There’s nothing like a nice sip of hot cocoa after a long day of hiking in the snow. That is, assuming your cocoa is still hot. The Montbell Alpine Thermo Bottle packs impressive insulating properties and a high quality, dual layer, vacuum sealed stainless steel construction, ensuring all day performance.
The bottles are built from stainless steel, inside and out, with the inner layer enclosing a tight air vacuum that prevents heat transfer between the inner and outer layers. The bottle has a polypropylene inner cap with a nice tight seal to prevent leakage, and the top screw on cap doubles as a nice cup. The cap is covered with silicon to aid in grip and add a little extra insulation where most bottles lose most of their heat.
The bottle creates a near perfect seal, preventing heat transfer throughout almost the entire bottle. The only place that heat can be felt through (when the bottle is full of hot liquid on a cold day) is just around the rim, where the top cap meets the bottle. This small ring is the only place heat trickle in or out, as the screw on cup is also insulated. The result is excellent insulation all around. After filling my bottle up with hot liquid on an 18 degree, windy day, I found that even several hours later, my precious hot cocoa was still far too hot to drink despite sitting on an outside pocket of my backpack. I’ve found that the bottle can keep liquids piping hot for, practically, the entire day. This makes it great for packing in soup, cocoa, tea, or anything else one might want to keep hot on the trail.
I really enjoy the tall and narrow design of the bottle as it’s not only visually appealing, but also quite convenient as it fits easily in a gloved hand and a standard water bottle pocket. The only downside I’ve found is the lovely finish, like most stainless steel bottles, scratches up easily. Overall however, it’s a wonderful thermos that provides exceptional performance on or off the trail, and it looks really nice, especially in red. I highly recommend giving this one a go.
The bottles weigh 9.3 ounces for the .5L version, and 13.4 oz for the .9 liter version (about 4 cups), retailing for $39 and $49 respectively.
For more information on Montbell and and their wide range of gear, check out their website, http://www.montbell.us/
For information on our rating system and our testing procedures, check out our About us/ Contact us page.
I want to extend a huge thanks Montbell for providing this product for review. We couldn’t do it without their help. Our full disclosure can be found here.
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