All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Every morning, I used to engage in a deranged, illogical coffee routine. I'd pour coffee all the way up to the brim of a very large mug. I'd drink about a third of it before it went cold. Then, I'd top it off—again, all the way to the brim—with hot coffee. I repeated this process until the Chemex was finished and there was a final two-thirds full cup of cold coffee left. That two-thirds either got dumped, or microwaved. Sometimes I wouldn't get through the microwaved coffee fast enough, so I'd nuke it again! It was a near endless loop of pouring and reheating.
My friend Adam found this ritual insufferable and painful to endure. So, he instituted a rule that when I'm in his kitchen, I use a small cup. Everyone else drinks coffee out of the large mugs, and I have my own designated little tea cup filled with a mere three ounces of coffee at a time.
At first, I hated it. Comfort, for me, at its very core, is wrapping both of your hands around a large, warm ceramic bucket of caffeinated sludge. I wanted a mug I couldn't support with one hand. I wanted a vat. I wanted a well of coffee. Only then would I be cozy, satisfied, and caffeinated.
It's not my fault. Society was pushing me toward large mugs. Forty years ago it seems like the standard size for a mug was around four to eight ounces, and now nary a checkout aisle of a TJ Maxx features one less than an 14 ounces. The halls of Williams Sonoma are filled with big ol' guys.
A former Pottery Barn employee who wishes to remain off the record told me that large mug fever began in the '90s. In its heyday during the housing boom, Pottery Barn's design aesthetic was literally about finding vintage items and making them twenty to thirty percent bigger. It was the era of big houses, and lots of stuff to fill them with. It was the era of Friends, where the coffee shop was king and the huge mugs were the central props. There was even a real coffee shop in Manhattan called Big Cup.
As much as it pains me to admit wrongdoing, I realized after a few years drinking out of the small mug at my friend's house that it was the better way. A small mug didn't mean I had to drink less coffee. It just meant I could actually finish the coffee in my cup before refilling it with hot coffee from my insulated carafe. It just made more sense.
And, it seems like the tides are turning back toward the small mug right along with me. My coworker Andrew was converted to the small mug lifestyle when his boyfriend Bill insisted they serve coffee only out of little four-ounce mugs at his restaurant, MeMe's Diner—and I've noted stylish cortado-sized mugs at other breakfast-focused restaurants around New York City as well.
I asked coffee expert Nick Cho of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters about his thoughts on the big mug situation. He equated the decades-long preference for large mugs to a specifically American ethos of more is more. He noted that our preference for large mugs at home was likely related to Starbucks normalizing giant sizes in their takeaway cups. (Don't forget that Starbucks took the macchiato, which is by nature a small drink, and made it very large and very packed with caramel.) And finally, he went there: He equated the desire for large mug sizes with toxic masculinity. If you want to be one of those powerful guys being dudes, you've got to suck down not a normal amount of coffee, but a giant amount.
But, he told me, one of the tenets of Third Wave coffee was to work against that large sizing. To emphasize drinking a small, measured amount of something expertly made, rather than doing what I was doing, which was pouring muddy water down my throat in massive quantities.
So, I suggest you do as the Italians do. Do as the hip bearded coffee guys do. Drink coffee out of small cups, not big ones. And please understand that I am not telling you to drink less coffee. Just refill your little cup more so it's always the optimal drinking temperature. Which little cup, you ask? Below, you'll find a few small mugs that I think are cute.
(Of course, the term small mug is rather vague. For reference, espresso cups are usually around 3 to 4 ounces. And the huge mugs that are fairly standard theses days are anywhere from 12 to 16 ounces. So, the sweet spot for small mug territory in my opinion is from 6 to 8 ounces, but I've also included some 3 to 5 ounce options here in case you want to go really small. I'll work down in size with my recommendations to ease you into the small mug life.)
