CamelBak Forge 16oz Travel Mug

I only bought the 16 oz for this test. I can’t see how anybody would be happy with only 12 ounces of coffee. It just does not compute.

The CamelBak is leakproof. I filled it with coffee, turned it upside down, and shook it. Nothing spilled. So I turned it right side up and opened it. It released some air and splattered a few drops of coffee. I turned it upside down again and nothing leaked from it.

The splattering of coffee got me curious. Would this mug splatter drops of coffee every time I pressed the button to open the lid for a sip? I went through the motions of drinking from it, paying attention to what happened whenever I open it. It did NOT sputter coffee when I opened it. The only reason it did so when I tested it for leakage, was because I shook it while holding it upside down, which caused a pressure buildup in the mug.

The Forge won’t leak, so don’t worry about coffee seeping out of it if ever the CamelBak finds itself on its side in your car.

You don’t want to use your travel mug to melt gold in; you want to drink coffee or tea from it. Provided you use it with common sense, you should be able to fill the CamelBak Forge with a piping-hot beverage often and not damage it.

Unscrew the CamelBak’s lid, pour your beverage of choice into the tumbler, and screw the lid back on. You could screw the lid back on immediately, especially if you want to keep your beverage scorching for a long time. But if you’re like me, who uses a travel mug more for the convenience of having coffee securely on the go, rather than for having it as hot as possible for as long as possible, you might want to allow the contents in the tumbler to cool down before you screw on the lid.

To wash you CamelBak Forge, you must remove the lid set from the tumbler, flip open what CamelBak calls the arms of the lid set and clean the whole mug, either with a brush or in a dishwasher. But before you screw the lid back onto the tumbler after you’ve washed it and want to use it again, make sure the arms are in the correct position, else you won’t be able to assemble the mug.

If you want to keep your CamelBak’s spout open permanently, simply press the button to open the spout, as you would when you take a sip, then press the little button on top of the arms down to lock the arms in place, thereby leaving the spout unblocked.

I used a creamy tomato soup, the same one I used for testing the other mugs. I prepared the soup according to instructions, then strained it into a jug to remove lumps. From the jug, I poured the soup into the CamelBak. It worked. You can easily drink soup from the CamelBak Forge.

But you use it for this kind of thing at your own risk. I suspect they make the CamelBak for use with coffee and tea, not soup.

Like with the Contigo, the AeroPress does NOT fit into the CamelBak, which means the Zojirushi wins this round, since the AeroPress fits snugly into it. If you make AeroPress coffee for the CamelBak you’ll have to make it in another container, like a stainless steel jug, and pour it into the CamelBak.

Tip: when you press AeroPress into a metal container, preheat the container so it doesn’t cause the coffee to lose too much heat.

The CamelBak Forge’s lid SHOULD be dishwasher safe but don’t quote me on that. It’s hard to find info on this mug, and since I promised to gift mine to a friend after the test, I didn’t want to sacrifice it for the sake of a test. I can confidently say that the tumbler part of the Forge is NOT dishwasher safe.