GDG Thermos test...

[John Robinson]

I duck hunt a lot, two to three times a week during the season, mostly with my main hunting partner Neil. Hunting in Montana it is typically quite cold, so our thermoses are an important part of our equipment. Neil is a coffee drinker while I can't stand the stuff and typically take two thermoses, one with hot tea and one with hot chocolate. A few years ago Neil misplaced his trusty old Aladdin Stanley and bought a new one. That's when he noticed my thermoses were keeping my stuff hot much longer than his thermos did. Neil did a bit of research and discovered Stanley moved production overseas some years ago, so he found an older, made in USA on and bought it.

That Stanley still didn't work as well as he remembered, so I googled "best thermos ever" and did some other searches to educate myself, I wanted to buy Neil a good thermos for Christmas. One of my searches led me to a youtube video of a guy testing some thermoses by preheating them, then filling them with boiling water, sealing them for a period of time and then testing with an instant read thermometer. This seemed like a simple foolproof test so I decided to test all of Neil's and my thermoses.

Now I'm a bit of a thermos slut, I own about six stainless thermoses. I bought my first good thermos when I was working on the Alaska Pipeline in the mid seventies. I actually bought two, a Thermos brand Thermos and a nice looking Uno-Vac, (the term Thermos is like Kleenex or Xerox, being the original company to make a and sell a successful vacume bottle, the name now covers any vacume bottle made by anybody). The thing I discovered from reading a bunch of thermos discussions on various forums is that 90% of the comments are anecdotal, most people believe their thermos is as good as it could be, because they dont have anything to compare it to, and durability against damage, falling off trucks and high places without breaking matters a lot. Based on many reviews, I ended up buying Neil a Thermos King made in China (they all are now) by Thermos.

I tested nine thermoses, listed below. I preheated each thermos with very hot tap water for fifteen minutes, then filled each thermos with boiling water, sealed each thermos with the stopper and cap, then set outside on my deck railing for eight hours. The outside temp was between 32 and 38 degress in rain and sleet.

Here's the results in ranking order:

#1 My old Camo Stanley (bought in 1995) 32 oz. 173.1 degrees F
#2 A Nissan camo covered from DU (around 2003) 28 oz. 167.2
#3 an old dented Nissan (no idea of date) 34 oz. 163.2
#4 My old Stanley (bought in 1991) 32 oz 157.6
#5 Neil's older Stanley 32 oz 144.2
#6 A Champ (Korean copy of UnoVac) 32 oz 138.2
#7 Neil's newer Stanley 32 oz 128.7
#8 A Uno-Vac I bought off Ebay 32 oz 116.4
#9 Another Uno Vac I bought off ebay 32 oz 108.7

On a separate test I tested the best of this lot (my old camo Stanley) against the new Thermos King I bought for Neil, after forteen and a half hours outside in freezing temps, my best testing Stanley was 142.3 and the 40 oz. Thermos King was 164.0 degrees! The thermos King blew away my Stanley by almost twenty degress!

So we can see that
1) the wonderful ubiquitous Aladdin Stanley is all over the place regardless of whither made in China or USA, the second best thermos in the whole test was my 1995 Camo painted one, while Neil's new one tested near the bottom with others in the middle. Maybe some are damaged and lost vacume, or there is a lot of variation in production quality control.
2)Nostalga doesn't count for much, I remember my old Uno-Vac as being a great thermos, but both tested at the very bottom of the pack. I bought the second one believing that the first one had to be damaged to test so poorly. Maybe both are damaged but I'm not going to gamble another twenty dollars on ebay to test it.
3)For modern thermoses, you cant go wrong with the Thermos-Nissan brand.

I welcome your own observations on thermoses.

John

[BonMallari]

Clint is a big coffee drinker, he has a METAL Stanley thermos that was a judges gift, the outside has been painted numerous times but it still keeps coffee hot....I like the Nissan ones because of their slim profile

[Hunt'EmUp]

And I like the little metal flask kept in my coat pocket, because no matter it's temperature the liquid inside keeps you warm

[Bubba]

And I like the little metal flask kept in my coat pocket, because no matter it's temperature the liquid inside keeps you warm

Zackly!!!!! And it helps my duck calling, joke telling, yarn spinning and singing as well. Saves a LOT of cold wet "Southern Exposure" when it comes time to return the coffee to nature.

Anti-freeze regards

Bubba

[savage25xtreme]

Great write up. I have a 16 oz Nissan that is 10 years old and works great!

Is this the Thermos you bought for Neil? http://www.amazon.com/Thermos-Stainl.../dp/B0017IHRNM

[John Robinson]

Great write up. I have a 16 oz Nissan that is 10 years old and works great!

Is this the Thermos you bought for Neil? http://www.amazon.com/Thermos-Stainl.../dp/B0017IHRNM

That's the one. The other one that looks good is the Thermos Work or somthing like that.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermos-Work-S.../dp/B001DB97DG

[Paul "Happy" Gilmore]

Fill with boiling water for 10 minutes before putting in hot coffee. Everybody knows that trick right? The Perkins in Moses lake always fills your thermos with hot water while you're eating then hot coffee when you pay your tab. Send you out the door properly prepared.

[PalouseDogs]

Oooo, data. I love data. I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t point out that the comparison of the old Stanley with the Thermos King is a bit unfair because the Thermos King is a 40 oz and the old Stanley was a 32 oz. Assuming they have more or less the same shape, a larger volume will retain heat better than a smaller volume because, the larger the volume, the smaller the ratio of surface area to volume.

