Warm beer sucks. Getting beer or any other canned beverage to go from warm to cold in a short amount of time is not impossible. It just takes some science, the basic principles of heat transfer and about 60 to 90 seconds to go from a warm beer to an ice cold beer. How do you do it? By spinning a canned beverage in ice using the Chill Bit.
The Chill Bit is made up of rubber and plastic that can snap onto the top of a beer can and hold it while being spun from a cordless drill. The back end of the Chill Bit fits into your drill’s chuck and once tightened, will hold onto the top of a canned beverage up to 1,100 RPM. You then place the can in ice or ice water and turn on the drill to start the spinning. After about 60 seconds a beer that is 80 degrees will drop in temperature by about 30 degrees. You want it colder than that? Spin it for two whole minutes and the contents inside will go below freezing and will actually form ice crystals on the inside of the can. Don’t believe it is true? Check out our video we did while tailgating in 2013.
(We did this video using the original prototype Chill Bit before it was improved to include the can and bottle version in the same unit.)
As you can see in the video, after we spun the can in ice water for 60 seconds, the temperature dropped 30 degrees. Had we spun the can in ice for two minutes the temperature would have dipped below freezing. The best part was we were able to open up the can right after spinning and it did not explode or foam over. The reason why it was able to get so cold so quickly without fizzing over is pure science.
How does it work?
By spinning the container, convection is introduced to both the inside and the outside of the container. This increases the rate of heat transfer and cools the beverage down at a rate of at least 20 times faster. You may have spun a beer in ice water by hand but that can get boring and tedious. It is the same science with the Chill Bit but much faster and you get to use power tools to do it.
Why does it not explode?
It all has to do with the air pocket. A ‘carbonated beverage’ is one in which carbon dioxide is dissolved in the liquid under pressure (Henry’s law). When the can is opened, the liquid inside starts to equalize with the pressure in the atmosphere, and the CO2 comes out of solution to do so. All carbonated beverages fizz upon opening, but whether they fizz over (liquid comes out of the container) depends on how fast the CO2 comes out of solution.
In order for CO2 to come out of solution, it needs a ‘nucleation site’ to do so. Those nucleation sites can be either gaseous pockets, or an irregularity along the wall. (Look at how a stream of bubbles form on a specific spot on a glass of beer or soda. You can’t see it, but that spot is an irregularity.)
When a beverage is shaken, the air pocket is broken up into millions of small pockets dispersed throughout the beverage. When the container is opened, CO2 in solution has sites all over the place, and it comes out of solution so quickly, that the liquid has no time to get out of the way, and it rises up and out, that is, it fizzes over.
When a beverage is rotated, the air pocket stays intact and knocks all the small bubbles off the side of the container, making one larger air pocket. There are no nucleation sites dispersed throughout, and the usual slow decarbonation takes place at the infrequent irregularities, and at the surface.
Okay, now that you have gotten your science lesson done for the day, the bottom line is the Chill Bit works. You supply the beer and the cordless drill, the Chill Bit provides you with peace of mind knowing you are never more than one to two minutes away from an ice cold beverage. And honestly, if you can’t wait a measly two minutes to drink a beer, you may want to look into rehab centers.
The Chill Bit is universal and will fit onto the tops of 12 oz and 16 oz cans, standard bottles including bottles with metal caps (beer bottles) and bottles with plastic caps (soda and water bottles). The Chill Bit is truly a wonder tool that is extremely affordable and versatile for tailgating, backyard BBQs, picnics, the job site, the garage or anywhere you want to chill a beverage quickly.
