Review on 🧹 Contigo ACY100A04 Brush Set: Versatile Cleaning Solution in One Size, Elegant Black Design by John Koch

I love my Contigo travel mug but had to replace the lid a few months ago after leaving it in my bag and leaving town for a long time. No matter how many cotton swabs I used to scrape the "sipping" part of the lid, brown coffee residue kept coming out. So disgusting I couldn't use that lid again! I bought a new one and decided I needed to buy some kind of brush to keep it clean. After a long search, this seemed to be the only way. The biggest bottle brush is just huge. The circumference is about the size of a toilet brush, but it gets softer and softer. It's thin enough to wash a glass beer bottle if desired. I could probably do without it since I can easily stick a sponge in a aluminum cup, but this brush makes it quick and easy: I just dip it in hot, soapy water and swirl it around a few times. The largest brush is used to clean the straw on some Contigo water bottles. In other words, it's pretty useless for a travel mug. My friend found a use for it around the house, but there really wasn't a need for it. The smallest brush is also double-sided. At one end are short, stiff bristles that are about the circumference of the widest end of a cotton swab and are about 1 inch (2.5 cm) long. The other end has softer and longer bristles around the circumference and length of the tutsi roll. This is a money brush: I brush each part of the lid well with the softer end, then dig a sip hole with the hard end. The brushes come with detailed instructions on all the different parts you can clean, but all you really have to do is plug in the brush and get to work. (Water splashes all over the place, be careful.) It works like a charm and I no longer worry about nasty bacteria growing on the lid. That being said, there are a few complaints: First, these brushes are quite expensive, and it's inconvenient to buy a set of three when I really only need one. But since the Contigo cup was so expensive to begin with, it was worth it. And it's cheaper than replacing caps! Secondly, despite all due care, the Contigo lid smells like coffee and imparts a slightly coffeey taste to everything you drink from it. I like drinking Earl Gray tea after dinner, but not from this mug. (Although not everyone minds the coffee aftertaste, my friend uses her mug for everything and claims she never notices.) Using it on Earl Gray also preserves the flavor but only contaminates the next cup of coffee. . But the taste of coffee has not disappeared. After all, those brushes would be completely unnecessary if Contigo made it easy to clean the lids in the first place! I understand that this is a sacrifice I make for a coffee mug that you can pour milk and sugar in, close and shake vigorously to mix everything without spilling a single drop, but I wish Contigo would do something better invent. Oh wait a minute! You have: I've just seen the latest and greatest mug on sale and the lid has a latch at the top that you can use to open it for a better cleaning of the inside. I should have just waited and bought this mug, it would cost about the same as the mug I have now plus these brushes! Verdict: It does what it's supposed to do but comes with extra brushes and is an expensive cleaner for an already expensive mug. On the other hand, I will not use anything but Contigo for the rest of my life!