When to Ice
 

The cooler, do you empty out the water from the last added ice or just dump more ice in the existing cold water my thought is to add ice and keep the water cold instead if just wasting it. How about you?

If it's mostly water with little ice, then no, the water will melt the new ice faster.

If it's mostly ice with a little water in the bottom, then it's not a big deal.

Dump the water as it is above freezing. If the new ice has less mass to cool, it will be more efficient.

Best
Les

I like the idea of ice added to the water. The water will be in contact with more of the surface of the cans and bottles, removing more heat from them.

^^
This

But that water will accelerate the melting of the ice.

The amount of heat required to melt 2 kg of ice (~4.4 pounds) is 668 kilojoules (that's taking ice at 32º and melting it to water at 32º

If you had the same amount of water (2 kg) at 32ºF it would only take 186 kilojoules to warm that water up to 72ºF.

You really want max ice and minimum water.

Depends on the quality/price of the beer you're drinking.

I’m sticking with my answer, but honestly don’t know. It’s an interesting question, and I don’t think I could have answered it when I studied thermodynamics many years ago in one class.

Your numbers say to me that the ice absorbs a lot of heat in changing phases, which means it’s keeping the water near 32 degrees. The water, in turn, can absorb more heat from the beer, since it’s contacting it much more completely than the ice would.

Question- do you think you’d get cold faster in a tub of chopped ice or water at/near 32 degrees with plenty of ice to keep it from warming up? (Or like the ocean where the Titanic sank).

It would be interesting if this has been evaluated scientifically.

I'm on this team.

do you want cooling speed or ice longevity?

There must be an equation for this!

Also applies to the amount of cold stuff, not just the temp.
Fully stocked fridge, packed. Pull the plug. Bet it will stay cooler than an empty one all else being equal.
Applies to a cooler also.
Say you have 30 ice cubes. Dump out the cold water in question and ice cubes in. How long score you have water at 65?
Leave the cold water, dump in the ice, how long before you have water at 65?

Thermal Engr. I'm also on this team.

Which is going to absorb the heat from a can of beer faster/more efficiently- a jacket of 32 degree water at/near 32 degrees or ice touching 10-30% of the can at 32 degrees? Lots of variables and assumptions needed. I assume the water and ice will be the heat sink for the beer, and the ice will be the heat sink for the water (mostly).

Add salt

A question could be - Do you want the ice to last longer and keep beer cool or last a shorter amount of time and keep the beer cool a bit longer.

This wouldn't be chance for Dom Perignon '53, would it? That's supposed to be no warmer than 38 degrees fahrenheit. That's as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!

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I suspect it's got to do with the mass of the water and the ice and the ration between the two as well as the mass and temp of the stuff in the cooler.

my feeling is

If the cooler has more water than ice, then definitely ditch the water and fill with ice.

If the cooler is mostly full of ice, but with a little water, then don't worry about the water.

I guess it might also depend upon what your goal is. Are you putting a bunch of warm beer in the cooler to get cold? Or have you had a cooler full of beer and ice sitting around cold and a lot of the ice has melted?

Yes, phase changes take TONS of heat compared to just temp changes within the same phase.

Yeah, I remember a little of my thermodynamics class, but not enough for this sort of thing.

you can add salt to the ice which lowers the temperature even more.

When I was doing refrigeration for beer rigs, we were taught to try to have a 50/50 mixture of ice and water so as to make the water like an ice bath.. Worked great.

When I was in college, in Mississippi, they did not have refrigeration, and sold hot beer. It was necessary to take a small cooler with ice with you to the store, after buying, put in a few hot beers, then spin the beer by hand. Spinning the beer would accelerate the ice melting, and increase the ice cooling/heat transfer ability.

It took about 7 minutes to get cold, which if you had no other place to stop, you had a cold beer by the time you got home.