If you’ve got a cooler or you plan to invest in one, then you should strive to find ways to keep the ice temperature up for longer. With the right conditions and the right amount of ice, you can easily keep the temperature in your cooler cold for many days. With the wrong conditions and the same cooler, you only get a few days of cooling out of it.
Below we share 5 useful tips to help you maintain the cooler temperatures for longer.
1. Chill the Cooler First before Adding Any Products
Before you fill up your cooler with any products, add ice into it and keep it somewhere cool for a few hours. Doing so helps to cool temperatures in the cooler thus enabling it to keep products cold for longer, thanks to insulation. Since keg chillers rely on insulation to keep products cool, the same principle would equally apply as well. Therefore, if you are using a keg cooler that features internal pockets, you can place ice directly on the surface of the container. When you do this, the blanket insulated ice wrap will ensure ice packs last for a longer period than you would typically achieve with non-insulated chill pack options.
2. Put Plenty Of Ice In Your Chill Box
Fill up your chill box with plenty of ice. When you do this, two things happen:
- The ice will obviously have a greater mass, meaning it will keep the entire box cooler, while the content stays colder for longer.
- When you fill up your chill box with ice, you effectively minimize the flow of warm air. Since warm air flow melts ice, the lesser warm air there is in the chill box the better for colder temperatures.
3. Only Drain Your Chill Box/Bag When Necessary
Air finding its way between the ice in your cooler is actually much worse than having water between the ice. Each time you open up your chill box or chill bag, cold air will escape and warm air from outside will find its way in. Therefore, draining your chill box means air gets between the ice and warms up the ice. By ensuring cold water stays in the box as ice melts, you prevent air from getting between the ice. As a result, cold water will help keep products cold for a longer period. Replace the empty space with ice and only drain your chiller box when absolutely necessary.
4. Keep the Chill Bag/Container In A Shade
If you let your chill bag or container sit in the direct heat of the sun, then you can be sure that it won’t work as desired. Instead, you should keep your chill box in the shade to ensure the ice lasts longer.
5. Frozen Salt Water
Pouring salt water into cold water in the hope of keeping products cooler is a great misunderstanding. Instead, you should freeze salt water. It is worth noting that the lower freezing point of sea salt means it’ll be much colder than your regular ice. While it’ll melt quicker than your regular ice, the water will maintain sub-freezing temperatures for longer.
With the aforementioned tips, you can actually ensure lower temperatures in your cooler for longer. If you wish to get the best results, then you might want to try applying multiple tricks discussed. Try these out and implement a strategy that works best for you.
