PeltierBeer

Helstein writes "Finishing a beer in the sun before it gets warm is usually not a problem, but what about those really hot days? Having some hardware lying around there is only one solution to keep the beer cool, that's to make a PeltierBeer."

Comments

Why?

[TheFlyingGoat]

My wife viewed this and asked why in the world someone would make that. I had to explain that we geeks get a kick out of doing stuff like this, just for the sake of doing it. This particular project would be even cooler (no pun intended) if that cat5 carried some information instead of just power. That way, maybe I could track which friends are drinking all my beer. :)

Some problems that I see

[Stonent1]

The thickness of the base of the glass could affect the ability to cool it. Also charging batteries generate heat.

Re:The only problem is

[cruppel]

No, this is what Guinness should always come out of. =)

that was a long week...

Solar Power?

[User1234]

Those 8 batteries only put out 12 volts couldn't those be replaced with a solar panel, then you would not have to worry about changing batteries for every beer.

Beer in sun bad

[gizmo_mathboy]

For us beer geeks we would just drink beer in the sun faster. UV rays is what skunks beer.

UV interacts with the alpha acids from the hops and creates that "skunky" taste. This is why most beer bottle are brown, it blocks out most of the UV for a period of time.

This page does a a decent job of explaining what happens.

Nonetheless, this is a cool hack. Just drink it fast or leave it in the bottle/can.

Re:Beer in sun bad

[tieke]

Link looks OK to me. You could try again, download the pdf version, or read below:

The smell of ultra-violet

Many things in the everyday world can have an adverse effect on a bottle of beer, but the single worst offender is simple ultra-violet (UV) light. The hops flowers that are used to add flavor to most fine beers are extremely sensitive to UV light. When exposed to UV for even a short period--as, for example, in as little as 15 minutes under fluorescent lighting in a store's cooler case or in direct sunlight-- beer promptly undergoes a chemical reaction that creates an organic compound, 3-methyl crotyl mercaptan. Not only does this not even sound like something you'd want to put in your mouth, it's actually the same compound that skunks spray to ward off foes. Hence the slang term skunky for a beer that is affected.

This is not mere hypothesis, but a well documented chemical reaction, reported most recently by the researcher Denis de Keukeliere of the State University of Ghent, Belgium, in a September 1991 article titled Photochemistry of Beer in The Spectrum, Vol. 4, Issue 2. Other scholarly journal articles on the subject go back as far as a report in the German Lehrbuch der Bierbrauerei in 1875.

What's more, you can conduct a simple test yourself. Take two bottles of a fine import (Pilsner Urquell would be a good one) out of the original packing case, to ensure that they have never been exposed to light. Keep one dark; place the other in direct sunlight--or adjacent to the fluorescents in your cooler box--for a couple of hours. Chill and open both, and taste the difference!

Remarkably, many consumers of mass-produced European lagers believe that this aroma of skunk juice in light struck beer is normal, since many of them have never tasted a fresh, unafflicted sample. Green glass bottles allow the highest transmission of UV light. Brown bottles are somewhat better, and canned and kegged beer is not in danger from ultra-violet light. The American brewers who use clear-glass bottles resort to the use of hydrogenated hop extracts instead of fresh hops, which solves the skunk problem but results in a beverage that lacks the full flavor of a natural beer.

Unfortunately, many retail display cases are illuminated by fluorescent lighting. This simple and popular marketing presentation looks attractive, but it rapidly destroys the flavor of the beers that retailers are so proudly displaying for sale.

We strongly recommend that fine beers displayed for sale in refrigerated cases not be exposed to fluorescent light. Fluorescent lighting in refrigerated cases should be turned off, at least in that portion of the display devoted to top-quality imports and American microbrewery beers. We suggest that this strategy can be turned into a marketing advantage, by the simple use of a poster or sign explaining that quality beers are best displayed in dark surroundings. This not only protects the beer, but displays the retailer's knowledge and proper care. By the same token, we recommend that fine beers on the shop floor be kept in the original sealed packing cartons.

