Words Liam Friary
Images Cameron Mackenzie
RRP 500ml $69 | 700ml $79
Distributor Southern Approach

In case you haven’t noticed – stainless bottles and tumblers have taken over lately. I suppose some of that is trends and fashion, but you can’t argue with how these bottles maintain temperature.

CamelBak – whom have a solid rep for their hydration products – has now brought out a stainless-steel bottle, with their Podium range. It boasts 14 hours of cold liquids inside the double-wall vacuum- insulated stainless vessel, and it’s available in small and large 500ml and 700ml varieties.

As the summers get warmer, keeping your water cooler makes sense – especially for a longer ride. I mean, who likes drinking warm water whilst pedaling away in the heat of the day?! And I would argue that a full bottle of lukewarm water is barely touched after an hour or two of riding in beating sun. Insulated bottles aren’t anything new, but previously they were typically double-walled plastic bottles with a foam liner or similar. These vacuum- insulated or double-walled construction bottles have been adopted from the outdoor market. There is a downside to these bottles, though, and the clear standout is the added weight and slightly reduced capacity (due to double wall) when carrying them on your bike. The upside is that your water stays cooler for longer and one would argue that these bottles will have a longer lifespan than the plastic ones, too. Then there’s the fact that if the water is cold, it’s more likely to be consumed and thus benefit the rider.

Drinking from the Podium steel bottle is certainly a novelty and not what we’ve become used to over decades of carrying bottles on our rides. On the first ride, getting any liquid out of the bottle required a change up – the action is now tip and suck instead of tip and squeeze. Are you still with me?! It does take a little bit of getting used to, but it comes right rather quickly and the benefit is that the flow rate is very good. The bottle uses a long blue rubber straw going all the way down the bottle. Counterintuitively, you don’t use the straw to suck the water up – rather it’s the return path for air to enter the bottle as you suck fluid out the nozzle with the bottle inverted.

I have had a few warmer rides with the Podium packed up with ice cubes, and I can say that sipping cold water is far better than lukewarm. The ice cubes were no longer in the bottle past the hour mark, but the water remained cold. CamelBak doesn’t intend for the bottle to be used for hot liquids but I think it would well work with warm tea on a cold winter’s day.

Besides keeping liquids cool, the reason we like metal water bottles so much is because of the taste of the water that comes out of them. For me, there is difference in the taste, but it wasn’t that dramatic. There’s a slight rattle when placed in a metal cage on the toughest terrain, but it’s not there in regular plastic ones. The bottle sits super tight with a metal cage, which is a good and bad thing – it’s secure but hard to get out. Side loader cages were very good for these bottles. If you’re riding on off-road terrain, such as gravel or dirt, the mouthpiece does gather grit and grime on it, however, this could be replaced with a dirt cap – basically a cap over the mouthpiece to keep it from collecting debris. The bottle is super durable and dishwasher safe. In time, like most bottles, it will scratch up. It costs and weighs more than regular plastic bottles, so that’s a worthy consideration. I like the Podium bottle because of its versatility to hold water and keep it cold in warmer weather. It helps that it’s a nice bottle for daily tasks, such as going to the gym and working in the office, but also fits in a bottle cage.