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Reviews > Cook Gear > Cooking Accessories > NALGENE Straight-Side Wide-Mouth Jars > Owner Review by Roger CaffinOwner Review - NALGENE Straight Sided Jars Roger Caffin 27-Feb-2006 
Biographical information
Backpacking BackgroundI started bushwalking at 14, took up rock climbing at University with the girl who became my wife and walking partner, and later we took up ski touring and canyoning. We prefer long hard trips by ourselves: a week in Australia, two months in Europe/UK. We prefer fast and light in unfrequented trackless country. We are out for at least three months a year. We have reduced our pack weights from 18 - 20 kg (40 - 45 lb) to ~12 kg (26 lb), including food, for week-long trips. I designed and made much of our lightweight gear. I am also the maintainer of the Australian aus.bushwalking FAQ web site www.bushwalking.org.au/FAQ/. | |||||||||||||||
| Manufacturer: | Nalge Nunc International | Also commonly known as NALGENE | |||
| Web Sites: | www.NALGENElabware.com | www.nalgene-outdoor.com | |||
| Product Name: | 'Straight Sided Jars' or 'Straight Sided Wide Mouth Jars' | ||||
| Part No | Capacity | Weight | Dimensions | ||
| Model: | 2118-0001 | 1 oz (30 ml) | 16 g (0.56 oz) | 46 mm D x 46 mm H (1.8" x 1.8") | |
| Model: | 2118-0002 | 2 oz (60 ml) | 22 g (0.78 oz) | 57 mm D x 48 mm H (2.2" x 1.9") | |
| Model: | 2118-0004 | 4 oz (125 ml) | 41 g (1.45 oz) | 75 mm D x 74 mm H (2.9" x 2.9") | |
| Model: | 2118-0008 | 8 oz (250 ml) | 52 g (1.83 oz) | 75 mm D x 117 mm H (2.9" x 4.6") | |
| Jar material: | Translucent polypropylene | Also available in Lexan as series 2116 | |||
| Lid material: | Translucent or opaque white polypropylene for both series | ||||
| Temperature range | 0 C to 135 C (32 F to 275 F) | Lexan: -135 C to 135 C (-211 F to 275 F) | |||
| Year of manufacture: | Mine are from the 70s or 80s, but the models are still current | ||||
| MSRP: | US $1.33, US $1.45, US $2.30 and US $2.83 respectively | ||||
The name of the company is 'Nalge', but it seems everyone refers to the gear as 'NALGENE'. The company now uses 'NALGENE' for their outdoors range. The jars are variously referred to as 'Straight-Sided Jars', 'straight-side wide-mouth jars', or even as 'PP, Round, Screw Cap', depending on which catalog or web site I look in. The part number (2118) is always reliable.
These jars were initially designed and sold as leak-proof laboratory storage jars. A taper seal between the cap and the neck of the bottle (shown below) is used to guarantee no leaks; it is common to much of the Nalge product range. The two smaller units listed here have different translucent lids, while the two larger sizes have a different white lid which is common to both sizes.
Even larger sizes of the jars are available (below), up to 32 oz (1 L), but they 'are not recommended for liquid storage on the trail'. They are good for storing other things of course, and I sometimes have used the smaller of the two as a 'rehydration container' (ie for pre-soaking).
The Nalge laboratory catalog describes the polypropylene (PP) used in the 2118 series as "similar to polyethylene, but each unit of the chain has a methyl group attached. It is translucent, autoclavable and has no known solvent at room temperature. ... It offers the best stress-crack resistance of the polyolefins. ... (it is) brittle at 0 C and may crack or break if dropped from benchtop height (at 0 C)." However, the nalgene-outdoor.com web site specifies the minimum temperature for PP as "Min. temperature: -40°C/121°F". Make sense of that. However, at more common 'room' temperatures the material is slightly flexible and seems pretty shatter-proof to me. My PP jars have certainly had a lot of testing on our trips with no accidents.
The Lexan 2116 series is identical to the 2118 series in size and shape, but Lexan can go to far colder temperatures (-135 C / -211 F) than any walker ever wants to play with. However, note that while the Lexan jars can go colder, they come with polypropylene lids, and the lids are only rated down to 0 C/32 F (or -40°C/121°F). I admit this seems strange. Of course, if I should want real cryogenic gear (for liquid nitrogen), Nalge sell that too. :-)
I first came across these jars when I was working as a Research Scientist in a government laboratory. I regret to have to admit that I collected a few leftover unused ones for personal (bushwalking) use because I was tired of having butter and jam leak out of other containers into my pack. As will be explained below, they worked so well that I made sure I had several of every size. I also collected a number of the larger-sized NALGENE bottles, some of which were suitable as water bottles, and others of which were eminently suited for use as fuel bottles.
