By: Billy BeerSlugger
It’s an age old question, “What’s the fastest way to get your beer cold?”. Everyone’s been there. You buy a case of beer from the distributor and it wasn’t cold or you need to chill that case in the basement that you couldn’t fit into the fridge.
What do you do?
If I’m at home and do not have access to a cooler or mounds of ice, I’m putting a six pack in the freezer and as many beers as I can fit in the fridge. After about 20-25 minutes the beers in the freezer will be cold and you take from the freezer and replacing from the fridge. You will have to do this for a good hour before the remaining beers in the fridge have cooled sufficiently. You will also have to watch out for beers in the freezer so that they don’t actually freeze and explode.
The best way, as explained by the show Mythbusters on The Discovery Channel:
In a cooler, combine salt, water and ice and just add beer for ice cold beer in about 5 minutes. The salt melts the ice and lowers the freezing point to 27 degrees. The water provides the surface area coverage to chill the beer optimally.
In contrast, using just ice and water to chill the beer would take about 15 minutes to get the 36 degrees achieved by the ice, salt, water mix in 5 minutes.
Of course you could use a fire extinguisher to cool the beer and it would be cold in about 3 minutes, but as I always say, “Safety First”. You may need that fire extinguisher after you get drunk. There’s nothing worse than accidentally starting a fire when you’re drunk and the fire extinguisher being empty from you chilling the beer with it.
So using conventional means, filling your cooler with salt, water and ice is the optimal way to cool your beer the fastest.
If you didn’t already know this, Now you know…. And Knowing is Half the Battle.