Review: Dawn to Dusk Dirt Mask Spare

The Dawn To Dusk Dirt Mask is a great way to keep your water bottles muck-free and yourself healthy. Single-handed operation means you don’t have to stop to use it – but the Dirt Mask doesn’t fit all bottles, so be sure to check first.

Whether you ride in urban or rural areas, keeping your bottles free of muck should be a priority. Unless you live somewhere that delivers mostly dry riding, you will inevitably be splashing water and filth up from your wheels and onto your bottles. So when you need to drink you’re also ingesting whatever organisms were on the road in the last puddle you splashed through.

> Buy now: Dawn To Dusk Dirt Mask Spare for £5.99 from Multisport Distribution

Over the years I’ve tried a number of covered bottles but they’ve all failed pretty quickly at the plastic hinge. Sometimes the cap still works to cover the bite valve, but it’s then a two-handed affair to remove it without it getting lost in the roadside as you trundle along – assuming you were happy to ride hands-free to take a drink.

I had lamented this situation for some time when I happened across US brand Dawn To Dusk and its 740ml Dirt Mask bottles. I’ll review the bottles separately, here I’m just looking at the Dirt Mask itself, which is available in the UK for £5.99 plus postage from the UK distributor. With shipping (£6.95), a single Dirt Mask is £12.94 – so best order a few in one go or club together with mates.

The Dirt Mask fits onto your bottle over the threaded mouth and is held in place by the bottle top. Dawn To Dusk sells the Dirt Mask as a spare part for its water bottles, but I had about a 75 per cent success rate fitting it to other bottles I have kicking about the Drawer Of Cycling Hydration Requirement, including several Elite bottles.

As a rule, the bottle mouth needs to be less than 60mm across its widest part (ie threads) and the bottle cap itself must be less than 70mm across to fit inside when closed. Out of about a dozen bottles I tried, if they met those criteria the Dirt Mask fitted fine and covered the bite valve.

The party trick of the Dirt Mask is the ‘spring-loaded’ cap. It’s not actually a spring – rather, it’s a rubber O-ring that is put under tension with the cap closed. So when you remove the bottle from its cage and flick the catch, the cap pops open and stays wide open, allowing you to drink from a clean bite valve. You can then close the Dirt Mask cap single-handed as well, and the lock is very positive – in a year of riding, from rowdy gravel to pretty extreme mountain biking, never once did a Dirt Mask cap pop open.

I toured for days with Dirt Mask-protected bottles in cages under my down tubes – directly in the firing line of every rock, splash and splat of mud off the front tyre. Not a single issue.

The two parts of the Dirt Mask – the ring that goes under your bottle’s cap and the cover itself – are hinged using a click-together indentation. Under twisting stress they simply pop apart, with the rubber O-ring in between. So should a bottle be dropped or fall out of a cage, the chances of the Dirt Mask actually breaking to the point of no repair is very, very remote, unlike other designs where the hinge wears out or would be broken in a fall.

You get a spare O-ring included with your purchase. Should they perish and snap in future, spare rubber O-rings are available in sets of two for 35p (plus £6.95 p&p, presumably, maybe order with your Dirt Mask) – a much more sustainable way to keep your muck-free bottle working than the other brands where, if the hinge breaks it’s game over for the whole bottle. In a year of multiple-times-a-week use and regular journeys through the dishwasher (top shelf), all my O-rings are still working fine.

Jon really liked the mud-proof Elite Fly MTB 550 bottle – but that’s the very covered bottle I purchased a number of and all the caps failed at the hinge within a few months of use. Ironically, the remaining capless Elite bottles work really well with a Dirt Mask fitted (Dawn To Dusk doesn’t do a smaller 550ml version of its own bottles).

The Camelbak Podium Dirt Series bottles use a much smaller Mud Cap over the bite valve itself, which you can buy separately for £6. I haven’t used one of these, but it looks like a bit of a two-handed faff to hold the bottle while removing the cap. Also, in her review Rachael thought the cap could get lost easily as it’s not captive.

> How much should you be drinking during your ride?

I’m one hundred per cent sold on the Dawn To Dusk Dirt Mask. It costs the same as a coffee and cake, works brilliantly, covers the whole bottle top, does a critical cycling-health job without fault, is usable on the bike one-handed, fits many of your current or new bottles, is pretty much bombproof and is repairable in the unlikely event of damage. Result.

Verdict

Ideal way to upgrade your existing bottles to be muck-free – if it fits…