Wrapping a Drink with Paper Towel (Or Toilet Paper) Cools It Faster in a Fridge

Last Updated on 2020-11-18 , 5:59 pm

As courtesy dictates, whenever someone visits our house, we are supposed to offer him or her drinks and snacks during the visit. Now, I’m not sure about you guys, but I tend to run into the following problem.

WE RAN OUT OF CHILLED DRINKS! LIGHT THE BEACONS! BLOW THE HORNS! GONDOR CALLS FOR AID!

…Well, you get the idea.

It really sucks for the visitors when the host runs out of chilled drinks (and ice, most probably). Now, we wouldn’t want to drink a warm can of coke, would we?

However, fret not as I offer up a simple life hack to solve this problem once and for all!

Ladies and gentlemen, if I may:

In case you’re wondering what this is about, wrapping a can of drink with a paper towel before tossing it into a freezer allegedly chills the drink faster than usual!

According to the theory, due to evaporative cooling, your can of drink will cool approximately 10 degrees more than a can which is not wrapped if given the same amount of time.

Now, I know some of you are arguing that this is but a myth.

(Hey, I’m not a science student, so pardon me)

However, when we decided to test it out on two different cans of milo, we found out that the one with the paper towel is indeed colder than the one without. Of course that is based solely on our “feel”, but the difference is pretty obvious.

Maybe it has to do with the contents? Perhaps there’s a difference between a can of coke and a can of milo? Or perhaps, there’s a difference between glass bottles and aluminium cans?

This YouTube video here seems to agree with the technique too:

 

And by the way, don’t think of using normal paper or tissue paper. Those might not have the same effect.

If you’ve no paper towels, you can use toilet paper…though I’m not sure if your guests would be happy to know what you’ve done with their drinks prior to serving them #justsaying