This Chilled Drink Calculator Tells You How Long To Cool Beer, Wine, And Liquor

Science rules.

It's a problem nearly everyone has encountered at one point or another: You buy a six-pack of beer, or a bottle of wine, or even a liter of soda from the store, hoping to serve it ASAP, but...it's room temperature. Do you stick it in the freezer to speed things up? How long does it really need to be refrigerated?

Álvaro Díez, a physicist getting his master's degree in particle physics at Warsaw University, enlisted his friend and colleague Tibor Pal, a PhD student interested in gastronomy and vinery, to help figure it out. The two work for Omni Calculator, a Polish company with free online calculators for everything from, yes, how long to chill your drinks to how much caffeine is optimal based on how much sleep you got the night before. Call it the best use of physics a non-scientist (🙋) could dream up.

While Díez and Pal work in separate countries most of the time, they bonded over a common love of eating and drinking. "We just connected very well around food and drinks," Díez told Delish. "I love eating and cooking, and he loves drinking."

Between Díez's knowledge of physics and Pal's experience working at a winery, the two set out to solve the shared problem of a lukewarm beer as best they could: not by creating a miracle solution to instantly chill the beer, but by creating a formula that tells you how much time to cool it. And, OK, yes, they have some hacks for speeding up the process too, like wrapping a cotton t-shirt around a glass bottle or placing a wet paper towel around the bottle.

The two based the Chilled Drink Calculator off the Newton's Law of Cooling, Díez explains. But whereas Newton's equation asks for inputs like the heat transfer coefficient and heat capacity of each liquid, the students' version asks more manageable questions like what you're drinking (water, soft drinks, juice, wine, beer, or spirits), where the drink was previously (in the heat, room temp), where you're storing it (fridge, freezer, wine cellar, etc.). and what your desired temperature is (for water, refreshing, very cold, and optimal for hydration are three options).

Once you enter those factors, you'll get an time: A bottle of rosé stuck in the fridge at room temperture will take approximately 1 hour and 55 minutes to chill, for example. Obviously, you'll need some foresight to make use of the calculator, but at least it takes away the guessing game.

Díez's pro-tip for procrastinators? Go with metal cans rather than glass bottles.

"If you want to cool it quickly, then go for a metal," he says. "However, there's a trade off here, which is once you cool it down, if you have it in metal, and you leave it in the sun, then it's going to warm up much faster than if you have it in a bottle." (That's when things like this huge insulated canteen come in handy!)

He's also not too keen on the freezer trick. For one, there's a solid chance you forget about at least one beer, leaving it to burst or become undrinkable. Two, a full freezer takes more power consumption which isn't the best for the environment, he says. And lastly, "the freezer is always a lower temperature than you actually want to drink it, making it work extra hard for no real reason."

In sum, plan ahead just a little and you'll be good to go. And use the calculator to know just how long you'll have to wait!

Madison Flager is the Lifestyle Editor at Delish.com; she covers food news and trends, travel-worthy food experiences, and the products you need in your kitchen right now. She has a deep love of coffee and manchego cheese.

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