YETI YETI "Flask" Hip Flask 1 piece

The sip that comes once the cars are parked for the day

What is the YETI Flask? A flat stainless steel hip flask for 207 millilitres of cold spirits, sealed tight, with a funnel in the box. It doesn't hold temperature, it can't take hot drinks or anything fizzy, and it only comes out once the driving is done.

The YETI Flask is YETI's hip flask for the half hour at the end of a car day, when the engines are off and somebody unfolds two chairs. 207 millilitres of cold spirits, flat enough for an inside pocket, tight enough for the door bin. It's been in your jacket since the morning and you haven't noticed it once.

• Flat enough to forget about. 13.5 centimetres tall, 8.6 wide, 181 grams empty. It sits against your body in an inside pocket instead of sticking out. Eight hours into a show, you'll only just remember it's there.
• Closed means closed. Screwed down tight, YETI rates it 100 per cent leakproof. It can ride lying flat in the door bin, in a jacket on the passenger seat, in a bag between the camera and the keys. No stain on the leather, no puddle in the rucksack.
• One size, eleven colours. 207 millilitres is four decent sips, or four measures poured into a shot glass. There's no bigger version and no smaller one. So the buying decision comes down purely to colour, from bare Stainless to Rescue Red.

Detailing1's tip from the shop: The cap screws off completely. No magnet, no tether, nothing holding it. The moment you take a sip, there's a loose metal cap in your other hand, and on gravel or exposed-aggregate concrete it rolls off. Under a car, or into someone else's paintwork. Get into the habit of dropping the cap straight into your other jacket pocket, not setting it on the boot sill.

The second mistake doesn't cost you the cap, it costs you what's inside. In 18/8 stainless steel a spirit stays unchanged for about three days, then the flavour starts to turn. Fill it for the occasion, not for the season.

Fill it at home on the kitchen table not at the meet

You fill the YETI Flask before you leave, using the stainless steel funnel in the box and working over the sink, not later in the half-dark of a car park.

The opening is narrow so nothing spills when you pour. That's exactly why you need the funnel to fill it. 207 millilitres run through in about twenty seconds. Without it you end up with a sticky neck and a whisky ring on the worktop, and the rest of the evening smells like a bar rather than knocking-off time.

Then it disappears, and that's the real trick of the shape. Flat, rounded, 181 grams empty. In the inside pocket of a jacket you don't feel it getting into the car, getting out, or sitting down. It's the one piece of kit all day that you don't touch once until it's needed.

Mornings aren't its turn. Cars and Coffee at nine, the drive over in the dark, the cup in the holder, the first lap of the car park. The flask sits unopened in your jacket the whole time, doing precisely nothing. That's not a lack of purpose, that is the purpose. It waits all day for thirty minutes.

And then it's just after nine. The cover is over the bonnet, somebody unfolds two chairs, the cooler sits between them as a table. The shot glasses in their case are ready to pour into, so nobody drinks straight from the neck. That's the scene. It lasts half an hour and needs no more than 207 millilitres.

Cold and strong yes coffee and fizz no

Cold spirits go in the YETI Flask and nothing else. It doesn't hold temperature, and the maker explicitly rules out everything else.

Whisky, rum, fruit brandy, a cognac after the last lap. What goes in comes out the way it went in, and with a metal vessel that's not a given. Flylab deliberately ran a taste test rather than a temperature test and found no flavour memory. Hot water, a drop of washing-up liquid, done. No soapy note, no trace of the last fill.

The limits are firm, and the maker spells them out. Nothing hot. Nothing carbonated. No storing food in it. It can't keep things warm or cold, that's not what it's for. Microwaves and open flames are off the table. If you need temperature, grab the insulated bottle with the screw cap and leave the flask in the cupboard.

Then there are the two points that crop up in every review. The cap isn't attached to anything and goes missing easily, testers and buyers agree on that right across 271 reviews at the US retailer Scheels. And 181 grams empty is too much for anyone counting grams. If you drive a weekend car with no luggage, you won't notice. If you walk a long way, you will.

What it genuinely does well is stay shut. YETI rates it 100 per cent leakproof, and that's screwed down tight, all the way. With this product that isn't a footnote. A hip flask travels lying down. In a jacket on the passenger seat, in the door bin, in a bag between the camera and the charging cable. All places where a stain stays put and nobody ever gets it out.

The last limit isn't about the product. The Flask comes out once the driving is done, and that's not moralising, it's maths. In Germany the limit is zero for new drivers on probation and anyone under 21, and 0.5 for everyone else. A one-month driving ban costs more weekends than a flask opened too early could ever save. Passenger seat, finish line, campfire. Otherwise it stays shut.

After three seasons in a jacket pocket it looks brand new

The reason to buy a YETI Flask is never day one, it's day three hundred, when it still looks like you unboxed it last week.

The body is kitchen-grade 18/8 stainless steel, puncture- and rust-resistant. The coloured versions wear DuraCoat powder coating, which YETI promises won't chip, crack or fade, and which also gives enough grip that it doesn't slip out of cold fingers. Five-year warranty against defects in materials and workmanship.

Our Stainless one has two dents from a drop onto exposed-aggregate concrete after one season, a dull stripe from a zip and not a single chipped spot. It picks up scratches. Dents too. It doesn't stop working. Bare steel shows every mark, and that's exactly why some people choose it.

So who's it for. For anyone who sits next to a parked car in the evening more than three times a year and brings kit they don't strictly need. The folding table, the blanket in the boot, the cloth that's only for glass. Not for anyone after a hip flask as a gift that ends up in a drawer. For that it's too pricey and not decorative enough.

Looking after it takes two minutes. Dishwasher: flask on the top rack, cap and funnel in the cutlery basket, then leave everything open to dry. Screw it shut wet and put it away, and the next time you open it you're in for a nasty surprise. A rum we forgot in the glovebox over winter didn't survive that. The flask was fine. The rum tasted flat.

Choosing is easy, because there's only one size. Eleven colourways, that's it. Black, Navy and Black Forest Green are the quiet ones, Olive Camo and the three Upland Bird versions come from YETI's hunting line, and Rescue Red is the colour you'll find again in the grass by your chair once it's got dark. The rest of the range is in the category with all the insulated tumblers and coolers.

The point where this set really falls down, in the end, isn't the flask or the cap. It's the funnel. YETI doesn't sell it separately, it only comes with the Flask. Toss it in the drawer with the measuring jugs after the first fill and you'll never see it again, and from then on you're pouring half of it down the side. Put it back in the box and keep the box wherever the whisky lives.

Caring for the YETI Flask

Fill it over the sink using the funnel in the box. Cold spirits only, nothing hot, nothing carbonated. Turn the cap all the way and it's sealed.

Drink the contents within about three days, after that the flavour turns. Dishwasher: flask on the top rack, cap and funnel in the cutlery basket, then leave everything open to dry.

Notes: Not for the microwave, never over an open flame, don't store food in it. The cap isn't attached to anything, so pocket it as soon as you take a sip. Put the funnel back in the box, it isn't sold separately.