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Travel Coffee Mugs
Travel coffee mugs can be a real lap saver (pun intended). Words are barely adequate to express the frustration you find as you’re driving down the road trying to take a drink from your coffee mug and finding scalding hot liquid running down your front and into your lap.
That’s why good travel coffee mugs can be your best friend during commutes and other road trips. The good ones will not only seal properly between the lid and the cup, but will have a mechanism that keeps the liquid from spilling out unintentionally while still allowing for easy drinking.
Unfortunately, most of us are all too familiar with the characteristics of crappy travel coffee mugs. Mechanisms get stuck, the drink wont come out, or when it does it comes out all at once. Here are some specific characteristics to look for in a good travel coffee mug.
Durability vs. Fashion
If your commute is relatively short and on good roads, you probably don’t need a coffee mug that is extremely durable. In this case you can go with something made from ceramic, which can have a certain pleasing aesthetic. The problem with ceramic is that it will not be as durable as something like a stainless steel mug, which could probably be dropped from 30,000 feet and not be much the worse for wear.
So if you have a more rugged commute, out on the back trails of Montana herding cattle (for example), then you would want to go with stainless steel or aluminum. These will often have rubberized grips and rims to help with comfort, improve the seal between the lid and the cup, and make a better grip.
One Size Fits All?
One of the more annoying things about getting a travel coffee mug that turns out to be a dud is when it does not fit in your car’s cup holder. You would think that mug manufacturers would have a clue about cup holder sizes and make sure that their mugs would fit. But, again, this turns out not to be the case. The worst situation is when it appears the mug will fit into your cup holder, but when you go around the first corner the mug tips over and dumps everything into your stereo, onto your leg, and down into your shoe.
That just sucks.
The cup shapes that are typically the culprits for this are the ones that start out small at the bottom and gradually get larger as they go up. It might be a please shape to look at, but it’s not a very good design from an engineering standpoint. A better and more reliable solution is the type of coffee mug that is the exact shape of the typical cup holder for several inches up from the bottom. Then you have to be careful that the mug does not flare out too dramatically further on up as that can make it top heavy, increasing the risk of an unexpected spill.
An alternative to travel coffee mugs that fit into a cup holder are the type that have a very wide bottom and a small opening. These are meant for larger vehicles or boats that have a large, non-skid surface area where you could place this type of mug. This is a good design choice, if you have the space, as even though the liquid can slosh around inside the bottom of the mug, the opening is typically small enough that whatever is inside will not easily or accidentally go outside.