Never drink warm beer again: New Spin Chill gadget can cool canned beverages in under a minute

Daniel Bean
·Assistant Editor

Two engineering students from the University of Florida have put their brains together to come up with a solution to a serious problem: warm beer.

A new Kickstarter project by Trevor Abbott and Ty Parker is seeking funding for a new invention that promises to chill a warm can of beer or soda in under a minute. Using a basic drill and a device called a Chill Bit,

the unique spin-to-chill process uses convection to increase the rate of heat transfer, cooling the beverage on ice at least 20 times faster, or about 30 to 60 seconds for a can of beer or soda, according to the Spin Chill Kickstarter website.



The Chill Bit is a power drill attachment that snaps on to the top of a can or bottle. The Beerouette, the team's newest invention, is a stand-alone, motorized device that can be placed right in the ice while spinning your beverage. Components for both products were designed in engineering software and printed in 3D to ensure they adhere tightly to cans and bottles.

The Spin Chill products can also respin and rechill an open can.


"The idea for Spin Chill came to us this summer when we were in Atlanta, Georgia, for the AngelHack Hackathon," Abbott told Yahoo News. "We had a case of warm beer that we took up to the hotel, and we had seen people spinning beers in ice by hand to chill them down before, so we tried it and it worked."

Abbott said he and Parker spent the next day of the Hackathon driving around Atlanta to find parts to build something that would spin the beer easier.

"We settled on a Black & Decker electric screwdriver that we ripped apart, shoved inside a baby sippy cup, attached a switch to it, used the new six-pack can holder from Cigar City Brewing and then went to town with duct tape," he said.

The two then took the idea back to Gainesville, Fla., and have been developing it through multiple iterations of the Chill Bit and the Beerouette.

If you think these guys are beer geniuses and want to party with them, you can donate $1,000 to the Spin Chill Kickstarter and they'll come to you with Chill Bits and Beerouettes to "help you throw the best tailgate ever!" If that's a little too rich for your blood, a simple $35 pledge gets you your own Beerouette that chills cans, beer bottles and wine bottles

And then there's the question of foaming. Surely we've all had a can of beer or soda explode on us after it's been shaken up a bit. Well, according to Abbott and Parker (and science), this will never happen with Spin Chill.

"When a beverage is shaken, the air pocket is broken up into millions of small pockets dispersed throughout the beverage. ... When the container is opened ... it fizzes over," the duo wrote on their site. "When a beverage is rotated, the air pocket stays intact and knocks all the small bubbles off the side of the container, making one larger air pocket. ... The usual slow decarbonation takes place at the infrequent irregularities and at the surface."

Is it too late to recall this year's Nobel Prize for physics?

You can view the team's Kickstarter pitch below: