Beer-cooling options?

[Rob_Webb]

My Leisure 27 has no kind of coolbox or fridge and as the 'summer' approaches, my beer is getting disturbingly warm and my crew correspondingly mutinous. I am looking for a pragmatic solution and have plenty of underseat storage space that would fit a small fridge/coolbox. Any thoughts / suggestions would be gratefully received by skipper and crew alike before we start our 2 week cruise!

Thanks
Rob

 

[rogerroger]

12v cool box - about £60 from a chandlers, or £40 from Homebase.

Plugs into mains at home so it and contents get nice and cool. Cigar adapter plugs it into the car to keep it cool on the drive to the boat and then, assuming you have a cigar plug on board, it plugs into that. Hey presto, flat batteries, but cool beer.

Roger Holden
www.first-magnitude.co.uk

 

[Rob_Webb]

Do they really work? We tried one from Woolies a couple of weeks ago and it's performance was pretty poor although it was admittedly only £30. Have you got a specific make/model in mind that really does ok?

BTW, you have a vested interest in getting this sorted so the beers are cold when YOU come onboard too!

Cheers
Rob.

 

[JeremyF]

I was going to suggest the Woollies one at £30. Power hungry, and probably not that great, but its worth a try.
If your car drive is quite long, then it should be pretty cold by the time you go on board.
If you can reckon on running the engine for an hour a day, then it should pull the temp down to 5 degrees below ambient for a few hours. Put it on with a 30 minute motor to your mooring, and the beer should be half-way cool.

And you can always top the thing up with ice when you can find it.

But, if you've only got one battery on board, don't even bother to try

Jeremy Flynn

 

[Twister_Ken]

Tea towel

From my long lost physics O'level days (remember latent heat?).

Soak tea towel in seawater. Wrap around beer. Expose to ambient temperature. Water evaporates from towel and 'exerts a cooling influence'. Splash on more water if tea towel looks like drying out.

Bizarrely, it works (same as damp-towel-on-forehead treatment for a touch of the vapours).

It won't get the beer as tonsil-freezingly cool as a proper fridge, but cool enough to be refreshing. And tea towels are cheap compared with cool boxes (unless you buy nautical tea towels from chandlers or RNLI shops).

 

[ruthhobson]

If you want to use a ordinary cool box I can reccomend some ice packs from Lakeland - they say they can remain frozen for 2 days. I was a little doubtful but we used them in Crete last year in a small cool bag that was left in a car in full sun or dragged to the beach. They certainly remain frozen at lot longer than the usual type and in our "summer" might well last for 2 days in a good cool box.
(They can also be heated in a microwave to keep food warm).

Another good thing was they are flexible and wrapped up in a teatowel you can use them for first aid (hot or cold) sprains etc. They came in two large sheets which you soak in water to hydrate, they can also be cut to the size you want.
Lakeland have a website for online ordering.

I know this will not be a solution for longer periods but would be good for weekends/shorter periods.

Ruth

 

[Rob_Webb]

Re: Tea towel

I see an experiment coming on...... tea-towel cooling versus dragging bottles behind boat in mesh bag....... But don't see it working quite so well for bags of salad or half-used packets of bacon.

 

[tcm]

Re: food dragging

All salad should be barred.
The entire contents of a packet of bacon should also be fried up to stiop it from going off.
Excess qts of beer in bucket, or in mesh bag off the back.

In hotter climes:
Drink in a bar or restaurant. Proffer plastic bag or bucket shortly before closing at night and request ice.

Go to the bank. Make no transactions, but stand about, perhaps a bit of nav or reading, whilst enjoying their nice aircon.

Go out of marinas: you can cool beers down in the med, but only at depths 20metres or more.

 

[LadyInBed]

Re: Tea towel

Petrol is better!!!!
Tie beer to 1mtr line
dip beer in petrol
swing beer on line around head for 3 mins
you then wont care if beer is still warm!

 

[johmal]

Forget about soaking cans in tea towels and petrol (dangerous)!

Thermoelectic coolboxes are good. Woolies are selling them for less than £30, and Tesco's had similar one's for the same price. But you need to fit a lighter socket to run them. They draw 3 to 4 amps - but you don't need to leave them going all the time.

Failing that - the good old bilges are a good place to leave cans. Anywhere below the waterline - in contact with the hull has cooling potential!

Happy drinking!

John

 

[Ohdrat]

Drink Guiness or preferably Dark Island ... it doesn't need to be cooled.. Sail somewhere where HOT drinks are in demand (not chilled).. like the Orkneys!

 

[david_e]

Stay traditional

Overheard in Earl's Court pub

Australia = Cold beer and warm pies
England = Warm beer and cold pies

 

[ChrisJ]

Re: cooling boxes

We use a cooling box. Its about 5 years old now, so the exact make is long forotten. It plugs into a cigar lighter fitting that is then rigged up to the light-circuit battery. It is a job given to one of the children to always plug it in when the motor omes on, and un-plug it again when the motor goes off.

The frst week of the summer fortnight goes well.
Milk in plastic cartons that have been frozen in the deep-freeze at home will stay frozen for 4 or 5 days within it. Ice-packs do as well - but they take up otherwise useable space!

The second week is less successful - the cooling box really needs to remain closed and cooling for 3 or 4 hours to get the temperature down to "nice beer" - and we don't do that much motoring each day. But leaving your ice-packs in a freezer over-night somewhere certainly help. Some marinas even offer a "leave yours, take these others" so you only need to make one call.

Bacon? Once opened the rest gets used by the kids for crab bait.

Cheers, Chris

 

[corkonian1]

Re: cooling boxes

Try my patented Beero-Coolo-Matic, only 60 pound inc post an packing,
(mesh bag and rope)
question, do full beer cans float, alcohol is lighter than water after all.
an experiment is called for after a few, never had the courage to try it.
or keep between SWMBO legs , ouch now this post wont make it

 

[ChrisP]

Start the genny and run the beer cooler as normal.

ChrisP

What do you mean the sea gull in front's walking !!!

 

[billmacfarlane]

Beer cooler ? What for ? Don't the English prefer warm beer ?

 

[Steve_Bentley]

Have you noticed one of the big bland coffee companies (Gold Blend?) now sell self-heating cups. Where is their sense of priority as I'm sure I read a few years ago you can buy self-cooling beer in Japan, and lets face it with umpteen coffee shops on every high street selling tarty lightweight coffee does the world need self-heating cups?

Self-cooling beer cans is what we need! I wonder if they work on the same principal as butane aerosols which cool off as the gas is let out....

 

[corkonian1]

And finally for all those people who cool their beer with petrol
soaked dishcloths in the bilge and are still around, did you known that vigourously
banging each can every day against the gunwhale sets up a
chemical reaction which absorbs heat - so hey presto - cool beer

 

[sailbadthesinner]

Only in centrally hetaed hot pubs with 5ft ceilings and a log fire roaring so everyone is steaming after coming in from the rain

On freezing cold summers dayon the water with a stiff cold breeze coming in offshore and the clouds overhead, then we insist the beer be cold.

Wants woman with boat
Send photo of boat

 

[Guest]

Create a saturated brine solution at home and freeze to slush. Keeps well in cool box and allows quick chilling by submerging cans in it for 5 mins. Ask Spars etc by marinas if you can refreeze your ice packs overnite in their freezers- preferably whilst making a purchase. Or drink red wine. This thread does't seem to support the abstemious response to earlier one on drinking aboard ;-)