Today we’re taking a little departure from coffee reviews and taking a look at a coffee-related product, the HuskeeCup! Check it out…
Purchase in the USA starting at $20 from Urban Dwellers
HUSKEECUP
A couple months ago, my friends at Urban Dwellers Coffee next door in Missouri reached out to send some new natural coffee from China’s Yunnan region, as well as to see if I wanted to check out a HuskeeCup. I think this was the first time I had heard of HuskeeCup and one look had me saying, “yes, please!” I asked for the natural colored one (the other color is a dark charcoal or black color) because I wanted to see if it stains. I was immediately drawn in by what I considered to be a midcentury modern aesthetic to the cups. That’s my era as far as furniture, architecture and design and the HuskeeCup immediately reminded me of George Nelson’s iconic saucer/bubble lamps. In my mind, the expectations I set up were that it was going to be featherweight and feel cardboard-y and I just assumed it would last a handful of uses before it had to be recycled. I was wrong on all counts! For you TLDRers: I love the HuskeeCup. It’s aesthetically pleasing both to the eye and to the hand, it doesn’t stay hot for too long, the design is super well thought out, it’s durable, there’s very little taste and I didn’t find much to dislike about mine. At $20 for the 12oz size with a lid from Urban Dwellers, this is my recommended travel cup for people on the go. The rest of you, read on…
HuskeeCup is an Australian-conceived reusable cup that is made in China. They had a very successful Kickstarter campaign and now the products are in full production mode. Currently, there are three sizes of cups, 6, 8 and 12 oz, all of which accept the same size travel lid, which is smart design. I keep dropping comments all over their social media, and would appreciate your help, too, for them to make a proper espresso demitasse sized cup at 2-3 ounces, too. I think it just look so cool! Let’s get this to happen! Huskee also makes a universal saucer and all the cups, saucers and lids are made from the same material. I appreciate that Huskee was also really looking out for cafes in their design of these products. The sizes are a good match for cappuccinos and lattes or carry out drip coffee. The lack of handles on all the cups means they stack nicely. The lids fitting each size means cafes don’t have to carry a bunch of lid sizes that they have to match up with each cup and the saucers also stack neatly and compactly and fit all three sizes of cups perfectly. This is a well thought out design, for sure.
Talking about the material itself, the cups use coffee husks or parchment, which is a waste product. Coffee is a fruit and coffee cherries resemble regular cherries in size. There’s a peel and some flesh inside, a bunch of sticky goop called mucilage, and then there are a couple of seeds found in the middle. These seeds are what we roast and call coffee beans. The seeds are surrounded by what most coffee professionals call parchment. This parchment is removed after the coffee has dried out in the sun but there’s not much this fibrous material has been used for up to now. The peels and fruit of the coffee cherry can be dried out and turned into mucilage, and often the cast off parts of the fruit are turned into fertilizer and compost, too. About 50% of a HuskeeCup is this husk/parchment material, so it makes good use of this stuff. This is why I thought these cups would feel like pressed cardboard and would be super lightweight, but the other reason neither is the case is that the other 50% of a HuskeeCup is polypropylene, a food-grade, recycleable plastic material.
Polypropylene is BPA-free and is a commonly used plastic in the food world. This material is food-safe and FDA approved. HuskeeCups are microwave-safe and also dishwasher safe. They are supposed to be taste-neutral and even though there is no handle, they were designed to hold hot beverages without needing an additional sleeve. HuskeeCups are not currently recycleable by normal means, however, Huskee is setting up a way to recycle old cups themselves.
So, upon receiving my HuskeeCup from Urban Dwellers (who, as far as I know, are the only people selling HuskeeCups in the USA, and thank goodness because shipping from Australia is a killer!!), I immediately noticed it is WAY heavier than I expected. Again, I expected a dry, cardboard-like experience with negligible weight, but I also thought this was 100% compressed husks and didn’t know it was 50% polypro until I did later research. I went with the 8oz size, which holds a little under 8.5 ounces of water without getting too close to overflowing. A little less if you need to accommodate for the press-in lid, which, by the way, is a perfect fit thanks to the rubber o-ring around its rim. My 8oz HuskeeCup weighs in at 141g or slightly less than 5oz without the lid and 179g/6.3oz with it. My favorite porcelain mug, the NotNeutral Lino, weighs 349g/12.3oz and holds a little over 9.5oz of water. The 8oz Huskeecup is a bit under 10cm or a little over 3.75″ tall without the lid and about 11.5cm or about 4.5″ tall at the tallest point with the lid. At its widest point, at the lip of the cup, it measures a little under 3.5″ wide or about 8.7cm.
