Your Moscow Mule Mug May Be Poisoning You

If you’re a Moscow Mule drinker you’ll know that half the fun of drinking the cocktail is sipping out of the signature copper mug. It also makes fantastic Instagram fodder (as I’m sure you’re well aware). However, that all may come to an end as health officials recently discovered that your favorite cocktail, more precisely the mug, may be poisoning you.

Health officials of the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division concluded that using the signature mug for alcoholic beverages – or any food or liquid with a pH balance of below 6 – could result in food poisoning or copper poisoning, which can cause diarrhea, vomiting, and jaundice. Yikes!

Going even further, the state of Iowa has declared that they will follow an FDA code on copper mugs, which “prohibits copper from coming into direct contact with foods that have a pH below 6.0.”That pretty much rules out all of the ingredients that make up a Moscow Mule – vodka, ginger beer and lime juice.

However, lucky for Moscow Mule lovers, they do have a solution to this dilemma. The report asserts that liquids from copper mugs with an inner lining of nickel, stainless steel or another metal are safe to consume. Crisis averted!