We believe that these measures would demonstrate the kind of care for beer that makes us want to patronize a shop. As a minimum, however, we hope that any retailer would be agreeable to a connoisseur's request for a six-pack out of a closed carton in the back room rather than one that's been sitting under the lights.

Re:problem solved

[VVrath]

Have you ever tried drinking Guiness quickly?

I've tried drinking Guiness quickly, and I can't say it's much different from drinking any beer quickly. I'm a member of a musical theatre society here in Manchester (MUGSS), and we have an annual cast versus crew versus orchestra versus old soaks boat race during our show week.

The rules allow you to choose your own pint (as long as it's beer), and as anchor of the crew B team, it fell to me to drink two pints back to back. I chose Guinness as my first pint, and Boddingtons as my second, the theory being the Guinness would line the stomach for the second pint. It kinda worked - I managed to get both pints down within about fifteen seconds.

Now, drinking two pints of beer back to back in 15 seconds isnt particularly comfortable, but I can honestly say that you can drink Guinness quickly, and the ill effects are no worse than any other beer.

BTW, the crew B team beat both cast teams... Luvvies are wusses!

Liam

Re:Well

[GigsVT]

Lets try this again, this time in a browser that supports cookies. :)

I read the article. He doesn't post any concrete numbers comparing it when the device is not powered.

Also, with the sensor on the peltier itself, it indicates little about the temperature of the liquid. That's like putting a thermometer on your heater and saying room temperature is 120 degrees.

I've done the research and the math regarding building a similar device, and I believe the conclusion I came to was that it would require something like ten 70 watt peltiers to move the temperature of 12 ounces of fluid a few degrees per minute. That's 700 watts before you even count the power needed for all the fans to cool the hot side of the peltiers.

Re:i am just curious

[Anonymous Coward]

your palate matures as you grow older.
keep trying.

Re:Guinness for IT strength!

[rjamestaylor]

When Ricochet was alive in areas that mattered (Denver and San Diego don't matter, sorry) there was very strong reception in Seal Beach, CA on Main St and well onto the sand. I used to head over to the Hennessee's there, plug in at my favorite bar stool and manage dedicated servers in Wisconsin while enjoying a Guinness. At least once I switched critical operations from one server to another while requesting another round. Miss that Ricochet. Really do.

/. is being had

[blair1q]

This thing couldn't work in a million years.

The thermometer isn't in the beer, it's hooked directly to the copper plate atop the peltier device.

Without a crystal goblet and gobs of thermal goop, he's going to cool his thermometer probe and some air and not much else. Actually, he should just leave the beer in the can. Aluminum has a thermal conductivity of 205 W/m-K, and glass does 0.8 W/m-K. The thinner can* and 250X increase in k will make his project more successful, but still a candidate for /. troll of the year.

I'd be willing to bet that the metal rails of that "caffetiere" are transmitting more heat to the sides of the glass than the copper plate is taking from the base.

* - say the base of his glass is 4 mm thick, and the can is 0.2 mm thick (it could be less), then the glass will have a thermal conductance of 200 W/K and the can will have a thermal conductance of 1.03e6 W/K.

stubbie holders

[wadiwood]

We always use stubbie holders. Stubbies are single serve glass bottles, somewhat larger than your can-sized serve usually.
RM Williams Oilskin stubbie holder

Axeman's stubbie holder Note unlike the photo, the whole can fits snuggly inside the neoprene (think wetsuit rubber).

In the tropics they take keeping your beer cold seriously:
stubbie holders, sixpack holders, You can even stick whole wine bottles into some of these.

The hard plastic and polystyrene sort. Buy a boat to hold your beer?

By the way, if there's foam in that bra, you're probably getting less than you bargained on. Real women don't need or want padding. Although occasionally I'd bet they'd like hard shielding from octopi disguised as men.

Re:Not 41.8 or 43.8 . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still absurd precision, and it's what's behind a lot of the "metric is soooooo complicated" nonsense.

