Do you have any tips for keeping your drinks nice and cold in the summer? We recently tried eight popular chilling methods and revealed which was best.
Now different parts of the UK are starting to see the easing of lockdown restrictions, including groups of six being allowed to meet in outside spaces, there’s a good chance many of us will be enjoying a good cold beer or soft drink in a garden this weekend.
Personally I’m looking forward to relaxing with a drink while watching the Premier League, which is back in action after three long months!
There’s little more disappointing than a warm lager or a room-temperature prosecco – so one of our, rather enthusiastic, researchers recently volunteered to put eight common chilling methods to the test.
How did we find the best chilling method?
At Which? we don’t believe in doing things by halves.
While there’s much less at stake trying to bring a drink to temperature than there is when you’re buying your next big appliance, we still make sure that even our more light-hearted tests are as accurate, repeatable and robust as you’d come to expect.
We used bottled beer for our test, but would imagine that similar results are achievable with other bottled drinks.
Chilling technique | Start temperature (°C) | End temperature (°C) | Temperature change (°C) |
Control: Temperature of a bottle of beer just left on the side throughout the experiment. | 20.5 | 21 | 0.5 |
8. Three minutes under a cold tap, twisting the bottle. | 20.5 | 18 | -2.5 |
7. Bucket of cold tap water. | 20.5 | 18 | -2.5 |
6. Bowl of cold water, covered over with a wet flannel, leave in a breezy location. | 20.5 | 17.2 | -3.3 |
5. Bottom shelf of the fridge. | 20.5 | 16.9 | -3.6 |
4. Cover bottle with wet tissue paper and put in the middle of a freezer. | 20.5 | 8.9 | -11.6 |
3. Bottle in the middle shelf of a freezer. | 20.5 | 7.8 | -12.7 |
2. 1kg of ice and a bucket of cold water. | 20.5 | 3.9 | -16.6 |
1. 1kg of ice, bucket of cold water, 100g of salt. | 20.5 | 1.6 | -18.9 |
*Room temperature during the experiment: 22.5°C.
** Not a drop of beer was wasted during testing.
How do you chill your own drinks?

Are there any innovative chilling solutions that we missed? Do you have any tips or ‘hacks’ for keeping drinks cool throughout the summer?
I’d love to hear about your methods in the comments below – let me know!