Cold beer here !!
 

Watched Myth Busters this weekend and they were experimenting on how to make beer ~34 degrees from room temp the fastest. Co2 worked fastest,but, not like you have a spare fire extinguisher around the house. As usual they tried more exotic stuff and then simple tests with plain ice, ice water and ice w/water and salt. The ice only took ~ 45 mins to 34, the ice/water ~20 mins and ta-da.... ice/water with salt added ~ 5 minutes! Seem the salt lowered the freezing temp and they measured the mix at ~22 degrees. So next time you head out and really need that beverage chilled fast.... pack some salt.

Tim

Im surprised that Myth Busters did that .... anyone who's made Ice cream, the old fashion way, knows about salt.

How much salt?

I saw them add ~half a pound or 8ozs.US.

Any of you guys fishermen? A sea water ice slurry is used the world around to ensure the catch is preserved in the freshest manner.

A slurry (being a liquid) maximises surface area contact and the salty water (due to density) freezes at a lower temperature than just plain water, so as a super cold liquid it makes it makes nearly the best cooling medium.

"Stoke's Theorum" is another really interesting phenomina...

So if I dump salt into my cooler of beer - I assume I have to rinse off the bottle before I crack it open to eliminate the salty taste?

drink tecate! then you only need to add the lime.

i thought salt caused the ice to melt, and the act of melting is to pull heat from the surrounding material? bonus points if the surrounding material is beer...or ice cream. isnt that the reason old timers with rusty cars, sprinkled salt on their driveways?

Spin a hot beer on ice and you can get it cold enough to drink in 6-7 mins, no salt needed. The thumb test (if it's a can beer) tells you when it's cold enough.;)

What's the 'thumb test'?

It's a pressure test. When your thumb (with little effort) can indent the outside of the can before it's opened, it's cold enough. The bigger the indent the colder, this doesn't apply to frozen cans, no indent there.:)

As a prior experience once showed me, beware prolonged exposure of your precious brew to salted ice water. Trust me - it takes a longer time to thaw when you are hot and thirsty.

Ice by itself can get colder than 32 F, but if there's any water present, and there alway is, unless it's January in Alaska, the ice/water mixture can NOT get colder than 32F. Basic law of physics.

Adding salt, you create a solution, and the temp of the ice/salt water mixture can drop much lower than 32F, so the beer gets colder faster. So does the ice cream.

You can thaw your walks with salt because the salt creates a solution and the freezing point of the ice lowers to the point that it's lower than the air temp. When the freezing point is lower than the ambient temp, the ice melts. Salting your walk when it's -50F probably won't work, it's just too cold.

To add to fishcops note, we add more and more salt to the brine to freeze fish solid as a rock while maintaining the liquid state of the water they are immersed in or sprayed with.Liquid provides a better mode of convection than air and air frozen fish loose up to 15% of their weight due to drip loss while they are freezing This reminds me that I have a Newcastle waiting in the freezer now.

So then, if you have a 3x3 foot chunk of ice at -25°F ....drop it into a lake at 34°F.

Does the block of ice instantaniously change to 32°F ? :cool:

I got a question! Why didn't mythbusters just add calcium carbonate instead of salt? That stuff is amazing. In chem class i dropped a ton in a cup of water and the cup was super cold after like 20 seconds and lots of stirring. Hmmm the mythbusters aren't so smart now!

Add my "ex" to the solution and it will never thaw.

Tcar, out of interest, pure water can be cooler that 32F/0C and remain liquid. It's called "Stoke's Theorum". Basically when you cool water it can "dip" below 32F/0C in a kind of "spike"... not for very long mind you :)

Anyone see the mythbusters where they tested the car A/C vs windows open myth? I think they were at Infineon for that one.

I'm still waiting for them to light farts. Never had the nerve to try it myself. Probably best left to professionals.

The truly awesome episode was the one where the shattered crystal using sound. It was amazing.