Generally cooling drinks for picnics by putting them in ice takes well over an hour. But there is a way to cool drinks like soda and beer in minutes, less than two minutes in fact if the proper mixture of ice, water and salt are used.
Take a container that is large enough to put in ice about ten inches deep. I like a five gallon plastic bucket for this. The container need only be as big as is needed to put some of the drinks in, they can be replaced as they cool. Add a half pound of salt for each ten pounds of ice in a five gallon bucket about fifteen pounds of ice, a pound of salt and about a gallon of water is a good mixture.
Add water so that the ice and salt to make an ice, salt and water mixture. Stir it but DO NOT STIR IT WITH YOUR HANDS or PUT YOUR HANDS IN IT. Ice water is 32 degrees but this brine mixture will hit about 12 degrees almost immediately. Immerse the cans in the mixture. They will cool very quickly and in fact if you let them in too long the beverage will actually freeze on the inside of the can.
If you take the cans out after a few minutes you can put them on ice to keep them cool and use the cold mixture to cool more cans.
A Couple of Notes
- You can add more ice to the mixture as the ice melts but if you do you need to add salt at about one half pound for each ten pounds of ice.
- The cold water in the mixture is just as cold as the ice as long as there is ice floating in it and it can be used to cool more cans till the ice is nearly gone.
- Don't use your hands to put the cans in and take them out. You can get frost bite.
- Drinks in plastic bottles can be cooled this way but they will take 3-4 minutes. The heat does not conduct through the plastic as well as the aluminum.
- Remove drinks in cans from this mixture in less than ten minutes. If they remain there the beverage can solidify and it will be difficult to drink.
- Drinks in glass bottles can be cooled but do not allow them to be in longer than five minutes. As the beverage freezes solid it can break the bottle.
- Ice cream cannot be stored for a picnic in regular ice, it is not cold enough but it can be stored if immersed in a container of this ice, salt, water mixture if it is in watertight containers.
And finally, this is the mixture we used over fifty years ago when we filled a metal can with a milk, cream and sugar mixture, put it in a wooden tub, added ice and salt, and turned the crank on it till we had ice cream.
