Experts Share the Quickest Method to Cool Your Beer Without Using the Freezer

With summer around the corner, nothing quite beats hosting a barbeque in the back garden with plenty of ice cold bevvies.

But in the rush to get the meat on the grill, even the most experienced BBQ host can forget to chill the beer.

And nothing ruins a summer event quite as badly as warm lager. 

Thankfully, a new study reveals the fastest way to chill a beer – and it doesn’t mean putting it in the freezer. 

Consumer champion Which? tested eight popular internet chilling ‘hacks’ on bottled beer – and found one clear winner. 

In just half an hour, it brought the beer temperature down from 20.5°C to 1.6°C – more effective than any other. 

So can you guess what the best chilling method is? 

See the full results below!  

Consumer champion Which? tested eight popular internet beer chilling ‘hacks’ – and found one clear winner 

According to the experts, the fastest way to chill a beer is putting it in a bucket of cold water with not only ice, but also salt. 

Salt water has a lower freezing point than regular water. 

Adding salt to a bucket of ice and water can lower the temperature of the mixture below 0°C, unlike without salt where it stays around or slightly above 0°C.

These sub-zero temperatures will chill your beer faster and ultimately leave it colder. 

Using this method, Which? researchers found the temperature of the beer dropped by 18.9°C in half an hour, leaving the beer at a frosty 1.6°C. 

After an hour, researchers managed to get the temperature of the beer down to a little less than 0°C. 

If you find yourself without any salt, don’t worry – all is not lost. 

The second-most effective way to quickly chill beer is the same method but just without the salt. 

The fastest way to chill beer is with 1kg of ice, a bucket of cold water and 100g of salt, the researchers say

Ice and cold water – ideally placed in a big portable cooler or ‘esky’ – took the beer from 20°C to 3.9°C in half an hour, they found. 

Failing this, another good method is putting the beer in the middle shelf of a freezer – taking the temperature down to 7.8°C in half an hour. 

However, although this method can effectively chill beverages quickly, it can present issues like lack of space and the risk of forgetting about them, resulting in frozen or burst bottles.

The experts also tested the popular online ‘hack’ of covering the bottle with wet tissue paper and putting it in the freezer. 

Using this method, a beer’s temperature dropped to 8.9°C within half an hour. Nevertheless, it was not as efficient as directly placing the bottle in the freezer without wrapping it in a tissue.

The wet tissue method is also a faff to prepare and drips water over you once it’s out of the freezer as you’re drinking the beer. 

Even less effective is putting the beer in a bowl of cold water, covered over with a wet flannel and left in a breezy location.

Which? explains: ‘The idea is that the breeze evaporates the water from the towel and thus cools the bottle [but] it’s a bit of a faff.’ 

Covering a beer with wet tissue paper and putting it in the freezer doesn’t chill the beverage any better than just putting the bottle in the freezer without wet tissue around it, Which? found

One of the two worst methods was running the beer under a cold tap for three minutes – an approach usually opted for by students. 

It took the beer down just 2.5°C – from 20.5°C to 18°C – resulting in a lukewarm beverage and a waste of water.

Equally as pointless was immersion in a bucket of cold tap water – also taking the temp down from 20.5°C to 18°C. 

The full results, published on Which?’s website, are ‘accurate, robust and repeatable’, the consumer champion claims. 

‘Without a doubt, cold water with ice and salt is the most effective and fastest way to chill a beer,’ it says. 

‘We used bottled beer for our test, but you should see the same methods work well with other bottled drinks and cans.’