The Offlap TamaGo Egg Protector: Testing the Limits of Bikepacking Cuisine

It's a warm spring Saturday morning. I'm stuffed to the gills with eggs and bacon, trying my best to ride my fully loaded Krampus up a steep hill. The unexpected warm weather and a gut full of barely digested food are getting to me; I'm sweating bacon. My bike weighs too much. Why oh why did I eat half a pack of bacon and three eggs scrambled in their fat? Who thought eating bacon and eggs on a bike trip was a good idea anyway? How did I get here? How did I have such a rich breakfast in the forest?

Like many of our reviews, this one started on Instagram. In a mindless haze of scrolling, I came across a delightful little bikepacking product from a company called Offlap from Tokyo. The product was called the TamaGo and promised the ability to pack eggs on the bike for a healthy and warm breakfast in the backcountry. For those that may not know, tamago is Japanese for egg, so the product's name is a play on the Japanese word and the ability to travel, clever name.

How on earth could you bike with something as fragile as eggs? Regardless of safe assumptions, I have oddly asked myself this exact question many times before. Where I go mountain biking in our local highlands, many little farmers set out excess eggs and sell them by the road in honor sales stands. I have always wanted to try bringing eggs home from those stands but never thought it possible. So when I came across the Offlap TamaGo, I just had to try it out. I reached out to the company’s founder, Josh, who generously sent us two TamaGos (TamaGi?) that showed up from Tokyo in a matter of days.

About Offlap

Founded in 2019, Offlap has quickly established itself with a clear motto: "Make your commute an adventure." At the core of its development strategy lies customer feedback, ensuring that every product meets the real-world needs of cyclists. Josh, the founder, shares his vision: "Idolizing cars is becoming obsolete in the face of the versatility and freedom offered by bicycles. I wanted to start a brand that encourages bike commuting." He further explains the brand's name, saying, "The name Offlap comes from OFF and LAP. The message is that our commuting should not be an endless 'lap' between home and work and bike commuting is the method we can get 'off' from that deadly rat race. Love it.

Exploring the TamaGo

When the TamaGo arrived at my house, the first thing I noticed was its great, simple eco-friendly packaging—a brown paper bag with some well designed instructions (that are only in Japanese). One of the first things you will notice about the Tamago is that it has a RIDE COOK RIDE logo on the top of it. This confused me a bit, and I asked Josh who told me that RIDE COOK RIDE is a sub brand of Offlap that is focused on bike cooking specifically. The product features a hard EVA casing that protects the eggs from shock and pressure, while the polyurethane foam inside protects from vibrations. Offlap believes in some serious product testing. To test the TamaGo, Josh rode 500 km ride from Tokyo to Osaka with 4 eggs in the bottom of a frame bag. Over broken pavement, pot-holes, and gaps, roadside washboard, and singletracks, without a broken egg.

The TamaGo is capable of withstanding single point pressure up to 8 pounds and capable of withstanding 30 pounds of even pressure across its surface, meaning that it should easily protect your eggs unless you crash or are sloppy at packing. The whole affair is simple as a peach. At this point the product seemed like all substance and zero fluff. I’ll admit, I loved everything about it—before I even tried it.

From Coop to Trail: Loading Up the TamaGo

As a warm-up for the summer and to test this year’s bikepacking setup, I planned a ride with Rob out to the forest, promising him some bacon and eggs for breakfast. We needed fresh eggs for our forest breakfast, so we called up our friend Mattie, a local ex-chef who raises chickens here in Victoria. Mattie not only provided the eggs but also imparted a lot of knowledge about owning chickens, which enriched our preparation.

Inserting the eggs into the TamaGo was an intriguing process. The eggs are twisted in with the pointier end of the egg facing down. This initially felt a bit sketchy; I was concerned the eggs might break laterally, but they were fine. The instructions reassured us that it’s okay for more than half the egg to stick out at this point, as the design accommodates eggs with heights of 54~58mm and widths of 42~46mm. Closing the lid was a bit nerve-wracking, as you could feel a lot of pressure being put onto the eggs. However, this is fine since eggs are structurally designed to handle weight vertically—thanks, nature. It’s also this pressure from the foam that keeps them snug as a bug while hammering up and down mountains.

Deciding where to pack them on the bike was the next step. The 4-egg TamaGo is very packable, and I could have placed it in almost every bag in my setup. I chose my 5L fork bags, as that’s usually where I keep all my food and cooking kit. I also considered that there could be additional shock on the front end since my bikepacking setup is intentionally designed front-heavy—making it the best test for the TamaGo. If we got out there to broken eggs, so be it.

Bacon, Eggs & Bike Trails: A TamaGo Test Ride

It was time to ride. Rob and I hit the trails to a new section of woods that I am only starting to discover about 30 km out of town. We hit everything from tarmac to flat and fast gravel to some light singletrack. We weren’t exactly pushing the boundaries of mountain biking but were approximating the terrains of any decent bikepacking trip.

When we got to our cook spot, we unpacked the stove and everything we needed to cook breakfast. Except for the TamaGo. We both laughed and found it funny that we didn’t unpack the product we were there to test until the end. We were both subconsciously nervous about what to expect. We took the TamaGo’s out of my fork bag and opened them. Lo and behold, we had unbroken eggs!

We cooked a full pack of maple bacon and the eggs in their fat on my new MSR pocket rocket and using Rob’s new Gerber Compleat Utensil set. We decided to scramble our eggs with some wild rosemary as we just didn't really have the patience for sunny side up; however, the yolks were intact and that is something we could have done if we wanted to. Planning the breakfast, I thought it would be a great idea to bring a whole pack of bacon and make it a feast, which turned out to be a mistake. I never eat food that rich which made for a slow meat-hazy trip home. The eggs were amazing, but I still can’t look at a bacon strip two weeks later.

Conclusion

If you have been following this site for any amount of time, you know that eating fresh on a bikepacking trip is a big topic for me. However, by fresh food, I have always meant vegetables with pasta or anything that wasn't a freeze-dried meal. The TamaGo takes this to the next level, opening up a whole world of bike culinary adventures.

I will be carrying the TamaGo with me in the future. The Offlap site has some beautiful photos with very thoughtful looking Japanese meals like ramen. Even though I'm not as culinary inclined as that, the idea of simply having bacon and eggs in the forest is amazing. However, I do think it's more practical for some trips than others. For example, it feels like the perfect type of product for an overnighter where you can afford to lose some room to a decent breakfast. But personally, I’m not sure I’d bring it on a 2-week trip across British Columbia. Not because it wouldn't work, but because the idea of eggs on the road seems like a luxury—versus the survival mode I usually am in on longer trips.

For now, the TamaGo is only available on the Japanese Amazon store (which requires an Amazon Japan account) for ¥2500 or about $16 USD—which is a total steal. Offlap also has new sizes coming out including a 2 egg and 6 egg case. Get one.

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Photos

Salty Beard