For Chilled Drinks In A Flash, Get Onboard With The Sous Vide Method
The easiest way to chill your drinks is by simply placing them in the fridge, but it's definitely not the fastest method. If you've just bought a case of beer or a bottle of wine and you're hoping to serve them as quickly as possible, there's a neat little hack you can use if you have a sous vide immersion circulator.
Sous vide is a method of cooking food. So, why are we suggesting you cool your drinks with it? Well, a sous vide machine doesn't have a cooling element, but it is able to circulate water. So, if you add some water and ice to the machine and set it to its lowest possible temperature, it will move that cold water around. Suddenly, the 20 minutes it would have taken for your alcohol to reach drinking temperature turns into five minutes. With standing water, the bottle forms a layer of warm water around it as heat transfers between the two. That's going to slow the cooling process down significantly. By circulating the water, you prevent that layer from forming, which speeds the whole process up substantially.
The importance of being chill
Getting your drinks to the right temperature has a huge impact on flavor. This sous vide method of cooling down drinks is great when you're in a pinch, but it's not as accurate as other methods. For something like a bottle of beer, the lack of precision won't affect its flavor as much. However, if you have a bottle of white wine and you're trying to reach a specific temperature — you don't want to overchill your wine — it's important to keep in mind that this method might be somewhat imprecise.
If reaching a specific temperature is important to you, you may want to look for other methods. But for most people looking for a quick solution to their warm bottle problem, this is a great option to have in your toolbox. We wouldn't necessarily recommend buying a sous vide machine specifically for this purpose — especially since there are products designed specifically to cool and circulate water to chill bottles of wine or alcohol. However, if you already have a sous vide circulator, this is just one more way to put it to use.