How to Keep Drinks Very Cold — Including the Blanket Trick

I’m a food writer, not a meteorologist, but I can already tell you it is probably going to be the hottest summer on record because that was true last summer and the summer before that. Aside from inspiring the existential dread of living on a planet that is hurtling towards levels of climate instability previously only imagined in post-apocalyptic movies, I can tell you that means one thing: Your beverages are simply not cold enough. 

There is no place for tepid liquids during a heat event, but we need to go beyond that. None of this “slightly lower than body temperature” nonsense. None of the “a little bit chilled” garbage. When I pick up a beverage, I would like for it to be as close to freezing without being an actual block of ice as possible. If it hurts my hand a little to hold it, that’s great. That’s why I have — and recommend — an extensive koozie collection. 

We are no longer in the kind of temperate days where a just pretty cool drink will do. It should be so cold it is slightly menacing. Like Mr. Freeze in the 1997 film Batman & Robin, your beverage should immediately inspire a number of terrible ice-related puns. Ice to meet you. Cool party. Everybody: Cool it. 

Are you one of those people who insist that metabolically, colder drinks do not cool you down as much as hot drinks? OK, I reluctantly acknowledge you. (I am married to one of these people, who, bafflingly, prefers a room temperature water to one that is icy cold.) Yes, technically, a hot drink makes you sweat, which might cool you down more effectively than a frosty one. But on a 95-degree day, who can face down a cup of hot tea? Not me. 

Restaurants, at least where I live, have largely not gotten the memo. A large, straight-from-the-tap carafe of water accompanied by little thimble cups? Please. I understand ice is expensive to produce. I will pay for the privilege if I have to. During the long sweaty months in Philadelphia, I long for the enormous plastic cups ubiquitous at barbecue joints in my home state of Alabama, where in order to prevent them from being absolutely jam-packed with pebble ice, you have to specify to the kindly person taking your order that you’d like “light ice.”

If I’m the person in charge of beverages, you’d better believe they are cold. In order to maintain the correct level of arctic-ness in my drinks, I take a several-pronged approach. 

First is — obviously — keeping the drinks in the refrigerator or a Very Serious Cooler. (Mine is a Yeti but it does not have to be! Coolers are deeply personal; go with what makes you happy and doesn’t blow your budget.) If a party is happening, the Very Serious Cooler has been prepared in the following ways. First, it has been filled with ice to pre-cool, then drained of any water slush. Then it is packed to the gills with cans and bottles of all sorts, wedged into different densities of ice. I like to alternate frozen quart containers alongside standard grocery store chipped ice. The larger ice chunks keep the temperature down and melt more slowly, while the smaller ice pieces keep the drinks cold. 

If the cooler is outside, I put a blanket over it. My most hardcore cooler friends employ one of those silvery emergency blankets that reflect the sun away from the cooler. I have not obtained one yet, but the summer is young. I also have not yet messed around with dry ice because I fear that I will lose a finger, but I understand that it is the ultimate in cooling technologies for long camping trips, and I respect it. 

Once I remove my beverage from the cooler, I put it directly into a koozie. Soft koozies are preferable for portability, but I have recently been converted to the glories of a hard koozie, which allows for both superior cooling and greater stability when the can is more than half empty. It’s a particularly nice accessory for the park or beach because it offers protection from dirt, grass, and sand. It’s beautiful.

If I would rather have your beverage in a glass than from a can, then that glass will be coming directly from my freezer. If it’s the kind of beverage that I’d like to sip rather than chug, and one where the addition of ice would be ill-advised (a Martini, say, or a nice classic Daiquiri) I advocate for swapping out that glass for a fresh cold one from the freezer every 30 minutes. No one wants to drink warm gin. And if it’s the kind of drink that is typically served with ice, by the Norse god of winter Ullr (rhymes with “cooler”), it’d better be full of ice. At these temperatures dilution is not a problem; it’s just additional hydration. 

On an individual level, I’m not sure there is much to prevent our planet from hurtling ever closer to being baked by the sun. But I do know that we can keep our drinks extremely cold on the journey there.