Travel Coffee Mugs

I’m a big fan of pretty much any beverage with caffeine in it, especially coffee and tea. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to sit around drinking coffee and tea all day as I find myself on the go a lot. Drinking coffee, tea, or any other hot beverage while driving is something of a dangerous art form, and is best done with a good travel coffee mug.

Those flimsy little paper cups you get from coffee shops just don’t hold up to the way I drive, and are very prone to spills. Not to mention they don’t contain heat nearly as well as even the most basic travel coffee mug. I’ve actually burned myself slightly a number of times just trying to pick up a paper cup off coffee, and so I generally avoid them if I can even if I have time to sit around and enjoy my beverage.

I’ve been using different travel coffee mugs for years now, and have started something of a collection. Maybe it’s a little unusually, but travel coffee mugs are as good a thing to collect as anything else I suppose. Most of the travel coffee mugs I’ve had have been pretty flimsy and poorly made. It seems that generally the best looking ones are the least functional, while the uglier ones work the best.

As an example, Starbucks has been making their own travel coffee mugs for some time with various designs and artwork on them. At one time they had a series of mugs with different stylish Bay Area drawings, such as images of the Golden Gate Bridge, and several other scenes from San Francisco depicted along the sides. While these mugs look great, and I collected the whole series, they’re only fair on the functionality department. They keep the heat in more or less okay, but tend to leak a lot if not used with caution.

The travel coffee mug I use the most often is a plain stainless steel cup. While it isn’t much to look at, it is a superior coffee mug. It contains heat like a thermos, and can be turned completely upside down without leaking if properly closed. There are some pretty crazy mugs out there with internal electronic heating systems and some other silly features, but a well made travel coffee mug keeps your drink hot for hours on its own anyway so I think it’s a little excessive. While it’s a neat idea, I don’t really want to have to plug my coffee mug in or charge batteries for it!