DefCon Beverage Cooling Contraption Contest

DefCon Beverage Cooling
Contraption Contest Results Page

Results from DefCon 13

It's all done and we're all home now... man, DefCon 13 kicked serious ass! I want to thank all the organizers, staff, speakers, goons, and attendees who made this such an incredible conference. Those who came around to either participate in or watch my beverage cooling contest were no exception. Gathered together in the blazing mid-day sun, we put a large volume of brew through the contraptions, and all the participating teams impressed me with their designs and their positive attitude. I chose to honor and recognize the whole field during the closing ceremonies since everyone brought a lot to the table.

The overall winner was determined to be the DC702 team, whose contraption utilized a copper coil (which was no stranger to alcohol as it came from a liquor still, if i recall correctly) emmersed in a cooling vat. The tubing was equipped with a funnel at the top to allow for large quantities of input and plenty of expand/contract space which cut down on head runoff. At one point i even think i saw a pump mechanism attached to their unit, powering the flow of lager through the line. Beers came out fast, cold, and very drinkable...

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Winning the "elegance of simplicity" prize in my book was team Beer-Fu, consisting of Renderman. While many individuals are content with the use of ice+water or ice+water+salt in order to make a fast-acting heat transfer pool, Renderman took this to a wickedly insane level by opting for isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) which has a freezing point of -128º F (-89º C) and utilizing chunks of dry ice (which has a surface temp around -109º F / -78º C) in order to turn his cooler into a soupy, foggy vat which held a temperature of about -90º F (-68º C) and was very dangerous to bare hands. Beverage cans immersed in this affair cooled in under a minute... but the different thermodynamic properties of liquids and gasses led to rapid expansion of the CO2 and some very foamy cans when opened...

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The Cincinnati Drinking Club was represented by Bacchus, who made use of a peltier cooler. I was curious whether anyone would opt for such a computer-related hardware mod and was pleased when it showed up. While the limited surface area of the cans led to difficulty with cooling forces fully reaching the inside liquid (truth be told, all teams who tried the in-can methods suffered from this difficulty to some degree) i was very happy with Bacchus's choice of electronic equipment. And next year, so he claims, he plans to refine his design... not only to make the cooler more efficient, but also to power nacho cheese with the hot side of the peltier junction...

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And last but not least, the Wicked Awesome Beer Ninjas (Noid and Lil Freak) came in true DefCon style... casting the elegant solutions of other teams into sharp relief with the brute force method they employed using a gigantic jug of liquid nitrogen. (-321 °F / -196 °C)...

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Pouring the powerful cryogen into a small canister containing their beer (a thick stout as opposed to a cheap lager, which added to their difficulty) managed to freeze some of the contents in the can, freeze the can to the contraption, and the contraption to the ground...

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Their beer was drinkable and tasty, however... and thus they succeeded in their task, even if they had a good deal of leftover liquid N2 in their supply container. "What to do with that?" we asked ourselves. Since the cost was the same whether the container came back partially full or completely empty, "Dump it in Pool 2!" was naturally the resounding answer...

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Sometimes when Alexis Park security arrives on the scene to demand an explanation of what you're doing, it's a sign that you're doing a very good thing.

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Once again, I extend a big thank you to everyone who was involved with the permission, planning, and participation in this event. I had a terrific time and hope that you all did as well. I look forward to running the event again at next year's DefCon and can't wait to see the designs that are cobbled together. Keep in mind that we may eliminate the in-can portion of the contest, since there seem to be physical limits as to exactly how cold and how fast a contraption can function with the beverage locked away inside of aluminum. Next year i'll bet the devices work faster and colder than mere mortals could ever dream. I look forward to seeing you all then!

Results from DefCon 14

For the second year in a row, attendees of DefCon got the chance to pit their wits and skill against the powerful las vegas sun. It seemed like it was even hotter this year than last time, but perhaps part of that was due to the fact that we weren't poolside and started later in the day due to a fire marshal mess. On to the results...

