Official News page 8

REAL LIFE NEWS: COLD BEER WITH NO ICE

by Hazed

At this time of year you're probably more interested in drinking mulled wine or hot toddies, unless you happen to live in one of those climates where it's warm all year round, you lucky thing! But for beer drinkers, who want their beverages to be nice and cold whatever the weather outside, a new way of chilling any drink without using ice is going to be of interest.

It's the work of a 22 year old inventor called Kent Hodgson, and his simple idea uses liquid CO2 to turn a warm beverage into a cold one within seconds. His invention is a gadget slightly larger than a pen, and it can cool a case of beer with one canister of CO2 - which should cost about 7 cents per beer.

He says that the technology involved in his new gadget is very simple: "You have plastic cooling cells which are pressed down into the dock which houses the liquid carbon dioxide. The liquid CO2 expands and is pressurized into dry ice in the base of the cooling cells in a moment. You then pop it into your drink."

The possibilities are endless. You wouldn't need to haul drinks coolers around with you, or fill up your fridge with beer or other beverages. Instead of keeping the drinks cool until such time as you are ready to drink them, you cool them at the time you want to quaff.

Kent calls his invention Huski and is working on patenting the device. He expects it to retail for about $50. If it does come on the market, I'll certainly buy one!

Footnote

Bella Sez: Cooling beer* with dry ice was around when I was a student (liquid nitrogen was an alternative). There is however a problem. Dry ice is so cold that it tends to freeze the water around it, which insulates the dry ice from the beverage. This is OK when the chunks are big enough to avoid, but small bits could be swallowed - not something to be recommended given that dry ice on skin can cause cold burns!

*Actually we used it more for all night party punches - lemonade, fruit juice and ethyl alcohol provided by the chemistry students. Then in goes the dry ice, courtesy of the physics students, and the whole confection looks like a rock concert fog machine in action...

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