Since the earliest days of brewing beer and making wine, the search has been on for an easy, affordable method of chilling drinks quickly without diluting them in the process. Florida-based start-up Spin Chill claims to have a solution to this vexing problem with a portable device that (literally) turns beverages ice cold in 60 seconds.
Spin Chill aims to radically shorten the time required to cool a canned or bottled beverage – 20-30 minutes if you simply put the container in the freezer. To solve this problem wouldn't seem to require more than a little planning ahead, but somehow running out of cold beer always seems to come as a surprise. Spin Chill brings this cooling time down to less than a minute.
Invented by Ty Parker and Trevor Abbott at this year's AngelHack hackathon, the basic principles of Spin Chill have been known since access to ice became common. If you spin a can in a tub of ice, it cools faster, because in spinning the can you cause convection in the can, while at the same time considerably increasing the surface area of the can that is actually touching ice.
The prototype was adapted from a power drill, a baby's bottle, and a great deal of duct tape, taking second place at the competition. Later refinements included using 3D printing to print the attachment known as the Chill Bit, which connects the power drill to a beverage container. The latest version of the Chill Bit will spin both cans and bottles.
As very few of us carry power drills around to parties or while tailgating (the inventors are mechanical engineers), the next logical step was to develop a self-contained unit for spin chilling. The resulting Beerouette is waterproof, and can spin a can or bottle to near freezing in less than a minute without requiring any attention while operating.
Doesn't all this spinning cause carbonated drinks to foam over when opened? Actually, you get less foam. When the can or bottle is spinning, the tiny bubbles in the carbonated liquid rise to the top of the spinning liquid, which is on the rotation axis, where they coalesce into a single large bubble. When the spinning stops, that large bubble is at the top of the can or bottle, where it can escape without fanfare when the container is opened.
The Spin Chill products allow a beverage to be cooled essentially down to the temperature of the ice in which they are spun. If the ice is melting, the limit is a bit above freezing. However, if the ice is fresh from the freezer, a beverage can be cooled below the freezing point. Beer Slushies, anyone?
Spin Chill is currently rising funds on Kickstarter to bring the idea to market. The company's video pitch is below.
Source: Spin Chill