The HuskeeCup is pretty smooth but does have just a light amount of texturing, almost like a sandblasted finish. The lid is vented so you don’t kill yourself every time you try to take a drink of a hot liquid. There are four small holes in the lid and a standard slit for liquid to get out of the lid and into your gob. I had no problems with the vents getting plugged by coffee and making life hell when I used this cup with the lid. The lid also has a relatively deep channel around it to catch the inevitable coffee sloshing around as you drink, walk, drive, ride, etc, and I just noticed while looking at the lid as I write this that the channel is tilted with the low end by the drinking slit so anything that does make it out onto the lid will drain back into the cup.
The HuskeeCup’s most notable feature are the fins around the outside. These are what creates that midcentury-looking aesthetic, to my eye, but they are also functional in that they provide both grip and serve as a heatsink to dissipate heat and allow you to hold the cup without burning your hands and without the need of a handle. I drop things all the time and I have yet to drop my cup, so the grip aspect seems to work. As far as the heat-dissipating capacity it works pretty well. When I do a just-off boil pourover in this cup it does get a little hotter than warm and borderline uncomfortable for a few minutes, warm enough that it makes me want to set it down and not have my hands around it, but because this is a non-insulated cup, that is short-lived as heat bleeds away from the fins and surface of the cup. With that in mind, I didn’t do any temperature/time tests, but I would say my impression of this cup is that it dissipates heat about like the Lino. I personally do not want a cup that keeps things too hot since you can’t taste anything that way. I took a piping hot cup of coffee with me, using the lid, to the airport the last time I flew and it was wintertime, still, and the coffee was still drinkably warm when I parked, which is about a 35 minute drive from home. This is no insulated in any way, though, so if you’re expecting Zojirushi-level napalm in the cup for the better part of several days, you’ll need to calm down a little.
I don’t have big hands and this 8oz size is perfectly comfortable to hold. I suppose kids or really tiny-handed people may find it a little girthy, but don’t buy a kid a $20 sippy cup. The heat fins really do give a lot of grip and also provide a nice tactile experience that just wouldn’t be the same with a perfectly smooth surface. The matte, slightly “sandblasted” finish adds to the slight texture and I appreciated that extra tactility, too. I have not tested mine out in the dishwasher. I just don’t wash any of my coffee vessels in the dishwasher because they stain that way, so I am strictly a handwasher when it comes to coffee stuff.
The first couple times I used the HuskeeCup I noticed it definitely gave off an odor that wasn’t really plasticky, but it wasn’t really organic-smelling either. Hard to describe, and I don’t know that I could taste it, but in a way if you can smell something while you use it you can also taste it in a way. Smelling the cup right now, there is just the faintest whiff of something coming from it, so I would say the “taste-free” claim is pretty accurate. Licking it, it doesn’t taste like anything. LOL I did make a cup of really fruity ginger and peach herbal tea in the cup and even with soap and water washing it, held onto that flavor, which cut through the coffee I drank from it the next couple times I used it. That was a pretty strong, acidic tea, but I didn’t love tasting it more than I could taste my coffee I was trying to enjoy. That went away after two uses. I can smell a hint of the last coffee I drank from my HuskeeCup after washing, but it’s minimal. Maybe just be careful with tea or other non-coffee drinks. After a few months of using this cup, I see no wear and tear and see no reason to think it won’t last for many years.
In summary, I’m a big fan. I don’t think the world needs yet another cool, hip, reusable cup (when most people have 20+ “reusable cups” are they really doing anything good for the world?), but this one stands out because of the use of an otherwise waste material of coffee husks, and the aesthetic is great. The design is super-functional (just wait until we get that espresso demitasse, though!) and to my eye, it also looks great. I like that the sizes and designs are super cafe friendly, too, and I know Huskee is trying to promote a program where cafe patrons can takeaway a HuskeeCup and bring it back dirty the next day while picking up their drink in a different one and so on. I’m not sure about how the logistics of such a thing work, but it’s a cool idea, anyway. At $20 for the 12oz size, with lid, from Urban Dwellers in the USA, this isn’t the cheapest reusable cup in the world, but I really enjoy using mine… it’s a tactile experience, it doesn’t give off as much flavor as straight plastic or stainless steel, it dissipates heat well so your drink becomes enjoyable in temperature quickly and it’s simply a great product to use and to look at, so it wins out as my favorite travel cup, and I have tons of them. KeepCup is probably the next closest thing, but at $15-$30 depending on where you buy one, it isn’t much different in price and that glass is just asking for a disaster at some point.