Thirsty work...

It's been raining on and off this week in Sydney. It really does affect my mood and general outlook of the day. But all the water reminds me of how little water I actually drink in a day. I tend to drink water when I think I should drink it, not because I'm thirsty, and because I often forget, ultimately, I drink very little. I also forget to take a bottle with me when I'm out and about because I don't really like the bottles I have at home currently. I previously had a simple stainless steel bottle, which I left in a café somewhere in Barcelona, I also had a neon yellow plastic Nalgene bottle, which I also forgot in another café (however it used to leak every now and then) in London. I really think that if I had a nice bottle, I would remember to take with me and therefore drink more water.

So I’ve been using glass bottles that I’ve saved from juices or tomato passata and so far they’ve been good. They're cheap and have already served one purpose! They don’t leak and you can get them in various sizes to suit your bag. They’re easy to clean (dishwasher) and they don’t transfer smells. But my son loves to play with them because he’s at the age where he sees us doing something so he has to do it or have one too. He’s not very delicate with fragile things either and so far we’ve thrown out about 3 glass bottles, a Pyrex roasting dish, and about half a dozen glasses (we let him drink from mini glasses - following Montessori principles). This is only in the last 3 months! So I’ve been thinking of getting a more robust bottle as I’ve had to sweep up broken glass too many times!

I was doing a search for a bottle that was stainless steel or glass with a silicone sleeve so no leaching of any harmful and toxic chemicals, as little plastic as possible, again no leaching of any chemicals and it’s better for the environment, and also has a large opening for cleaning and ice cubes. I normally drink water at room temperature unless it’s a really hot day and I might want to take tea out with me occasionally so insulative would be a bonus.

I haven’t mentioned bottles that fit in cup holders, because I don’t really use them much and I don’t want to be restricted by that criteria affecting the size design of a bottle. Also cup holders come in various sizes from about 2.5 inches up to about 4 inches depending on your car. Some people need their water bottles to fit into particular bags etc as well so if this is one of your needs, I’ll let you decide which ones fit your space.

Oasis Borosilicate Glass Bottle (Australia)

I did spend a lot of time looking for a glass bottle that I liked. It needed to have a good protector on because it was likely to be dropped. There were several glass bottles out there with silicone sleeves but this was the only one I could find that had a full sleeve. I expected that the other ones, if dropped on the exposed glass area, would break, and that would be the end of that bottle. So this one seemed perfect! Borosilicate glass to handle changes in temperature and it comes in 500mL capacity so not too large. I used to think the larger the better but I realised I was just carrying a lot of weight around because I would never finish the bottle.

I ended up buying one for myself and one for my son because he's at the age where he doesn't need a sippy bottle anymore. It has a medium size opening, good weight and the silicone felt nice. It was a little difficult to take the silicone off to wash under it ( I expect I won't be doing that very often) because it surrounds most of the surface of the bottle. It is doable but requires a bit of elbow grease.

After using the first couple of times, I found that it 'leaked'. I tried to screw the lid on more tightly but this didn't help. I realised that if the bottle was upturned, any water that was trapped between the lid and the bottle, would run out. There's not a lot of space to trap much water there but enough to make it annoying. So every time I use it, I manage to trap a bit of water there and my bag would get wet. It would also 'leak' this water out when I went to take the lid off resulting in my clothes getting slightly wet too.

So all in all, disappointing after my initial excitement at finding a full silicone sleeve glass bottle.

If you're still interested in this bottle, I would recommend using it in an office or on a desk only so that you aren't ever inverting it to allow water to get trapped. It's on sale at the moment for around $10, here's the link for the Oasis Borosilicate Bottle

Klean Kanteen - Insulated TKWide range (certified B Corp, Designed and owned USA, Made in China)

Klean Kanteen use 18/8 stainless steel in their bottles, which is essentially like a 304 grade (I found this page helpful in explaining all of this https://mightynest.com/articles/stainless-steel-all-about-food-grade-304-188-and-1810)

This is standard food grade steel. As a bonus, most of their steel, 90%, is from post-consumer recycled steel. They are aiming to increase this to 95% by the end of 2023.

Klean Kanteen have SO many variations to choose from as well.

The first is single wall bottles and insulated bottles. I personally went for an insulated bottle because of my tea drinking but the single wall bottles are also good if you want a lighter bottle and don't mind the temperature of your liquids being room temperature. The insulated bottles keep drinks cold for up to 145 hours, and hot for up to 47 hours (roughly depending on the capacities).

Klean Kanteen non-insulated bottles

So, the capacities. The non-insulated range comes in 12oz (355mL), 18oz (532mL), 27oz (800mL) and 40oz (1182mL) capacities. The insulated range comes in 12oz, 16oz(473mL), 20oz(592mL), and 32oz (946mL) and the massive 64oz (1900mL). That’s almost 2 litres of liquid! (Which is probably good for me because I fail everyday to drink enough water, despite filling my glass several times, I swear!).

Next, are the opening sizes. The regular opening size is actually already quite a large size (44mm) but they also have the wide non-insulated bottle with a 54mm diameter opening and also the TK Wide Mouth opening size (66mm). I chose the TK Wide because I wanted to get ice cubes in easily but I don't think it would be too difficult using the regular size bottle either.

Next up are the interchangeable caps. There are so many options here! Deep breath...they have a regular loop cap, a twist cap (fold-away straw), a straw cap, a cafe cap for sipping, a sport cap, a chug cap, a flip cap and a kids' sippy cap! Some of them are leak proof and others are not, just depends on what you will be using the bottle for. My bottle came with a Cafe Cap but I bought an extra Loop cap because I didn't think I was going to use the Cafe cap much because I wanted mostly steel in the lid too and wanted an easy to clean option. It turns out that with the Loop cap, because the opening is so large, I would splash water up the inside of the bottle and wet my nose when I lowered the bottle away from my mouth. So I now use the Cafe Cap more often. One thing to mention about the caps is that some bottles come with a beige cap (not black) so if you wanted black, you would need to order an extra one. I wanted a black Cafe Cap to go with my Tofu coloured bottle but it came with a beige one but then the extra Loop Cap I ordered only comes in black, so that is slightly annoying.

And lastly, the finishes! So many colours and patterns to choose from. I went for a Tofu colour, which is not like me these days because everything either gets damaged or gets covered in baby gloop constantly. But their Klean Coat is very durable and even chip-resistant so I had to give it a try. So far, marks have just wiped clean and it's not been chipped yet.

I'm really impressed by my bottle so far. Though I did have a problem with it. It seemed to develop a very small pin-hole leak. But Klean Kanteen have a very easy returns policy, through an outsourced provider, to replace faulty bottles very quickly. I could drop it off at the Fjallraven Kanken shop in Sydney and they posted it off for me. So I was equally impressed by that process.

Update 25/01/2024: I also bought the loop cap for my bottle. It came with a cafe cap on it but I wanted to use the loop cap for simplicity. However I found that it was too wide for drinking whilst I was in a car, as the movement of the car meant that the water would splosh out of it. But also that if I moved the bottle down and away from my mouth too quickly, the water would sploosh up and my nose would get wet. So now I mostly use the cafe cap :)

Takeya Actives, HydroFlask and Purist were also on my list of wanted bottles but I settled on the above for price and ease of obtainability.

Let me know if you've tried any of the above and what you thought!