Congrats, you have a Hydro Flask (or are thinking about getting one soon)!  It's hard enough deciding which Hydro Flask bottle to get, but have you also thought about which lid you'll use?

Hydro Flask has four (4) lids available right now on Amazon: Flex Cap, Flex Sip, Flex Straw, and Straw Lid.

In this video, we go over how each one works, what we like and don't like about each design, and how we use them.

If you'd rather read through the review than watch the video, see the written summary below.

​Hydro Flask has four lid options, and you might be asking which lid is best for you. We've reviewed and tested each lid extensively, and here's what we think.  Links are in the description.

Which one is best for you?  Well, it depends on how you want to use it, but we can tell you how we like to use them.

• We like using a Flex Cap with a SplashPro in our largest bottles when we're doing something active. We find it easier to get smooth pours and bigger gulps of water while also keeping water out of your face.
• For sipping at work or in the car, we like using Flex Straw with a FlavorFuze Straw infuser to add some flavor.
• And for coffee and tea in the morning, we prefer to use the Flex Sip lid with a smaller Hydro Flask like a 16oz.
• The only lid we recommend against using is the original straw lid. If you want a straw lid, just get the Flex Straw.

​Also works with a ​FlavorFuze Straw Infuser

Many people search Google for things like:

• How to make loose leaf tea in a Hydro Flask?
• Can you make hot tea in a Hydro Flask?
• Tea infuser for Hydro Flask
• Tea strainer for Hydro Flask
• Tea steeper for Hydro Flask
• Making tea in Hydro Flask
• Hot tea in Hydro Flask
• Loose leaf tea Hydro Flask
• Brewing tea in a Hydro Flask

We get a lot of questions about this too.  Hydro Flasks are primarily used for water, but plenty of people would love it if they could have different flavors, like fruit infused water, coffee, or tea.  In particular, tea is what we're focusing on today.

And unlike some concerns with plastic and even aluminum, from what we have found, stainless steel won't leach chemicals or pollutants into your beverage.  Flaske has a great article covering more details about the question of "Are Stainless Steel Water Bottles Safe to Drink From."  So does Elemental Bottles, where they recommend looking for bottles that are either made from #304 or 18/8 stainless steel (Hydro Flasks are made from 18/8).  We highly recommend checking these articles out if you have any other questions or concerns.

You should also consider what type of Hydro Flask you want to use, since that can have an effect on which type of tea infuser will work best.

Now that we know putting hot tea in stainless steel bottles like Hydro Flasks is safe, let's look at the best ways to do it!

I'll be 35 years old tomorrow, and I've had a soda habit since I was a kid.  Growing up, it wasn't uncommon for me to drink 2, 3, or even 4 sodas per day.  As you might guess, I've also been overweight most of my life too, which is certainly not a coincidence.  But at 35, I finally kicked my soda habit.  I'm down almost 10 pounds this year, and best of all, I feel like what I'm doing is sustainable.

​Here's what's working for me, and hopefully it'll help you on your journey too.

Google Trends - Searches for "Low Sugar" for the Previous Five (5) Years

Of all the ways that consumers regularly ingest sugar, sugary beverages are the primary culprits.  These include:

• Sodas 
• Sports drinks
• Fruit juices
• Energy drinks
• Coffee or tea with added sugar

According to the American Heart Association, the maximum recommended sugar intake is 36 grams of sugar per day for men.  For women, it's 25 grams.  Each one of the drink examples above is either right at those limits or way above them, all from one drink.

Seeing how bottle and can sizes vary, it's also interesting to look at the sugar concentration as shown below.

​One of the more surprising realizations for most people is how most fruit juices really aren't good for you.  Sure they provide some benefits like vitamins and other nutrients, so in that way they are better than sodas.  But the sugar content per ounce for Minute Maid orange juice is essentially the same as a Coke!

There are plenty of people smarter than me that study this topic for their day jobs, so I'll leave it to them to provide additional details and research about sugar and health.  Here are some of the more helpful articles we've read.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Guidance on Added Sugars

WebMD: How Sugar Affects Your Body

American Heart Association: How Much Sugar is too Much?

Healthline: 11 Reasons Why Too Much Sugar is Bad for You

And keep in mind that diet sodas aren't free-and-clear of problems either.  There is growing evidence that drinks with artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose are bad for you as well, as discussed here.

