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I think we can all agree that Hydro Flasks are just about the coolest way to take your drink with you.
Carrying them by hand is a cinch with the strap, but the challenge is how to take them with you on a bike trip.
A regular bike bottle will fit fine in a bottle cage. Trouble is that Hydro Flasks come in all different diameters, which makes it really tricky to find a ’standard’ bike bottle cage that they will fit in. Plus, many of the cheap metal bottle cages will end up scratching the color off the body of your flask – not good!
So, I’ve done some research to track down the best available solutions for carrying your Hydro Flask on your bike.
I thought that the only solution to carrying a Hydro Flask on a bike ride would be to hook the strap over the handlebar. That’s fine, but it tends to swing around as you pedal and clatter off your hand and the handlebars.
Thankfully, there are some much better alternatives that won’t involve damaging your knuckles, or your bike, or your Flask! Let’s take a look.
Topeak produces a fantastic range of bicycle gear and this is a very welcome addition to their range.
On the face of it, it’s a standard bottle cage, but take a peek under the hood and you’ll see that it’s the perfect holder for your Hydro Flask.
Firstly, it’s made from engineering-grade plastic and rubber so that it’s durable, strong, and will also cuddle your flask when it’s inside. It also has fixings to mount it to the normal cage braze-ons on your bike down tube.
Where it really excels though is its size versatility. This thing will expand and contract to fit a wide range of different bottle sizes. Originally designed for Starbucks tumblers, take a look at the comments from (delighted) purchasers and you’ll see that they used the Topeak cage for a wide variety of cups, flasks, and other things (such as Bluetooth speakers).
The cage has three areas of adjustment so you can find the perfect fit for your Flask: (1) the height can be extended for tall flasks, (2) the base can be widened, and (3) the top strap can be easily adjusted as well. All these allow flasks of up to 3.07” or 78mm diameter to be used.
I’ve recommended the Accmor bottle holder many, many times and it’s not hard to see why!
First up, this will take Flasks (and anything else) with a diameter of between 2.5-3.3” (64-83mm).
The really exciting thing about the Accmor though is that you can (almost literally) put it anywhere on your bike. Take a look at the pictures on Amazon and you’ll see that it doesn’t have the standard bottle cage fixings for the downtube. Instead, it has a quick-release clamp. This means that you can lock it onto any place on your bike where it and your Flask will fit, and at any angle.
Handlebars? Check. Seatpost? Check. Top tube? Check. Halfway down the front left-hand fork? Yup. Check.
That means that you can have more than one of these little beauties on your bike. And, if you get bored of having your Flask stored in one location on your bike, then you can quickly and easily swap it over to a new place.
If you’re toting one of the large varieties of Hydro Flask (such as the Wide Mouth or Growler) then we need to break out the big guns.
The Any Bottle Cage from BiKase is a simple-to-use bottle holder with an adjustable strap that can be used to load Flasks of up to 4.75” or 120mm.
It has two different fixing options to attach it to your bike. Either the rugged anti-slip Velcro strap, which will fix on to most bars of up to 3.25” diameter. Or you can leave the strap off and attach the cage direct to your downtube braze-ons.
The ratchet strap can be easily adjusted to accommodate various diameters of Flask or bottle by twisting the knob on the front. So you can go from daytime chilled-drinks-in-your-Hydro-Flask to nighttime taking-a-nice-bottle-of-red-to-that-little-BYO-restaurant-down-at-the-seafront.
Our Hydro Flasks are very special, and we want to take good care of them. Often cuddling and stroking them lovingly and whispering to them how much we adore them.
Normally, this is fine, but on a bike it’s more difficult because we need to concentrate on silly things like using our hands to steer and brake.
For that reason, a bottle cage is an essential part of our cycling wardrobe, allowing us to do all of that steering and braking stuff, and still making sure that our Hydro Flask feels safe and loved.
