Why Ceramic Coffee Mugs Are The Best For Serving Hot Drinks

If you've ever gotten to your fourth or fifth sip of morning coffee and found it already unsatisfyingly lukewarm or even cold, you know the pain of not having the right mug. Coffee, tea, cozy hot chocolate on winter evenings — a crucial element of how delicious and comforting these drinks are is their warmth. Considering that most of our drinking vessels for these beverages are open on top, it can be quite difficult to keep them from chilling. That is, of course, unless we choose the right material for our mugs.

Mugs can be porcelain, metal, enamel, plastic, or glass, but the best material of all is ceramic. Sure, there are temperature-controlled mugs and stainless steel mugs designed to avoid premature cooling, but these can be quite pricey. For an everyday, accessible, and affordable option, ceramic mugs maintain heat the best, meaning your coffee or tea stays nice and toasty even with that open, ready-to-sip top. There are a few reasons why: One is that ceramic is more porous than other materials. When two materials meet — in this case the mug and the liquid — one of them will inevitably be cooler than the other, and then conduction happens, in which the cooler material ends up causing both to lose heat. Porous ceramic has air pockets that create a boundary of heat insulation to slow this down. Ceramic's glazed finish also helps trap heat.

Beyond conduction, there's also a process called convection that happens when a hot beverage meets a cooler mug. This is yet another way that the liquid and the mug exchange heat, causing both surfaces eventually drop in temperature. As a material, ceramic remains hotter than something like glass and has better insulation. Another benefit is that ceramic doesn't tend to take on the flavors and aromas of other things the way something like stainless steel does, so you don't have to worry about old dish soap or lingering oils from your last coffee that have now spoiled.

There are extra things you can actively do to even further enhance ceramic's heat-maintaining quality too. You can preheat the mug by filling it with nearly boiling water, letting it sit for a couple minutes, and then emptying it before pouring in any different types of coffee or tea. Additionally, you can keep your mug covered whenever you're not actively drinking, essentially shutting down the beverage's surface area getting exposed to cooler air. If your cup doesn't come with a lid, you can easily pick up a silicone cover that will help the ceramic trap in all of that heat.