Can You Put Soda in a Yeti Tumbler Cup or Bottle?

Are you able to put soda in your Yeti tumbler cup or bottle or will it cause damage to your Yeti and make it taste bad or leech metals into your drink?

If you can put soda in a Yeti will it keep it carbonated or will the soda lose all it's bubbles and fizziness?

Yeti's are great at keeping water ice cold all day long, but if you're drinking soda instead of water it's important to know if you can put soda in your Yeti and what precautions you should take (if any).

I personally love my energy drinks and while I'm trying to cut down on them I wanted to know if I could put them in my Yeti cup to keep them cold.

Yeti say it's fine to put soda in your Yeti Rambler cup or bottle. The airtight bottle will keep your soda fizzy for a long time while the tumblers are not airtight and may release some gases. Research suggest soda should NOT affect the stainless steel but some people claim their Yeti imparts flavor into their soda.

Ultimately there is not definite answer here. However, I did do a fair amount of research into the pros and cons of using soda in your Yeti and some things you should be aware of.

See the latest price of Yeti Tumbler Cups at Yeti.com
(or compare to prices of Yeti Tumbler Cups at Amazon)

What Are The Risks of Putting Soda in a Hydro Flask?

What exactly is it about soda that makes people worried about drinking it in their Yeti? What potential risks are there that could cause and issue and is there actually anything you should be worried about?

Well there are a few reasonable concerns people have:

Carbonation and Expansion Breaking Your Bottle

Soda contains carbon dioxide which is dissolved into the drink. This is what creates it's fizziness.

When placed in a bottle the carbon dioxide wants to expand into gas and it does so as much as it can. This creates pressure inside the bottle.

Some people are concerned that this pressure will be too much for Yeti cups or bottles to handle and that the inside may get damaged or it may ruin the insulation. But this isn't the case.

Yeti tumbler cups and bottles can easily handle the pressure created for carbonated beverages like soda or sparkling water. You may get a surge of pressure release as you open your bottle but it is highly unlikely to cause any damage.

One of the things you do need to be aware of though is that a big buildup of pressure in your Yeti bottle can cause the lid to get stuck.

This is more likely to be an issue if you leave your soda in there for a very long time and it starts to ferment and go off. As it does this gasses are built up creating an upwards pressure on the lid. If your lid does get stuck then here are 12 ways to get your Yeti lid unstuck.

You also need to be careful when removing the lid of your Yeti bottle if you have soda in it. Below is a story of what happened to someone with a similar brand Hydro Flask bottle.

Check out the story below from this Facebook post:

When I had sparkling water in mine, the lid popped off a good 15 feet when I turned it to open it and the inner ring also popped out of it.

The Yeti Tumbler Cups are not completely leak proof or air tight so they shouldn't build up this sort of pressure. This is only a concern with the Yeti bottles.

Acidity Corroding The Stainless Steel

A lot of people don't realise that soda's are quite acidic. This is covered up by the fact they are so sweet.

But then usually have a PH level ranging for 2.38-3.70 for most types of sodas. This means they can be as much as 100,000 times more acidic than water. That's a lot!

So soda is actually highly corrosive and some people may worry that this could lead to the soda corroding the stainless steel Yeti and causing it to rust or leech chemicals into your drink.

There's no clear evidence that this happens and wikipedia states that stainless steel resists corrosions of most acids including the phosphoric acid found in coca-cola:

All types of stainless steel resist attack from phosphoric acid and nitric acid at room temperature.

I looked at this in more detail in my article on do Yeti tumbler cups and bottles rust?

Build Up of Residue

Leaving soda in your Yeti can cause a build up of residue on the inside walls of your Yeti. This can be really hard to clean off without scrubbing it really good with an abrasive cleaner.

When I worked in a cafe they used to soak our stainless steel milk jugs Coca-Cola overnight to help remove stains and milk buildup. I would then have to clean them out and it would take A LOT of scrubbing with a mild abrasive sponge.

I can imagine that cleaning a Yeti tumbler or bottle could be really difficult as the opening isn't really big enough to fit your entire hand in down to the bottom. Click here to learn how to clean a Yeti tumbler.

What Does Yeti Say About Soda In Their Bottles?

Yeti Cooler Logo

You may be curious what Yeti has to say about their tumblers and bottles and whether they say it's safe to put soda in them.

Well you're in luck. Yeti clearly state on their Yeti Rambler FAQ page:

The tumblers will keep your soda, beer, wine, smoothie, or mixed drinks ice cold.

While they don't specifically state “yes it is ok to put soda in your Yeti tumbler” I think it's pretty clear that they consider it to be fine.

There is also this Amazon question where they ask if you can put carbonated drinks in your Yeti tumbler.

The responses were that yes you can put carbonated drinks and soda in them and multiple people do this without issue.

