Want It Wednesday - The Specialized Purist Water Bottle

The first step is admitting you have a problem...

Sometimes we want the BIG things in our Want it Wednesday posts, and sometimes we only lack only the little things.  Today, I’m jonesing for the most basic, but also most essential, of bike needs: the water bottle.

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We have waaay too many water bottles.  It is amazing how you pick them up – a free one with a bike purchase, a swag give-away at a local race.  We’ve even taken to buying a water bottle from local bike shops we visit on our travels as a way to remember our vacations and support the little guys.

The SubCulture Purist

In fact, it was one of those buys that leads me to today’s Want it Wednesday – we stopped in Salida, Colorado last summer on our way out to Crested Butte and quickly found our way to SubCulture Cyclery.  It is a small shop with an awesome selection of bikes per square inch, and a pretty cool logo on their water bottles. 

Since coming home, I’ve found myself reaching for the SubCulture bottle rather than grabbing a random bottle from our collection.  Why?  The top is bigger, which makes it easier to maneuver while riding, and you get a good squirt of water.  The top also comes apart for easy cleaning (I don’t care how many brushes you have, you never get all of the gunk out of a normal water bottle valve).  Still, until I read a recent water bottle review in VeloNews, I figured I just stumbled on a cool, one-off bottle.

Turns out, I stumbled on the Specialized Purist, and it has even more benefits than the great valve.  The bottle is lined with silicon dioxide which, as the website goes to great pains to explain, is a naturally occurring compound that works as an amazing lining.  The Velo test pitted the Purist (and other bottles) against grape juice, cabernet sauvignon, spaghetti sauce, and Gatorade.  The bottles were left for months before they were cleaned and used.  The overall winner: the Purist. 

The one problem about the Purist?  You actually have to go looking for it and buy it (Velo quotes a price of $11, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t pay that for the SubCulture Cyclery bottle).  To be honest, it is difficult to pull out the wallet and buy such a simple thing, particularly when you pick up so many for free.  Just last weekend I came home with two new freebie bottles from my team’s winter party. 

So, what I really need is for race promoters to start buying the Purist for all of their give-aways so I can replace the 20 or so bottles I have accumulated over the past five years…