The Picard ManeuverThis has been your weekend PSA
numberfour002I’ve tried all the “quick chill” methods I’ve heard of, but none of them work as quickly or as well as the icecream maker method. Watered down ice with some table salt. Set your unopened beer into a slurry like that, and in about 20 - 30 minutes, it’s surpremely cold. None of the “5 minutes and it’s ice cold” methods work as well or as quickly to be honest. At least not in my climate and in my experience.
There’s a cheap machine that dip the can in ice cold water and spin really fast. It cool the can down to <10°C in less than 10 minutes. I think it’ll work even better with your salt method.
How does that work?
By spinning the can in ice water, it increases the rate of transfer of heat energy from the can (and its contents) to the ice water. It’s like how stirring the ice in a cup of not-cold water will melt the ice / cool the water faster.
At a molecular level, you would see an increase in the number of collisions between ice molecules and liquid molecules. The collisions must occur for heat transfer to happen, so more collisions = more cooling. It is also the same reason why a heatsink can draw more heat from a processor when a fan blows air over it (until the air is saturated with heat).
Thanks for the answer! That’s pretty cool honestly. Could you achieve the same result with anything that spins, like a lettuce spinner?
The main reason spinning a can works is because it induces convection inside and outside of the can, which contributes to more collisions and better distributions of collisions. If the warmest soda is in the middle of the can, the cold molecules near the can walls will reach a temperature similar to the ice bath and thud the rate at which heat is transferred becomes stunted.
For lettuce, you’d have better luck finding a way to pass cold water between the leaves, much like having fins on a heatsink (surface area).
No, a lettuce spinner is a little basket inside of a container with a handle that you can spin to turn the basket. You wash your lettuce and put it into the basket and turn the handle. The centrifugal force (I think) causes the water clinging to the outside of the lettuce to drain into the container.
I think if you filled the container and basket partially up with ice or crushed ice) and some water, it’d achieve the same result as the machine someone linked above
Lol… I have never heard of this before. I think it would help halfway, but it won’t induce much stirring inside of the can, which is more important than just throwing more cold molecules of water at it.