Beverage holders make great gifts

Christmas is coming, so it’s not too early to think about gifts for the outdoors folk in your life.

Everybody drinks hot beverages while hunting and fishing. Keeping winter beverages hot and tidy is always a challenge, but it’s easier than ever with the ever improving selection and quality of beverage containers.

The Yeti Rambler Tumbler is the gold standard for what we call “sippy cups.” These high-quality stainless steel cups are so popular that retailers can’t keep them in stock. They are high-capacity, heavygauge stainless tumblers that are renowned for their ability to keep drinks hot or cold for extended periods. They come in 20- and 30-ounce sizes.

One reason for the chronic shortage is that businesses buy mass quantities and wrap them with corporate colors and logos.

Wayne Crutchfield of Prattsville used a 30-ounce Rambler at our annual squirrel hunt at Ozone in September. He said he first owned the 20-ounce version but quickly upgraded to the 30-ounce. Long-term temperature retention, he explained, is only necessary for large volumes of tea or coffee because it relieves the user of frequent refills. You can nurse a cold or hot drink for hours.

That’s not as important for smaller quantities, he added, because you’ll empty a smaller drink sooner.

The Yeti’s weakness is the hole in its lid. You have to keep it upright or its contents will spill.

An alternative is the Thermos Travel Tumbler. It has a screw-down pressurized lid with an open/closed valve that will not leak, even if stored upside down for extended periods. When you open the valve when the tumbler is full of hot coffee, the airlock breaks with a hiss.

I have a Thermos Travel Tumbler and love it. It passed its toughest test Sept. 1 when I took it float fishing on the King’s River. I filled it with coffee at Huntsville, and the coffee stayed hot for the entire float, despite repeated openings. It did not leak a drop despite spending most of the trip on its side.

It performed similarly during last week’s overnight float fishing trip on the Buffalo River. I filled it each morning with hot coffee, and it stayed hot all day.

Its weakness is that it holds only 16 ounces. That’s not an issue for me, but it’s obviously too small for those that like to nurse a cup of tea or coffee all day.

The Thermos Travel Tumbler and the Yeti Ramblers have tapered bottoms that fit into most automotive and boat cup holders. The Thermos tumbler also fits snugly into a camp chair cup holder.

The Thermos Travel Tumbler costs about $22. The 30-ounce Yeti Rambler costs about $40, and the 20-ounce Rambler costs about $30.

If a sippy cup doesn’t suit your style, Yeti has some other products that have helped it corner the market on beverage holders.

One is the Yeti Rambler Lowball, which my son gave me for my birthday this week. It’s a wide-mouth double-walled stainless steel cup that holds 10 ounces of liquid.

I initially thought it was about the most worthless thing I’d seen, but I quickly changed my mind. Full of hot coffee, the outer wall remains cool, and it keeps coffee hot much longer than a ceramic mug. The lid for a 20-ounce Tumbler fits the mouth for added security and temperature retention.

They are much better for camp use than the regular stainless steel camp cups I’ve used for so many years. My old camp cups are thin stainless steel that retain temperature poorly. If you fill them with hot coffee, cocoa or cider, you’ll burn your hand if you don’t hold them with their flimsy wire handles.

Worse, the steel in those cheap cups imparts a metallic taste to all drinks, including water.

The Yeti Lowball imparts no foreign taste to drinks, nor do any of the other containers in this review. The Lowball costs about $25.

For those who like canned beverages, Yeti also has its nifty Rambler Colster. It is a stainless steel sleeve that encloses a 12-ounce aluminum can or bottle. It also comes with a proprietary can with a twist-off lid into which you can pour any beverage. A collar locks the can or bottle in place inside the insulated jacket.

The Colster keeps canned drinks colder much longer than a foam koozie. It does not float, so it is not approved for use on state waterways.

If you use the Colster with a bottle, you should encase the bottle in a koozie to keep it from rattling around inside the case. The Colster costs about $30.