How To Keep Your Beers Cold While Camping
When camping with friends and family or even solo, one of the best moments is when you’re huddled around a crackling fire, telling stories, and sharing laughter with a nice cold beer in hand. There’s nothing more refreshing and satiating than a frosty cold beer to complement a day of hard work, or even for leisure when camping.
A warm beer can be unappealing or unsatisfying to drink, especially in warm weather. When traditional camping, it’s easy for your beverages to lose their coolness due to being exposed to the unrelenting heat. Unlike “glamping” where you have access to air-conditioned rooms and fridges, with traditional camping, you have to rely solely on other portable or natural methods to keep your beers nice and cool.
Beer is simply more refreshing when crisp and cold. Here are a few foolproof ways to keep your beers cold while camping.
Flowing Water From a Stream
If you’re camping next to a stream or river, this tip is useful. Using the cool flowing water from a river or stream is a natural way to bring down the temperature of your beer. You can tie your bottles of beer in a bag and secure them to a rock or nearby tree where you can submerge the bag of beer into the water. Let the water flow over the bottles while you do other activities, like drifting across the river or fishing with your backpacking inflatable raft. Be sure to do this during the daytime, as it may be dangerous to try and retrieve the bottle at night with limited light.
Bury Beer in Cool Dirt
Burying your beer in cool dirt is another easy way to keep your beers cold while camping. Find a cool, dark, area underneath a big tree or shade to dig your hole. Make sure that the soil is soft and dark in color before making the hole.
Dig a hole big and deep enough to fit your beers and keep them tucked in the cool earth until the temperature has become colder. You can even sneak a few handfuls of water from the stream to put into the hole to cool it down even further and faster.
Traditional Ice Bucket
A traditional ice bucket is always a reliable option for keeping your beers cool. Even when the ice melts, you can allow the beer to chill out in the cold water until you’re ready to sip on them. Bring enough ice to completely submerge your bottles of beer to keep them crisp and cool.
Traditional Ice Cooler
A traditional ice cooler is a foolproof way of keeping your beers cold. It is one of the surest ways to make sure that your beverages stay refrigerated. Invest in a good cooler, as cheaping out may result in poor performance and warm beers. In addition to packing the ice cooler with traditional ice, you can pack it with ice sheets for a longer-lasting effect. Ice coolers can be a hassle to carry around, but they are trustworthy and reliable for good reason. It’s portable, large, and will keep your beers nice and cold in the unforgiving heat.
Freeze a Sock
If you’re in a desperate situation and really want your beers to be cold, try freezing a sock and using it as a sleeve for your beer to help get the temperature down. This takes minimal preparation, but it’s simple and easily accessible. You can freeze the bottle with the sock on it and take it out of the freezer when you’re ready. You can even dig a hole and put the socked beer bottles in the earth to aid in keeping it cool even further.
Wet T-Shirt Method
Another way to keep your beers cool is by using a wet T-shirt. Completely submerge your T-shirt in ice-cold water and wrap it around your beer bottle. If you can find an area where there’s a lot of wind, this can help keep the beer cool.
Use the Snow
If you’re on a camping trip and hiking in the snow, use nature’s very own to keep your beers icy cold. Find a deep layer of snow and simply bury your beers for an hour or so and enjoy the crisp and cold beverage.
Use Ice Sheets
Ice sheets are a practical way of keeping your beer cold. You can wrap the ice sheets around your beer bottles in a bucket, cooler, or lunch bag. It’s an easy and portable way of keeping your beverages cool while on the go. You can simply freeze the ice sheets and use them. They are designed to stay cool, so after the initial iciness has melted away, you can still rely on a steady coolness to keep your beers on the cool side.
Use a Beer Chiller
Beer chillers are a handy invention that is convenient and efficient to use. Picture a straw-like tube connected to a bottle cap. Now imagine that this straw-like tube is a cooling device that keeps your beer cold from the inside out. Because it goes inside the beer and is screwed on by its cap, it’s perfectly portable and a constant source for your beer to remain cold even while you’re drinking it.
Insulated Cooler Sleeves
Insulated cooler sleeves are another effective and practical way of keeping your beer cold. You can simply refrigerate your beer and then place it in the pocketed sleeve to maintain the cold temperature. You can carry this around with you and easily transfer it from one beer to the next whenever you’re finished.
Sometimes you have to get creative while camping in order to achieve what you need. When it comes to keeping beer cold or just cool enough, there are many ways to use nature to accomplish just that. From icy river streams and cold-packed earth to wet laundry and genius inventions, you can be sure that you’ll be able to enjoy your cool beverage.
If you would prefer to not spend money on practical resources like coolers, know that these simple DIY hacks and nature are on your side to provide you with your quick fix.
