How do you cool a lot of beer effectively and in a way good for the environment?

A cool springfed stream.

Assuming you don’t have access to a stream, cool the beer in tubs of water with floating ice.

Drink it warm.

Anyone else thinking these three have been around way too much beer?

@dpworkin Thanks for the answer, ‘bout the only useful one… That’s one of the ides we are already trying and are planning to implement. Thanks nonetheless, good to know others have had success with it!

Back in the 80’s we had a rare Hurricane (Gloria) go through Long Island. We were out of power for a week. Those were the party years. We drank LOTS of beer.

We did not have much ice and ended up drinking a percentage of it cold.

You get use to it.

rent a canoe, pour in a layer of ice, beer, ice, beer….get it? And the canoe is a novel way for more than one person to grab-a-cold-one at a time.

It came up in a conversation recently that using rock salt helps keep things cold (think old-fashioned ice cream makers). I found an article here about keeping ice cold while roadtripping in the desert that might provide some insight (see the section “Does Salt Keep Your Ice Colder?”).

Also, Mythbusters had an episode with a segment Cooling a Six-Pack (March 23, 2005):
The MythBusters use ice, water, refrigerators, freezers and fire to test the fastest way to cool a six-pack – if you want to look it up.

Obviously, if you use salt, you would need to take care when disposing of the water, but from what I understand, it keeps water colder without it freezing or something like that.

In the old western days, beer was kept in underground cellars at the saloons.

Ice, Ice Baby…

Probably the most environmentally-friendly way to chill beer is with a solar refrigerator. They’re simple to construct, and they have the benefit that the hotter the Sun gets, the colder the solar refrigerator gets. The simplest way to construct one is this:

1) Place whatever you want to chill on a raised surface inside a large bucket.
2) Fill the bucket with water.
3) Take a towel, blanket, or any other fabric which absorbs water and drap it over what you’re trying to chill, with the edges soaking in the water.
4) Place it in the Sun, the brighter and hotter the better.
5) Allow capillary action to draw water up the fabric and allow the Sun to evaporate it.
6) Profit!

As the Sun evaporates the water, whatever is underneath the fabric will become colder and colder. How cold it will get will depend on how much Sun you have; the more Sun, the colder it’ll get.

Dig a pit deeper than wide and deeper than , line it with a tarp, fill with 50 or more cases of beer hopefully already cold beer. Throw a couple of bags of ice on top the cans and fill buckets or leak proof bags with the rest and place on top. Cover the pit with a tarp and blankets or tarp and lots of straw. Will stay nice and cold for about a week.

I live in Norway… we just grab the nearest glacier…. or dig down two feet to the permafrost.

Note to myself:

Norway, good place for cold beer.

Not terribly green, but this is both effective and awesome.

I have a spring-fed pond on my farm that never gets warmer than 42F. Several cases of beer are hanging off the dock in a cargo net.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land – And where do you live?

Dry ice. Quick and effective. Be careful you don’t freeze it solid.

@ChazMaz New Hampshire. Near the White Mountains. Lots of cold springs around here.

Cooler box with superior insulation.