My Airline Coffee Dreams Have Come True!

Whenever I have a tight connection, I arrive to the airport late, the line at Starbucks is extremely long, etc and I am in desperate need for Starbucks, I use the mobile order option in the Starbucks app. It can be really glitchy sometimes (all the time) but it comes in handy! When I am packing up to leave the lounge, I open the app, order it, and by the time I get to Starbucks, my drink is waiting for me!

There are hundreds of studies on coffee. They're about 50-50 on good/bad. The huge nurse's study (80,000 participants?) showed that those who drank more than two cups per day had slightly elevated cholesterol but no increase in heart disease. Coffee contains antioxidants and other goodies besides the almighty Caffeine. For home use, the cheap AND fantastic Aeropress kicks ass on every drip machine I've ever used and hangs with most espresso machines, no prob. Created by the inventor of the Aerobie, it's a masterpiece. Use a Bodum or other conical burr grinder for your organic beans and you're set. For outside the house, to-go cups of any stripe-paper, foam, whatever, are so over. First, they don't keep coffee hot for more than what? a couple-five minutes? Depending on your SS (sipping speed), you spend the rest of the time drinking progressively colder and more tasteless coffee. NOT TO MENTION the fact that you're sipping through some cheap-ass plastic lid and from a cup that does nothing to add to the taste, and in fact detracts therefrom. Then, of course, after a few short minutes, the long- or ever-lasting cup is discarded and added to the waste stream that so many of us are oblivious to or choose to ignore the consequences of. The solution to always having a cup to take, having hot and as tasty coffee as you started with, as well as redressing a small portion of our eco-crimes, is the spillproof insulated cup. The full-size Thermoses and the mini-thermoses are the kings of keeping the beverages hot, and are just fine, but lack some of the convenience of a pop-open sipping portal. After trying all of the big four brands that I'm aware of--Contigo, Trudeau, Thermos, and Oxo--that make the spillproof insulated cups, my judgment, with little fear of valid contradiction, is that first, they all lie about how long your drink will stay hot. Two hours? Four hours? My ass. In order, the Contigo, Oxo, the Trudeau, and the Thermos are more to less convenient to open and close quickly and easily. With a little care, they are all truly spillproof. For what really makes the difference, though, the Oxo is hands down the best at preserving liquid temperature. Not great, but if you preheat the stainless cup (true for all brands), you'll get pretty good coffee temperature maintenance for somewhere around 30-50 minutes, depending on ambient temps and what the cup is sitting on, e.g., heat-sapping metal vs. warmy wood. All three have a hard plastic lip parking structure, of which Oxo takes the lead slightly if at all. Out of coffee or already trembling sufficiently? Well, now you have a nice ecological reusable unbreakable water, juice, smoothie, or margarita mug that will keep your liquid at its desired temp for use at your seat or in your car or by your bed at night. The Oxo is about $20 at places like Bed Bath and Beyond and maybe some Whole Foods. When mine have failed in the past (the design has now improved some), I have gone to the nearest BB&B and traded the leaky one in on a brand newbie with nary a receipt nor an argument. Oh, and Starbucks takes a dime off the outrageous cost for bringing your own container. I'm saving up for a Ferrari Berlinetta with my credits.

Spotted these at LAX last week!

I am with @Jen and @Josh - can't understand why anyone would drink filter coffee... Few years ago I was in Honolulu and had a weird experience - you could have Kona coffee but ONLY from the dripper "urn". WTF? What a waste!

@Rand -- What are you talking about? America is the only country where stale, filter-drip coffee pots are considered acceptable. I dunno what "coffee craze" you're talking about (Starbucks??) but the Italians have been obsessing over coffee for centuries, and their delicate, artisinal tradition is what was exported to Australia. It's still almost impossible to find a cup of coffee made with love in America, outside of hipster enclaves like Brooklyn, Los Feliz, The Mission. As a German friend of mine says: "Ahh, Americans. The people who think beer needs to be fresh but coffee doesn't." ;)