Ayeitis was recognized with the "Frostiest brew award." He consistently cooled beers to 32° and below. His best run involved a drop from 93.8° to 30.6° in two minutes. However, on most of his cooling attempts he overshot the 38 degree mark.

Busprof was far and away the achiever of maximum style points. His contraption was assembled from computer cases, using "dual core" technology in the form of a pair of copper tubes. A variety of domestic and international beer caps served as I/O ports on the back. We hope this college professor will grace us with his presence again next time, as his workmanship was truly a hit with observers.

Noid and Lil_Freak, the Wicked Awesome Beer Ninjas, returned again... but with no Liquid Nitrogen this time around. While they didn't take the "brute force" title like last time, they garnered what i dubbed the "whole mouthful" award, since their device (a plastic bucket submerged in a supercooled vat) was able to handle the immediate dropping of an entire can's contents without any spill.


- DC702 -	- Vegas 2.0 -

There was much buzz about the "Hometown Showdown" this year, with two separate vegas-based teams entering the competition. Bryan & Rob were representing DC702, while Hackajar and other associates formed team Vegas 2.0... who was going to take the title in this hotly contested local matchup?

Well, the official victors were the crew from DC702. The consistently cooled beers to the target temperature in under two minutes time.
Their best run, for the record, involved dropping a beer from 92.5° down to 36.1° in a minute and fourty-five seconds.

However, Hackajar's design does deserve recognition for it's uber-cooling power. This contraption exhibited the maximum cooling ever achieved thus far in the competition's history. Late in the day, after the beers had been sitting out in the scorching sun for hours (and almost all hope of properly calibrating tools and factoring in temp differentials was lost) Vegas 2.0 managed to drop a beer from 108.5° to 42.7° in two minutes and fifteen seconds! This was outside the time window, but that's still some damn impressive cooling!

No discussion of the DefCon 14 Beverage Cooling Contraption Contest would be complete, however, without giving proper credit and recognition to Renderman. I feel so very, very terrible about this... but due to a HUGE foul-up on my part, his photo was lost from my slide show and subsequently his mention was absent from my wrap-up during the closing ceremonies.

When all numbers were laid out, Renderman actually won the competition... beating all others in terms of pure, perfect cooling. Again opting for the beauty of simplicity in his design, Render used a supercooled vat (consisting of Dry Ice and Isopropyl Alcohol, which has a freezing point far lower than water-based solutions) and dunked in a plasic ziplock bag. This provided the absolute maximum surface area with a medium that had almost no thickness to insulate or foul the thermal energy transfer.

A good sport and a true friend, he forgave me for my idiocy and promised to come back again next year with more great design work and an appetite for more delicious, frosty beer. I, in turn, promised he would never be left out of my commentary again... and i also promised that in the future his Canadian pallette wouldn't be subjected to Pabst Blue Ribbon. ;-)

Results from DefCon 15

So I suck and was really late when it came to putting up the results from DC15, and the only photos that survived were of the top two teams... Beer-Fu and The Jewish Hackers.

The two fellows from the Jewish Hacker team used a coiled tube running through a cooling bath system. At times this led to some line freeze-up, however, a problem that many teams have encoutered throughout the years that often requires a lot of manual blowing and forcing of the tube in order to get fluid to dispense properly. They were admirable contenders, however, and successfully cooled beers that were taking a pounding in the blazing Vegas sun. On their best run, they cooled a beer from 93° to 37.4° in exactly one minute... that's .926 degrees/sec of cooling power!

Renderman and his team-mate this year, EricM, had a refined version of his super-cool isopropyl/dry ice setup. This time, ziplock bags were again part of the equasion but they had all air extracted and were sandwiched in between cookie cooling racks so as to best maximise the surface area during cooling. They blew the contest out of the water... or "beverage" as it were. They cooled a 91° beer down to 35.8° in one minute and five seconds. Wile this was a slightly slower rate of cooling (.849 degrees/sec) than the Jewish Hackers, their exceedingly low finishing temperature gave them the edge and the winning spot. Well done, guys!

See you next year!