How to keep your hands warm while biking outside without using bulky gloves

Question

I live in Germany and as Ned Stark never got tired of saying: Winter is coming. I ride my bike to work in the morning and back home in the evening. As of right now, my biking gloves manage to keep my hands from freezing.

I'd rather avoid wearing bulky gloves which prevent me from grabbing my keys from my trousers pockets for example .

In terms of heat preservation I remembered glasses with additional layers filled with air to prevent beverages from warming up or cooling down too fast. Could a kitchen glove under my biking glove produce a similar effect?

Are there other suggestions?

Answer 1

You could try using "pogies". These are sleeves that are attached to your handlebars, allowing you to slip your hands in and out easily. Pogies allow you to go barehanded when you would normally need gloves and to wear light gloves when you would normally need heavy mitts.

Answer 2

Two variations over the same idea, and that is to make cover for the bike handles.

Build an air deflector on the bike handles

If you are a little handy, you could build air deflectors around the bike handlebars, which would deflect the cold air from your hands. This would in turn mean that you could use ordinary bike gloves for much longer, as the hands are not directly in the cold turbulent air flowing around your handlebars.

Use cayak mitts or paddle mitts

In the winter time when paddling at sea I've used these and they are really comforting. I foresee that you can use these mitts around bike handlebar as well. If you use a large enough pair, you leave the mitts on the bike, and then simply insert hands with bike gloves into the mitts when you want to ride your bike.

Update: Here is an article listing specific mitts for biking similar to the kayak mitts.