After reading articles about how sugar essentially acts like a poison and how sodas in particular are "empty calories" that provide no nutritional benefit, I knew it was in my best interest to quit.

Each time I tried to change, I would start off a few days or weeks without sodas, but then I would slip and start drinking them again.  The most common backfiring strategies I used were:

• Comforting: "I had a rough day.  A soda will make me feel better."
• Celebrating: "I had a good day.  I'll have a soda to celebrate." (ironic, right?).
• Rationalizing Now vs Future: "I'll have one soda today and get back on the soda diet starting tomorrow."  Or, "I have many more years to develop better habits, so one soda today won't kill me."

The reason that these backfiring strategies worked on me was that I hadn't determined what my real motivation was yet.  I said I wanted to lose weight, and that can work for many people.  But the problem, for me, is that I'm fairly comfortable in my own skin already.  Also, I have always been overweight so it's not easy for me to truly realize how much better I might feel to achieve a healthy weight.  It was more abstract.

But as I got older, something happened.  I started thinking more about how little time we truly have, and how chronic diseases that we always read about and learned of back in school are very real.  And then someone very close to me passed away.  He smoked most of his life, and though he was finally able to quit a few years ago, by then the damage was done.  He developed cancer and passed away earlier this year.  He urged me to improve my habits now and to learn from his life experiences.  This changed my motivational focus.

Honestly, I've used all of the strategies listed above to varying degrees.  But the ones that helped me the most are #1 and #4.  By drinking more water, I've been able to feel fuller and am less likely to drive to the store for a soda.  And by using a flavored drink alternative, I can still take a break from "boring" water each day and satisfy my need for flavor.

This is what's working for me.

Need another bottle?  Check out Hydro Flask's Amazon store.

With the every-growing popularity of reusable water bottles like Hydro Flasks, more and more people are wondering what is the best way to keep their bottle close at hand on the road? 

But which Hydro Flasks fit in cup holders, and do you need a cup holder adapter for your car?  This can be a tougher question to answer than you might initially think because of the sheer number of cup holder designs and water bottle sizes.

​And while this post is primarily focused on Hydro Flasks, it also applies to similar reusable bottles like Nalgenes, YETIs, Klean Kanteens, Iron Flasks, Thermoflasks, Takeyas, Simple Moderns, Fifty/Fifty, and many others that are on the market today.

​Before thinking about which Hydro Flask will work for you, we recommend taking a closer look at your car

First, measure your cup holder's diameter and save it for later.

​Then, determine if you have a "standard" or "non-standard" cup holder according to the descriptions below.  This can have a major impact on whether cup holder adapters would fit securely in your vehicle, which opens the possibility of using larger bottles.

Now that you know whether you have a "standard" or "non-standard" cup holder, it's time to think about what size bottle you'd like to have.  Keep in mind that the "narrow", "wide", or "oversized" designations below refer to the bottle diameter, not the mouth diameter.  For example, you can have a 20oz Wide Mouth bottle that is categorized under "Narrow" because it is only 2.91" diameter.

The lists below are based on specifications listed on Hydro Flasks website and some that we independently verified.  If you already have a bottle, we recommend measuring its base yourself to make 100% sure that you have the correct measurement.  If your bottle has a protective boot, then you should also include this in the width measurement (they generally add around 0.25" to the diameter, but it varies based on the boot manufacturer).

The mug measurements are for the diameter of the body, not including the handle.

The links in the lists of bottles go to the product pages on Amazon.

There's a lot of information here, so to make it easier, we've developed this flowchart to help you sort through it all.  You just need to know (1) whether you have a "standard" or "non-standard" cup holder and (2) the diameter of your cup holder compared the diameter of your desired bottle.

Disclaimer: The information provided above has been fact-checked against Hydro Flask and Amazon websites (and with some in-person measurements).  The flowchart below is based on our experience and observations.  However, please note that we cannot 100% guarantee compatibility of any resulting purchases you make because there are literally hundreds of thousands of different bottle/cup holder/adapter combinations once you add them all up.  But hey, that's what return policies are for!

With that said, let's dive right in!

​If you determined that you need an adapter, then check out the adapters listed below.  Unlike back in 2015 when BottlePro launched, there are plenty of cup holder adapter options on the market nowadays.  Here are some of our favorites.