Cheap Bags of Ice

ballooba

I have about 300 litres of beer that needs chilling. I need a lot of ice. Anyone any ideas where to get my hands on it? Tesco is doing two kilo bags for €1.

Also, an interesting tip I found today: Use 1 part salt for every 4 parts ice and add water. This increases the melting point of the ice meaning that it takes more heat from the beer to melt it.

jos28

Talk nicely to your local barman. Most pubs have ice making machines and will usually oblige. My local filled a refuse sack for me.

pa990

if you use salt it will melt faster..

you wont have colder beer

it raises the melting point ..

oblivious

What are you storing it in?

The beer surface area to storage is probable inefficient to chill it with ices alone, if its kegs have you thought about an in line cooler or jockey box

ballooba

It's bottles and cans. I have seven tubs each holding forty litres.

BTW with regard to the "beer ice salt" trick... Google it.

I had the physics wrong, salt lowers the freezing point of water to less than -1 degree centigrade. So it does indeed make the ice melt quicker. This means it draws the heat from the beer quicker. So the salt makes it cold quicker but not necessarily colder.

oblivious

You can keep them cool in dust bin with ice water, but I am not sure what sort of beer you are serving

ballooba

This kind:

wba88

ballooba wrote:

This kind:

*drools*

pa990

ummmm.. so i suppose everyone is invited ?

Noelie

Adding the salt, reduces the freezing point of water, so you'll end up with really cold water, doing this will chill your beer quicker.

Frankiestylee

Molloy's should all have ice machines... normally quite decent about pricing if you're buying beer there or getting a load of ice... the amount of times I've filled black sacks with ice is nuts.

rubadub

Dunnes is 99c for 2.25kg.

Salt does work in a few ways. If you have ice at -18C, then adding salt will lower its melting point, it might melt at say -5C. Since you now have water it will surround the cans perfectly, while ice just touches at a few points. Direct content is FAR better for heat transfer. Also if you have beer at 20C and water at 0C, then the beer never actually reaches the temperature of the other substance. The temp quickly drops and tapers off as it approaches the temp of the surrounding liquid. Therefore the beer in -5C water can drop really quickly to the temp you want.

Some offies/supermarkets have baths of subzero liquids for quick chilling of off the shelf wine.

If you got a few containers you could fill them with salt & water and put them in a chest freezer for several days. This way you are in effect storing lots of energy in the water. You should have another bucket of water to rinse the salt off though.