See the latest price of Yeti Tumbler Cups at Yeti.com
(or compare to prices of Yeti Tumbler Cups at Amazon)

What Do Other Companies Say About Soda In Their Bottles

There are a lot of different bottles like Yeti which seem to work just as well and be of an equally high quality. They also use stainless steel and vacuum insulation.

So I wanted to see what they said about it and to see if Yeti was unique or if you can put soda in any vacuum insulated stainless steel tumbler.

Cambak said on this FAQ page:

Just about anything (milk, juice, sports drinks) works as long as you clean your bottle after each use. We don’t recommend putting carbonated beverages in the eddy, since the pressure can cause liquid to spurt out of the straw. However, it’s fine to put carbonated drinks in the Chute or Podium series bottles.

What Do Regular People Say About Soda in their Yeti?

I can imagine that there would be thousands upon thousands of people using their Yeti's to drink soda out of every single day. So I searched the web to try and find what regular people are saying about using their Yeti cups or bottles for soda.

Honestly, there was very little I could find but the good news is I didn't see any horror stories of people putting soda in their Yeti's and it exploding. So I'm assuming most people have no issues with it.

Use it primarily for my ice cold Pepsi.Amazon

When I was looking into if you can put lemon juice in a Hydro Flask a lot of people out there claimed that lemon juice caused a metallic taste in their Hydro Flask.

However, I did not find this when looking into soda.

I am yet to see one complaint about metallic tasting soda in a Yeti or any other stainless steel tumbler or bottle. I am unsure if this is due to lemon reacting more with stainless steel or to people just not being able to taste it through the sweetness of the soda.

Soda Is Made In Stainless Steel Tanks

It's like that you buy your soda in a plastic bottle, or maybe a metal aluminium can (with a thin plastic layer inside it). But pretty much all major sodas are made in large stainless steel vats or barrels before they are packaged into their plastic bottles.

The stainless steel used in these factories is likely a slightly different grade than that in your Yeti, but it would be extremely similar.

So your soda has likely spent a large amount of it's life inside stainless steel containers before ever making it to the shop and ending up in your Yeti.

If soda wan't fine with stainless steel then I imagine they wouldn't be using it for manufacturing.

Will Soda Stay Fizzy In a Yeti Cup or Bottle?

Soda loses it's fizz when exposed to outside air, so having an airtight container is paramount to stopping your soda from going flat.

It's also interesting to note that soda stay fizzy longer when kept at a lower temperature. As it warms up it loses it's fizz more.

A Yeti bottle will keep soda fizzy and story it going flat because it's airtight an keeps the soda cold. A Yeti tumbler cup on the other hand will not keep soda fizzy for long as the lid is not airtight so the carbon dioxide can escape making your soda flat.

For best results you should use a Yeti bottle and you should fill your Yeti bottle as close to the top as possible. This means there is less air space for the carbon dioxide to escape into, which leaves it inside your drink keeping your drink fizzy.

Below you can see a video of someone testing how fizzy a diet coke will stay in a Yeti vs a Tervis tumbler.

While the Yeti tumbler performed better than the Tervis it still lost a lot of it's fizz because the lid isn't airtight.

Will The Phosphoric Acid in Coca-Cola Corrode Your Yeti Cup or Bottle?

Phosphoric acid is great for dissolving and removing rust and Coca-Cola happens to contain phosphoric acid. This actually makes it useful and is one of the ways to clean rust from a Yeti.

The kitchen grade 18/8 stainless steel that Yeti Rambler products are made from is corrosion resistant and should not react much to the phosphoric acid in Coca-Cola. It will dissolve and remove existing rust but is unlikely to cause your Yeti to rust.

So it should be fine to use Coca-Cola in your stainless steel Yeti.

See the latest price of Yeti Tumbler Cups at Yeti.com
(or compare to prices of Yeti Tumbler Cups at Amazon)

Can You Put Carbonated Drinks In a Yeti?

What about carbonated drinks other than Soda? Sparkling water or sparkling wine or beer or champagne?

Can you put other carbonated drinks in a Yeti tumbler cup or bottle?

It is safe to put all forms of carbonated drinks in a Yeti tumbler cup or bottle. The stainless steel can handle any pressure from carbonation and is corrosion resistant.

Yeti bottles will stop carbonated drinks from going flat for a long time while drinks will still go flat in a Yeti cup, but they will go flat slower than if they were in a non-insulated cup.

Can You Put Sparkling Water In A Yeti Cup or Bottle?

A lot of people like drinking sparkling water instead of regular water. Can you put sparkling water in a Yeti cup of bottle?

It is safe to put sparkling water in a Yeti cup or bottle. The stainless steel walls of the Yeti is strong enough to withstand the pressure from carbonation and the water isn't acidic so it won't cause any corrosion.

If you want your sparkling water to stay fizzy you'll want to use a Yeti bottle NOT a Yeti Tumbler.

Yeti bottles are airtight and thus will trap in your carbonation keeping your drink fizzy. Yeti tumblers on the other hand are not airtight so the gas will escape making your sparkling water flat pretty quickly.