I have nearly completed my greatest invention yet. It more practical than the Beyboard and more awesome than the bathroom radio or even the LED chandelier.
I have created a device that cools your beer as you drink it! I call it the pint-chiller, but for marketing purposes, let’s call it the Cryo-bev3000.
Here’s how it works. The bucket contains a sub-freezing fluid of ice and saltwater. A DC pump bought off ebay (it’s intended for use in water-cooled PCs) circulates through an umbilical which is attached to a copper coil that cools the pint glass of beer.
Here you can see the guts of the project enclosure, the detachable heart of the Cryo-bev3000.
The extra in-line values you see here are for the two auxiliary cooling coils I have yet to build. After all, beer does you no good if you have to drink it alone.
Here’s a photo from when I was laying out the tubing to see if it would fit in the project enclosure.
The tube that ends in a hose clamp is the siphon. Because the water pump is a centrifugal design (it spins the water to the outside of a cylinder which flings through the out-tube) it doesn’t work on air. Water has to be continuous through the inflow tube to the bucket of freezing solution, so to get the Cryo-bev3000 started, I have to suck on that tube.
As it happens, a mouthful of freezing saltwater is exceptionally unpleasant.
On Saturday I ran the full Cryo-bev3000 assembly through its paces.
The test-run was a success, it lowered the temperature of a pint of Pacifico by almost 20 degrees.
I had a "control group" beer that became unpleasantly lukewarm during the same timeframe.
I did learn though that vinyl tubing doesn’t work very well at extremly low temperatures. It becomes as stiff as Bob Dole and doesn’t actually keep a seal (like Bob Dole).
As I tinker and upgrade, I’m going to have to replace the umbilicals. I’m thinking that I may have to special order low-temperature silicone tubing, like they use in snowmobiles in Antarctic research facilities. Or maybe latex tubing will work well at those temps? I’ll welcome suggestions.
