Best deal for Bodum Double-Wall Stainless Steel Travel Coffee and Tea Press with Bonus Lid, 0.45L, 16oz, Black is now hitting the market. This awesome product is now on the market, you might buy it right now for only
Product Info
A good cup of coffee or tea is always at your fingertips with the Bodum Travel Coffee and Tea Press. Made of vacuum-sealed, double-wall stainless steel with a colorful, silicone, non-slip grip, this travel press lets coffee lovers enjoy their daily fix on the go. It's quick and easy to use: add coarsely ground coffee, pour in hot water, seal the lid and take it to go. After four minutes, regardless of where you are, press down on the plunger and enjoy. For those that prefer tea, the Bodum Travel Coffee and Tea Press works equally as well. The Bodum Travel Coffee and Tea Press keeps beverages hot or cold for several hours while maintaining the aroma and flavors of a freshly pressed cup.
Factor Benefits
- Includes bonus travel lid.
- Brew coffee or tea on the go and drink from same container when ready
- Made of vacuum-sealed, double-wall stainless steel and keeps beverages hot or cold for several hours
- Non-slip silicone grip is available in an array of bold colors
- Spill resistant lid with built-in plunger
Reviews
Stephen Foster
A perfect travel mug would be almost a Holy Grail. This might be my tenth, going back to the original, introduced by Thermos in the 1970s. That one displayed all of the flaws that designers have worked on since, like a locking, "leak-proof" top that worked well unless you did something extreme like filling it with hot liquid.But does this one work as a French press AND a mug? It really does, turning out an excellent cuppa tea or coffee (but not both: I now need to buy a separate one for tea only, which I'll do, willingly).But the design makes a compromise that you need to consider. The grounds or leaves remain in contact with the liquid, which is not a good thing in coffee, and eventually results in tea that us British cheerily describe as "stewed to buggery". But that's the only real drawback to the design, and I'd rather have an excellent cuppa that was better finished quickly than a mediocre one that lasted all day.Technical details: the mug is noticeably heavy, weighing in at over a pound, dry. In comparison, my other "16 liquid ounce" mug (in quotes because they all hold approx. 12 oz) weighs half that and my long-time workhorse 20 liquid ounce mug weighs only 11oz.I don't mind the extra weight, and the Bodum is certainly better-built than my other two. For one thing, when I fill it with boiling fluid, then later pick it up, the outside is cool. My other mugs get almost too hot to hold, which wouldn't bother me except that it means my tea is quickly getting cold.The (truly non-slip) base and grip, and cap plug are silicone, and the rest of the top is matching Dayglo Orange plastic. I would wish for another colour, but I'm certainly not going to misplace it, and in a pinch it might double as a distress beacon.Now, back to that "leak-proof" top design: the discovery that hot liquids exert steam-pressure when enclosed brought us the Industrial Revolution, but also brings us leaking travel mugs. This mug's extra, "normal" top comes closer than any to solving the problem: the hinged lid securely locks into place on the rim. It failed my extreme test: I filled it with boiling water, closed it, and shook it while holding it upside down. But when I tried a more real-world test: making a normal cuppa tea with milk, then locking and shaking it right-side-up, it passed!Other reviewers complain that the base of the press can unscrew and get stuck at the bottom of the mug. This is not very serious: if it happens to you, remove the shaft from the top, carefully screw just the shaft back onto the stuck base, then pull the base out. To stop it from happening again, reinsert the shaft through the lid, screw the sleeve onto the shaft until it freely slips up further, firmly screw the shaft onto the base, then FIRMLY screw the sleeve down onto the base, finishing the job with pliers. You'll know it's tight enough when you can insert the base into the mug and rotate it anti-clockwise without it starting to unscrew.