The seal on these jars has to be good for them to be used as laboratory-ware. The picture to the right illustrating the seal and the cap is taken from the NALGENE Labware catalog with acknowledgement. (I am not going to cut one of my jars in half for a photo!) It shows the tapered sealing ring in the top circle and the robust buttress threads in the lower ring. This is not 'consumer-grade' stuff.
I discussed my use of these jars for walking with the product manager for the local NALGENE lab-ware distributor. I recommended to him that he try placing some of these jars and bottles with the local gear shops. Within about 6 months I started to see NALGENE jars and bottles in our gear shops in Australia. Within a few years of this happening the Nalge company decided to get into the global outdoors market in a serious manner. I do not know whether this was entirely due to the Australian experience or whether some walkers in America had also tried the idea, although the nalgene-outdoors.com web site does say "But there were rumors floating around ... stories about scientists taking the smaller, more convenient bottles out of the lab and using them on hikes and excursions."
I have been using the same set of NALGENE jars for about 15 years now. I prefer the PP ones over the Lexan ones as they seem a bit more flexible and robust, but this is a very subjective impression. The Lexan ones may be just as robust, but I haven't used them in the field very much. We are walking every weekend or more often, so they have certainly had a lot of field testing. The smaller two sizes are just right for enough butter and jam for my wife and me on day walks (see pictures), while the larger ones suit longer walks. The largest bottle can hold pretty well all of a 'standard size' bottle of jam and all of a 250 g (1/2 lb) packet of butter. OK, I do have to give the butter a bit of a push to get the last bits in, but they will fit! We have also used the larger two sizes on our two-month long trips in Europe. (Mental picture of the author pouring jam out of a glass bottle into one of these in the middle of a small shop while puzzled locals try to ignore us ...)
Nalge claims the seal in the lid is leak-proof. I have tested this with water, butter and jam, at temperatures ranging from -15 C (5 F) to well over 40 C (104 F), and (with a special exception) they have never leaked. I have also tested them by taking them through height changes of up to 1000 m (3000 ft) as we went up and down mountains, with the same result. They don't leak. Considering the way melted butter can migrate out of some containers, I consider that pretty good.
Mind you, that does not mean they are always easy to open. The taper seal can be done up very tight, and if I screw the lid up 'tightly' my wife sometimes finds it too hard to unscrew. She then gives it to me (with imprecations), and sometimes I find it pretty hard to undo as well. Losing lots of altitude can put significant pressure on the lid and this also can make it hard to unscrew at times. However, I have never been unable to unscrew any of these lids by hand.
The PP plastic is a shade 'soft', and this means it can be scratched. The insides of all our bottles show myriads of little scratches from where we have extracted butter and jam. Using a bread knife with a rounded tip does not threaten the plastic too much, but I found the sharp edge and especially the sharp tip of a Benchmade 530 knife I was testing for BackpackGearTest was too much. After a couple of scrapes, I was not game to put this knife inside the jars. On the other hand, Lexan knives present absolutely no problem at all.
Some of the lids are quite small, while others are larger in diameter. Considerable force can be generated inside a larger lid when it is done up tightly. This applies more to the very large lids on 2 L (1 qt) water bottles not reviewed here. I have noticed that a couple of those lids appear to have small stress-cracks at the edge of the taper seal. None have actually leaked, but the potential is there. I suspect the cracking may have occurred during winter ski-touring trips when the lids have frozen on overnight. The PP is not rated for below freezing. I have not seen this happen on the smaller lids on the jars being reviewed here.
I have also had the body of a large rectangular NALGENE PP water bottle (2007-0064) crack once. The exact cause was not known, but I suspect it was a combination of two things: very cold ski-touring and being bashed around inside a canyon pack with a whole lot of climbing gear. The bottle had been in heavy use for at least 10 years when this happened. I have not seen this sort of cracking happen with any of these little jars.
| Likes | Dislikes | |
|---|---|---|
| Light weight | The lids can get very tight | |
| Reliable seals | ||
| A range of sizes | ||
| Not too expensive |
Yes. Fortunately they are still available in most of our local gear shops, so obviously they have proved to be popular with many other walkers as well.