My thermos story (which is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand): Many years ago, probably in the late 1980s, I bought a 32 oz. Aladdin glass vacuum thermos. It had a red lid. The first time I put hot coffee in it, the glass shattered. (Yes, I had pre-warmed it with warm water.) Thinking I had the bad luck to buy a defective specimen, I bought another one, same size, same glass vacuum design, except this one had a blue lid. Back in those days, there weren’t many thermos options and there wasn’t an internet (at least not the way we know of it today). The first time I used the thermos with the blue lid, the liquid seeped into the “vacuum”. I could hear it sloshing around when I emptied the thermos and there was no way to get it out.

I was so peeved, I went to the effort to find the company address. I mailed both thermoses back to them with a long letter explaining the problems, saying that I wasn’t interested in getting any money back, but that I was never going to buy another glass vacuum thermos. Then I went out and bought the now-classic 16 oz green Stanley steel bottle thermos, which, by the way, is also made by Aladdin. (Like I said, not many choices in thermoses back then.) The steel thermos doesn’t seem to keep things as hot as the glass bottle thermoses, but the smaller size may be partly to blame. It weighs about 4 times as much as the glass bottle thermoses, but is indestructible. I still have it. If I ever get attacked by a bear in the woods, it’s heavy enough to use as a weapon.

Not long after I bought the Stanley steel bottle thermos, I received a package from Aladdin. It contained two brand new glass vacuum thermoses, one with a red lid and one with a blue lid, just like the ones I had sent to them with my grouchy letter (nice touch). I still have those thermoses, too, possibly because I became a little gun-shy about glass-vacuum thermoses and rarely use them. I’m not sure anyone even sells the glass vacuum thermoses anymore.

On the subject of what to put into a thermos for a cold day. Normally, I prefer my coffee black, no sugar, no creamer, but only when it’s piping hot. For thermos coffee, I add 2 or 3 packages of hot chocolate mix to the coffee. That way, if the coffee cools in the thermos, it’s still palatable. Kind of a cheap mocha. If I have time, I reheat the coffee in the microwave after I stir in the chocolate mix, so it starts out warmer.

I'll have to look into that Thermos King.

[John Robinson]

Oooo, data. I love data. I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t point out that the comparison of the old Stanley with the Thermos King is a bit unfair because the Thermos King is a 40 oz and the old Stanley was a 32 oz. Assuming they have more or less the same shape, a larger volume will retain heat better than a smaller volume because, the larger the volume, the smaller the ratio of surface area to volume.

My thermos story (which is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand): Many years ago, probably in the late 1980s, I bought a 32 oz. Aladdin glass vacuum thermos. It had a red lid. The first time I put hot coffee in it, the glass shattered. (Yes, I had pre-warmed it with warm water.) Thinking I had the bad luck to buy a defective specimen, I bought another one, same size, same glass vacuum design, except this one had a blue lid. Back in those days, there weren’t many thermos options and there wasn’t an internet (at least not the way we know of it today). The first time I used the thermos with the blue lid, the liquid seeped into the “vacuum”. I could hear it sloshing around when I emptied the thermos and there was no way to get it out.

I was so peeved, I went to the effort to find the company address. I mailed both thermoses back to them with a long letter explaining the problems, saying that I wasn’t interested in getting any money back, but that I was never going to buy another glass vacuum thermos. Then I went out and bought the now-classic 16 oz green Stanley steel bottle thermos, which, by the way, is also made by Aladdin. (Like I said, not many choices in thermoses back then.) The steel thermos doesn’t seem to keep things as hot as the glass bottle thermoses, but the smaller size may be partly to blame. It weighs about 4 times as much as the glass bottle thermoses, but is indestructible. I still have it. If I ever get attacked by a bear in the woods, it’s heavy enough to use as a weapon.

Not long after I bought the Stanley steel bottle thermos, I received a package from Aladdin. It contained two brand new glass vacuum thermoses, one with a red lid and one with a blue lid, just like the ones I had sent to them with my grouchy letter (nice touch). I still have those thermoses, too, possibly because I became a little gun-shy about glass-vacuum thermoses and rarely use them. I’m not sure anyone even sells the glass vacuum thermoses anymore.

On the subject of what to put into a thermos for a cold day. Normally, I prefer my coffee black, no sugar, no creamer, but only when it’s piping hot. For thermos coffee, I add 2 or 3 packages of hot chocolate mix to the coffee. That way, if the coffee cools in the thermos, it’s still palatable. Kind of a cheap mocha. If I have time, I reheat the coffee in the microwave after I stir in the chocolate mix, so it starts out warmer.

I'll have to look into that Thermos King.

One thing about the Thermos King, could be a positive or negative depending on how you use your thermos, the Thermos King is very light. I get the feeling that the stainless they use is very thin, light guage. This is nice if you are carrying it, but I would think it would dent way easier than the heavier steel Stanley. I think the Thermos Work Series is more heavy duty. Neil loves his Thermos King and has already painted it dull green camo, it comes with a pretty shiny midnignt blue finish. I might buy a Thermos Work Series just for comparison.

John

[Shawn White]

It seems that a little American Honey always seems to help my Thermos stay warmer. and numerous coats of paint