Jim
I tested the heat retaining capability of this aesthetically pleasing looking travel press/container as follows: while boiling water (in an electric kettle), I warmed the container with hot tap water. I then filled it with just-boiled water, put on the "free extra lid" that it comes with (i.e., a regular sipping lid rather than the sipping lid that also holds the plunger), and I then put it on a middle shelf of my home refrigerator. The first time I did this I set a timer for 4 hours. When the 4 hours was up the water was almost cold. I then decided it to just give the container a 1-hour test, and this time the water was hot - too hot to put my finger into for more than a second - and 145 degrees F on a meat thermometer (which can be used in water as it has a "boil test" mark for calibration purposes at about the 212 F mark).I also did an upside-down test, and as I anticipated, the travel press did not pass because coffee dripped out from the area around the spout when using the standard lid (i.e., not the lid that holds the plunger, which I expect would leak when upside down simply because of the fact that there's a movable plunger in the middle of it). I was not surprised, as travel mugs are not made for being carried upside down or on their sides.This press makes a nice cup of pressed coffee, and it works the same as my 8 oz. glass Bodum French press, and my 32 oz. stainless Bodum press. But it only works for me as a press if I transfer the pressed coffee to another container or cup after brewing it, because I happen to like my coffee with honey and half & half and there is no practical way to mix honey into the coffee in the container after brewing a cup using the press method. The instructions that come with the Bodum travel coffee press say to "Open the spout to add milk and sugar" to freshly brewed pressed coffee, but offers no suggestion as to how one might go about mixing these into the brew. So I think that as a press pot type container, this container would be best for someone who prefers their coffee black.If you visit Bodum's website you will see these exact travel presses (double-wall stainless with "free extra lid") with a list price of $29.95, so I am at a loss as to how Amazon came up with a list price of $40 (at least at the time I'm writing this review).The attractive box the travel press comes in (would certainly make a handsome gift for commuting drinkers of French pressed black coffee) includes the phrase "VACUUM TRAVEL PRESS" below the words "TRAVEL PRESS." The word "VACUUM" here obviously refers to the volume of space between the stainless steel double-walls of this travel press. The lids for this unit - the lid that has the plunger attached to it, and the standard lid - are adequate sipping lids and do not leak around the rims (each has a removable gasket), but they do not appear to be designed to maximize the heat retention of whatever hot liquid is in the travel press. They are not, for example, anything like the non-sipping lid of a 3 decades old trucker's stainless steel Thermos I own that to this day keeps coffee hot for hours.One problem I had more than once is that when unscrewing the plunger-lid, the plunger rod unscrewed itself from the filter, and the filter was left more or less stuck down near the bottom of the container. In order to get the filter out each time this happened, I had to hold the container over a sink and shake it downwards with considerable force, until the filter had budged enough for me to get it out with two fingers. What finally rectified this problem for me was tightening the filter onto the plunger rod.To sum up, based on my tests, this unit should keep coffee satisfyingly hot for over an hour in refrigerator-cold temps; sipping coffee from it in a room heated to 70F, my coffee (with half & half added) stays hot - much, much hotter than it stays in a standard mug or cup - for a good hour, and that's with the spout open the whole time; the stainless double-wall keeps the exterior stainless wall from getting too hot to be comfortable to hold, and the wide rubber grip enables users to pretty much avoid touching the steel at all; it makes a nice cup of pressed coffee, as good as any I've had at home and in cafes and restaurants; it is not really designed in a way that makes it convenient for users to mix creamer and powdered sweetener (or honey) into coffee that's been freshly pressed in the travel press - you could pour milk and sugar into the coffee through the spout as it says to do in the instructions, but then how do you mix it? - by shaking the container?; if the plunger rod is not screwed pretty tightly to the filter, the filter may stay in the container when the plunger-lid has been removed; it's a very handsome looking container (though I don't like that on either side of the nice, wide, rubbery gripping area, it says in raised letters, "bodum THE FRESH WAY TO BREW FRESH COFFEE & TEA"; what I don't like is that here is yet another coffee container that is also an advertisement - I suppose someday some folks will get paid to have brand names and marketing slogans and such tattooed on their foreheads, but I digress [I'm still feeling the effects of that last cup of pressed coffee I had made in my Bodum ;)]), but that's not that big a deal. The stainless steel is really nice looking; I could see these containers being sold in places like the MoMA gift shop. The container is wide enough for me to get an Oxo Good Grips Kitchen Brush (sold here at Amazon) comfortably inside for cleaning, yet it's slim enough to fit easily in the coffee container holders in my Toyota. Overall, I think the Bodum Travel Press is a nicely designed coffee (or tea) container, and I like it, and would consider buying one for someone (who likes French pressed black coffee) as a gift.
Kevin Currie-Knight
I have been excited to try this product because, as a drinker of loose tea, my "at the office" options are pretty limited to loose tea bags and an electric kettle. I was curious to see whether this product was a better way. Most every tea drinker agrees that the problem with tea bags is that it restricts the tea leaves from expanding in the water, leading to a thinner flavor than normal. A tea press to go? Nice.Well, only sort of. Here's the problem. Tea (and I think coffee as well) has a certain ideal steeping time, beyond which additional steeping leads to an overly strong and bitter flavor. And as this is a press and a mug in one, the tea continues steeping well after you've pressed the tea leaves to the bottom (because water still interacts with the leaves).And that leads to a cup of tea that is great at first, but gets more and more bitter as you drink. While the idea of a press-and-mug-in-one is nice in theory, it falls flat in practice unless you want your final swig or two to be bitter as all get out.That combined with the clean up (tea grounds on the bottom of the mug and in the press's filter) make it so that my Adagio Teas Paper Filters are still the most convenient way to make good tea on the go.So, why the two stars? Because, as others have mentioned, this is a really FABULOUS stand-alone mug. In addition to the press equipment, it also comes with a "regular" lid that allows it to function only as a mug. It keeps me tea very warm for an hour and a half! And the screw-on lid is really well designed for both sipping and not letting any dribbles out (in the car, say).For that I give this travel mug two stars. For the press feature, I give it an additional zero stars.
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