Vargo Stainless Steel Para-Bottle

Wide mouth stainless steel bottle, uninsulated, 1.0L (34 oz). Good solution for carrying boiling-hot liquids in summer time (when and if you don't need them to stay hot). Wide mouth also makes carrying the food possible.

With my 450-ml titanium mugs by Snow Peak and Toaks

Background

I received this bottle as a prize for my shared content at Trailspace as a Top 10 Reviewer for 2017. 

To see the usefulness of this particular design, let's see, what can also be used for carrying the liquids in your trips. There are more popular solutions, but they have their own disadvantages.

1) Plastic bottles:

• Short service life.
• Don't work for boiling-hot liquids (e.g. if you don't have enough time to cool down the boiled water or tea).

2) Thermos bottles:

• Excessively large and heavyweight.
• Keep the temperature extremely high for long time. Sometimes (especially in summer or in transport) you have to wait really long before starting drinking.
• Hot temperature of water is not always needed.

3) Aluminum bottles:

• Short service life due to applied coatings.
• Easy to damage.
• Add specific taste to the contents (without coating).

4) Titanium bottles:

• Extremely expensive.

So you need the Vargo Stainless Steel Para-Bottle if your use case meets the following criteria:

• Sometimes you need to pour boiling-hot liquids to the bottle, unable to cool them before that.
• You don't welcome the high temperature of bottle contents, or you even want to cool it quickly.
• You welcome the moderate weight, price, and good durability of the bottle.
• You may use the bottle for food storage, not only liquids.

A lunch on the track

Capacity

This bottle has the capacity of 34 oz/1 liter, which is good for 1 person for a day or 2-3 people for single eating. Also it combines well with my 1.0L Primus ETA and Campfire pots, which I routinely use for making the tea.

For carrying some tea for a breakfast I'd prefer only a half of this volume, but such option doesn't present for this model.

Ease of Use

This bottle has a very wide mouth, so it's extremely easy to pour into. Also it may be used for storing the food. On the other hand, drinking from this bottle in moving train is somewhat challenging. 

Features

This bottle doesn't feature the vacuum insulation, so it doesn't keep the temperature. In some use cases this may be a blessing, so consider it before purchasing. Also there is an insulated version available.

There's no kind of insulating pouch included, so after pouring a tea or freshly boiled water the surface will be EXTREMELY hot for about 15 minutes. Luckily there is a braided strap which may be used for carrying the hot bottle. It looks classy, but I'd prefer a simpler solution.

The braided strap actually consists of 7 feet of paracord for emergency use, which is nice.

Due to absence of coatings and insulation, in emergency scenarios this bottle may be used as an improvized pot for boiling the water.

Construction & Durability

This bottle is made of brushed stainless steel without any coatings. The cap is plastic. I expect really high durability from this bottle, as usual for bare stainless steel products. But I'd also welcome the steel cap instead of plastic. This bottle doesn't have any foreign odors in it.

Conditions

I use this bottle in summer cycling trips for carrying the freshly made tea. As noted above, the thermo bottle is not advisable in such conditions, as it's both heavyweight and requires to wait too long before drinking.

Also I use this bottle for carrying some tea for a breakfast in my morning train to work. Actually I don't need a full liter of volume (also the wide mouth is not very convenient), so I've just ordered a 0.5L bottle for such purpose.

Conclusion

This bottle is very nice for specific use case, when the usual plastic or thermo bottles could not help you.