-Stainless-Steel-Tumbler-Gray/861682563?selected=true
+1 on the Contigo. They have gotten better now that they have the little locking thing that makes it where you can’t accidentally press it open. I throw mine in a bag and before the lock had to be careful how it ended up in there. They handle drops and getting knocked around quite well, although if they land just right/wrong on the top they will catastrophically fail. The threaded part of the lid can shear very cleanly from the rest of the lid, out of too many fate tempting drops I have had two have this failure. One while full…
They even come in various sizes! Large, extra large, and gargantuan. Just like condoms.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/62b2a468915eb73ca077abb88b3378c80ee140ac517b5a4e5b9c509d65e2f0e8.jpg
THIS. The lock is fantastic. I have thrown mine into the trunk and nary a drop exited its cavernous thermal grip