If you make a full cafetière or a pot of filter coffee in the morning and the second cup is always lukewarm by half nine, then yes. It’s one of the least exciting things you can buy for the kitchen and one of the most useful in winter.
The trouble is the glass. A cafetière or a filter jug loses heat fast, and in a cold kitchen it’s even worse. Leaving a filter jug on the hotplate keeps it hot, but it slowly stews the coffee until it tastes burnt. A vacuum jug skips both problems. You brew, you pour it in, and it stays hot without carrying on cooking.
Nothing fancy is needed here. The Tiken 1L thermal coffee jug is a plain double-walled steel jug with good reviews, and a litre is about four mugs, roughly what a standard cafetière or a small filter machine makes. Tiken says it keeps drinks above 66°C after 12 hours. Take that with a pinch of salt: it’s their own test, starting at 95°C in a 20°C room with the lid shut and nobody touching it. Every pour lets heat out, so in real life you’ll get less. For a morning of refills, though, that’s more than enough.
The lid is the bit you’ll notice day to day. It’s a press-button design, so you pour one-handed while the other hand holds a mug (or a toddler). There are two silicone rings in the seal and Tiken reckons it won’t drip even tipped slightly, which matters if it’s going in a bag. It’s 304 stainless steel inside and out, with a non-slip silicone base so it doesn’t skate across a wet worktop.
One trick that makes a real difference
Pre-heat it. Tiken mentions this too, and it’s true of every vacuum flask. Fill it with boiling water from the kettle, leave it for a couple of minutes while the coffee brews, tip it out and then pour the coffee in. A cold steel wall pulls a surprising amount of heat out of the first fill.
Where it really shines is a slow Saturday, a day working from home, or a pot on the table after Sunday lunch when nobody wants to get up and make another round. It does tea just as well.
One catch, though. Coffee keeps getting flatter once it’s brewed, warm or not. A jug keeps it hot, it doesn’t keep it fresh. So if you’re a one-cup-at-a-time person who cares about flavour, skip this and just make another cup.
