Originally Posted by
cyccommute
While I agree that King Cages are the best (they are on the white bike), the question was about aluminum. Aluminum will work for a very long time. Kings will last a lot longer and they won't leave your bottles black but Kings are a bit expensive...~$20 each.
Those bottles had more than 450 miles on them when I took that picture (they weren't new when I started the tour) including about 200 miles of dirt roads in Ontario and part of the Erie Canal. You can see how clean they are. Bottles in aluminum cages would be dark black under similar conditions.
But ... every aluminum cage I have ever used has broken off the bike and shed the bottle. (Except ones I retired before that happened,) I discovered cracks happening in nearly all my steel cages in the shop and replaced them before they shed a bottle. (Often after decades of use.) Losing a bottle on a screaming descent on a hot day is something I consider a very bad outcome. Yes the OP was talking aluminum but he was also talking of wanting security.
And $20 for a cage is expensive? For a cage that will do its job the next 20 years? I don't blink an eye paying that for that quality. Not for items that are that important. (I keep my mouth shut, but I do laugh rather cruelly on the inside when I see a cage and bottle rolling along the road. And those cages are either aluminum or very light in almost every case.)
Ben