It's Time to Mug.
You've probably never looked into exactly how many types of coffee mugs exist, but you might find it very surprising to learn that there is an absolute abundance of different mugs available. In fact the list is so big that I'm going to have to break this Coffee College article up into four posts to cover the different categories and everything they contain within their niche, and we still won't get to cover everything.
The Four Focus Areas.
To give you a general idea of the categories we will be discussing I have broken things up into the following categories:
- Material
- Intended Use
- Custom
- Powered
The First Focus Area: The Material.
First let's spend a bit of time talking about mug material. What you drink out of matters, and the material of the mug will affect the taste, temperature, and experience when drinking your cup of coffee. From the most commonly seen ceramic material all the way to less common coffee mug materials like stoneware, we'll dive into some of the aspects of each in this post.
The Ceramic Mug.
The most commonly seen coffee mug material is going to easily be ceramic. From grocery stores to giftshops you can find coffee mugs of this flavor every where you look. They have high durability and are very easy to clean, though they tend to stain easily. They also are great insulators and let your heat disperse evenly, so it helps keep your coffee hot longer.
Sometimes you will even find coffee mugs made from different materials like metal will have a ceramic lining inside of them for better insulation. They may not have the greatest style or make you stand out, but with ceramic it is easy to find or make custom coffee mugs, or add a photo on the coffee mug to easily make things like company logo coffee mugs or gift mugs.
The Glass Mug.
Similar in many ways to ceramic mugs is the glass coffee mug. Some clear perks here are the added aesthetic of a glass mug and being able to see what's in your mug, high resistance to being stained, and ease of cleaning.
With glass you can also still easily have custom printed coffee mugs and there are several different styles to include doubled walled coffee mugs which allows a great many different styles to choose from. Their downsides however is that they do not have great insulation, are fragile and can chip easily, so they typically don't have as long as a life span as other types of materials due to that fragility.
The Stainless Steel Mug.
As you might imagine the stainless steel coffee mug boasts the highest durability of everything you can commonly find on the shelf. These mugs are noted for their high insulation, the ability to have an inner coat to give you the ceramic coffee mug flavor and extra insulation, and the extreme durability of the steel. These are as their name implies, stainless, so they are very difficult to stain and clean easily.
You can still make a customized coffee mug with stainless but I most often see them in different colors rather than stamped with photographs or text.
Stainless steel coffee mugs are also what you will find most often in the role of a travel mug, and you can also buy them with lids or in the form of a thermos to keep your coffee hot all day.
Depending on what you're buying stainless steel mugs can come at a higher price due to the functions they can include. I have a basic steel mug with a handle and a fancy mug that acts as a thermos that cost me a pretty penny.
The Melamine Mug.
I'll admit it, I hadn't heard of this material before writing this article, but the Coffee College is here to help educate every coffee lover, including myself. After understanding the nature of melamine I'm certain I've seen them before and I would bet you have too, probably thinking it was just another ceramic coffee mug. The biggest difference between ceramic and melamine is that you will often see a glossy coat over melamine. Other than the coat melamine and ceramic have almost identical attributes.
The China Mug.
Queue violin music and put on your top hats and monocles please ladies and gentlemen. These are the fancy coffee mugs. The kind of items that will demand you reach deeper into your wallet, especially if you want them to be custom made coffee mugs with your chosen design or accents.
The greatest perks with these include them as family heirlooms, valuable, beautiful and often stylish, you can often buy them in a set, and may demand you hold your pinky out with each sip for the special occasion you've chosen to serve them with.
The drawbacks are their price point, their delicacy, and the special care and cleaning needed in order to keep them safe and looking good. (They are not dishwasher safe in the slightest.) It is also advised you store them in a special area, such as a place with low movement traffic and out of the reach of children.
The Stoneware Mug.
These are the least common coffee mug you will find in the store or in a cabinet, but they are great coffee mugs nonetheless.
Stoneware makes great personalized coffee mugs and they offer great durability like their ceramic and melamine cousins. They are also often handmade so getting them as a custom coffee mug is almost simply part of the process.
They look nice and are appealing to the eye, can have many different accents depending on the stone they are made from, and are unique per mug because of how stone looks when it is cut. They're also great insulators, are very hard to stain, and can be coated with protective glaze in order to have them made from clay or other soft materials too.
Your Mug, Your Choice.
It is up to you to choose what best suits your needs for which type of mug you want to buy. I personally have several different mugs of each category, and I also own a mug or two of the very specialized role of mugs which we will talk about in another article. I most often go to my ceramic mugs because I have so many, but I also have a ceramic inner coated stainless steel travel mug, stoneware, glass, a set of china mugs passed down to me by my grandmother, and a battery powered coffee mug.
Like most coffee lovers as time passes on through gifts or impulses or simple desire your coffee mug collection will likely grow, and that's part of the fun of being a coffee lover.
Thanks for stopping by Friggen Cawfee and reading this article! As always I’m more than glad to help answer your questions and provide input for all your coffee questions.
You can email me at Mark@friggencawee.com
– Mark, Friggen Cawfee Connoisseur