Best mint julep cups

How we judged these

• Does the maker publish the material properly?

  Stainless, pewter, solid copper and copper-plated steel are four different products at four prices. For pewter, the specification that matters is whether the maker states it is lead-free; for copper, whether there is a lining.

• Capacity, against the way the drink is built

  A julep is mostly crushed ice. Twelve ounces is the traditional size and the one that leaves room for a proper charge of ice over the bourbon.

• Will it frost?

  Any metal cup will, which is the entire reason the drink is served this way. It is also why a julep cup is a poor choice for a drink you want to hold for an hour.

• Published care instructions

  Pewter is hand wash, always. Stainless is usually dishwasher safe. If a maker publishes neither, assume hand wash and treat the silence as a mark against it.

• One cup or a set

  Juleps get made for a table on one afternoon a year, or for one person on a summer evening. Those are different purchases and the price per cup varies by a factor of four.

Why the cup is metal at all

The mint julep is the rare cocktail where the vessel does something the drink cannot do without. Bourbon, sugar and mint over a packed charge of crushed ice is a good drink in a glass; in a metal cup it is a different object.

Metal conducts heat quickly. Pack the cup with crushed ice and the cold moves straight through the wall, so the outside drops below the dew point and water from the air freezes onto it. That frost is the signature of the drink, and it is also the most honest thermometer in cocktail making: a frosted cup is a cold julep, and an unfrosted one is not ready.

Two consequences follow, and both are practical rather than decorative. The first is that the ice has to be crushed rather than cubed — crushed ice packs with far more surface area against the metal, which is what makes the frost form in under a minute. The crushed ice page covers the canvas bag and mallet that produce it, which is the same twenty-dollar kit a bar uses.

The second is that you hold the cup by the rim or the base. A hand around the body of the cup conducts heat the other way and melts the frost you just made. It looks like etiquette and it is actually thermodynamics.

Pewter, stainless, copper or silver

Four materials, four different buys, and the marketing rarely distinguishes between them.

• Stainless steel. The practical default. Inexpensive, usually dishwasher safe, frosts exactly as well as anything else, and available in sets. The trade is that it looks like what it is, and a stainless cup will never be an heirloom.
• Pewter. The traditional material and the one most associated with the drink. Pewter made for drinkware today is produced without lead, but whether a given cup says so varies wildly — and that published statement is the thing to buy on. It is soft, heavy in the hand and hand wash only, because pewter is a low-melting alloy that dishwasher heat and detergent will mark.
• Solid copper. Beautiful, and it carries the same question as a copper mule mug: the food code restricts copper in contact with food below pH 6, so the cups worth buying publish a stainless lining. Unlined copper is a display object with a caveat attached.
• Silver plate and sterling. The Kentucky tradition, and the expensive end. Plate wears at the rim and the base over decades of polishing, and sterling is a different budget entirely. Both tarnish and both want hand washing.

For a first julep cup that will be used rather than displayed, stainless is the honest recommendation and pewter is the one to buy when the cup is the present.

The four cups, compared

The bottom row is the one we would look at hardest. On a category this traditional, the difference between a maker that publishes its specifications and one that leaves them to a reseller is the difference between knowing what you bought and hoping. Barfly publishes capacity and dimensions for its cups; Vagabond House publishes the material and the dimensions but not the capacity; Real Deal Steel publishes the steel grade but nothing about washing it.

The cups we could not recommend

Four more were checked and left off. The reasons are worth publishing, because they are the traps in this category rather than in these specific products.

• An unlined solid copper cup. Its seller is admirably direct — “no nickel, tin, or steel” — which is exactly the problem. Bare copper against an acidic spirit drink is the situation the food code restricts, and the mule mugs page covers that rule in full.
• A set that cannot agree on its own capacity. Fourteen ounces in the title, “a full 12 ounces” in the description, and the same listing calls the cups both copper mugs and stainless steel.
• A silver-plated copper cup whose interior is never described. At this price the buyer deserves to know whether the silver goes all the way inside; the maker does not say, and the maker’s price and the retail price differ by more than twenty dollars.
• A handsome American pewter cup listed at two capacities. The size field says 10 ounces and the description says eight, and there were four left in stock when we checked.

None of those are necessarily bad objects. They are simply products we cannot describe accurately, and on a page whose entire argument is published specifications, that rules them out.

Which cup to buy

Buy the Barfly stainless cup if you want a julep cup to use. It is the traditional 12 oz, it has a reinforced lip so it stays round in a drawer, and stainless asks nothing of you beyond washing it by hand.

Buy the Real Deal Steel set of four if the drink is for a group. Juleps are a Derby-afternoon or a porch-in-August drink, and four matching cups at roughly half the per-cup price is the sensible way to serve them. Treat the dishwasher claim with caution, since only the retailer makes it.

Buy the copper-plated Barfly if you want the copper look on a counter without the solid-copper question. It is a steel cup wearing copper, which is the honest description and the reason it is here.

Buy the Vagabond House pewter cup when the cup is the gift. Solid pewter, stated lead-free in the listing, with a horseshoe motif that makes it obvious what afternoon it was bought for. Know that no capacity is published anywhere and that it costs several times what stainless does.

What the cup needs around it

A julep is short on ingredients and long on ice, so two things matter more than the cup, and one of them is free.

Crushed ice. Not cubes, not the fridge dispenser’s hollow chips. Crushed ice packs against the metal and is what makes the frost form in under a minute, and a canvas Lewis bag with a mallet makes it in about that long. The crushed ice page compares the bag against crank crushers and electric shavers.

Mint that is pressed, not shredded. The mint in a julep is bruised gently to release oils rather than torn, which is the same distinction that decides a mojito. Muddlers and what their heads do covers the flat-headed shape that presses rather than tears.

One thing the drink does not strictly need is the tool named after it. A julep strainer was historically held against the cup to keep ice and mint back while you drank; today it is mostly used for stirred drinks poured out of a mixing glass. The strainers page explains where it still earns its place.

Buying a julep cup as a gift

This is a gift with a date attached. The first Saturday in May accounts for most of the demand, and a cup that arrives that week lands better than one that arrives in November — which is worth knowing when a pewter cup is handmade and ships slowly.

For a bourbon drinker who already owns glassware, a single good cup is a better present than a set: it is an object rather than a service piece, and it sits on a shelf being admired between uses. Gifts for whiskey lovers covers the neighbors of this purchase, and the whiskey glasses page is the right page if they drink bourbon neat more often than they make juleps.

And pass on the care rule with the gift, particularly for pewter: hand wash, dry with a soft cloth, never the dishwasher. Pewter is a soft, low-melting alloy, and one cycle at dishwasher temperature is all it takes to spoil the surface of a cup meant to last generations.