40 degrees would've been plenty close enough.

The same thing happens when people say that a mile is 1.609 kilometers rather than saying "it's about a mile and a half", or that a pound is 454 grams rather than "about half a kilogram".

Sure, for science and engineering you may need that level of precision (although you don't always, even there) but for typical "grocery shopping"-type weights and measures you don't.

If you asked someone to go to the store and get a pound of bananas, and they came home with half a kilogram, would you get upset? Of course not, since the odds against the person coming home with EXACTLY (to three significant figures!) a pound of bananas are rather high. It's understood that what you mean by "buy a pound of bananas" really means "buy somewhere around a pound, taking in mind that bananas vary in size and the store is going to get upset if you start cutting them up to make an even pound."

Note that this is a different issue entirely from the MERCHANT doing rounding. I'm talking about Joe or Jane Shopper here. They'd much rather see a speed limit sign that says 90 km/hr rather than one that says 88, even though 88 is closer to the "correct" figure.

solar cells

[Naikrovek]

solar cells on the outside of the cooling "holster" thing-a-ma-bob dohicky he sets the glass in would probably be a better upgrade.

forget the damn cables, just wire up a collection of solar panels. Presumeably he's just sitting in the sun, and if so, he can have a remote panel collection wired to his cooler. put some thermally transmissive foam on the top of the cooling unit, to touch the most of the bottom of the glass as possible, and he'd have something worth selling.

If people buy those STUPID singing fish plaques, they'd foam at the mouth to buy these.

The better marriage of beer and cpu cooling tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Many have already pointed out that Guiness is supposed to be served warmer than fridge temp. This leads me to a far superior marriage of cooling technology and beer, name to cool your overclocked processor with ice-cold guiness from the fridge. The important trick is of course it can't be a closed system, rather the cold beer comes from the fridge, is opened, poured into a beer funnel which sends the beer past the CPU, where its HEATED to the perfect drinking temperature, and poured into the open mouth of the ever so pleased with himself overclocker. The faster your processor the faster you drink!

Cooling

[eliasen]

I was thinking of making my own Bar-Monkey style computerized drink mixer and thought of putting a Peltier junction and a heat-exchanger block on it to cool drinks on demand--until I ran the numbers too.

I assumed that the heat capacity of beer was just about that of water (1 calorie/degC/g). So, using Frink, a calculating tool/programming language I've developed, the power needed to lower a lovely 12 floz beverage by a relatively scant 10 degrees F in a minute is given by:

12 floz water (1 calorie/degC/gram) 10 degF/min -> W

Which gives about 137 watts given perfect efficiency! You actually need to divide the left-hand side by the Coefficient of Performance of your Peltier junction which is probably--what--0.4? And then divide by all your other efficiency losses due to imperfect heat transfer and heat input from the environment...which, as the saying goes, "is left as an exercise for the reader."

(You can use the web-based interface to Frink to plug in your own numbers and units like liters or degC, or K, or recalculate the numbers using the heat capacity of ultra-high-ethanol concoctions.)

No wonder that Peltier-junction cooled ice chest I bought many years ago didn't work worth a lick. It kept things cool if you filled it with a big bag of ice. :)

Wonderfully fun experiment, in any case. I'd sure like to see the thermometer placed in the liquid, though.

Why not?

[uspsguy]

There are niftly little hot plate kind of things to sit on your desk to keep the coffee warm. Why not a commeccial version of this I can sit beside me at work and keep my Pepsi cold. Drinking faster doesn't work here. I need to meter the caffeen intake over the whole graveyard shift to survive. Ever try and find one of those cute cozys to fit a 1 liter bottle?

Ice cap

[ThaReetLad]

Well that may be one way to keep beer cold, but I've seen another one tested in pub in cardiff. A specially designed tap turns the last bit of beer of the pint into ice crystals thus creating an ice cap which floats on top of the beer. This then keeps the remaining beer ice cold all the way down for up to 45 minutes.