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from the also-because-ice-cold-beer-is-an-abomination dept.
Why isn't beer served with ice? Well, the main reason is, the beer will get watered down as the ice melts – it's a problem that also extends to drinks that are served on the rocks, even though the coldness of the ice may help them to go down smoother. That's where the Beyond Zero system comes in. Instead of making ice cubes out of water, it makes them out of booze.
Invented by Kentucky-based entrepreneur Jason Sherman, the system actually consists of two devices – the Liquor Ice Maker and the Liquor Ice Storage Unit.
A liquor of the user's choice is first poured into the Maker, where it's cooled well below the temperature reached by a regular freezer, and formed into cubes. Exactly how that's accomplished is a trade secret, although the process takes just a matter of minutes.
Whiskey slushie, anyone?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:31PM (1 child)
Yeh, I am still thinking either liquid CO2 or liquid nitrogen. Both of which possess the thermodynamic capacity to do the job. However, liquid CO2 is generally more available.
Like you say, if you get this thing too cold, one may find things like frozen dental work pronto should you chew into one.
Neither would it surprise me to find the thermal shock of pulling supercooled "antifreeze" into one's mouth may do wonders to one's dentition.
Especially if crowns are involved. You know... thermal shock. The same thing that fractures glassware on rapid temperature changes.
Thanks for the -30 deg C point for vodka. I would now have to consider the latent heats of fusion for vodka as well as CO2 or Nitrogen to get an idea of how much refrigerant is required for each round of drinks.
( What really makes me think he's doing it this way is he is so careful to keep the refrigerant technology under wraps as a "trade secret". My guess is it would kill off sales if the prospective customers knew they had to have pretty substantial sources of CO2 or Liquid Nitrogen to run this thing, so "trade secret" is a good business method to make the sale before the customer realizes what he's getting into. But a big venue catering to the super-rich would probably go for it. The machine would be cheap enough to build in low quantities for the stated price, as - like a car - my guess most of the money goes into promotion and appearance. But the consumables would be another story. )
It did not appear to me that heat pump technology was in use, as there does not appear to be sufficient volume in the device in the photo to house the necessary compressors and heat exchangers. And the price looks too low for small runs of something like that.
Again, I am speculating on how this would work, just as I speculated on Rossi's E-CAT, being the fact of how it works is being withheld from me.
Being this is a discussion site, and I have no dog in this, I'll toss my speculation into the fray and see what others think about it.
Figuring out how stuff works, or making unusual things is my idea of fun. ;)
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday May 27 2017, @01:08PM
For all we know tho there is a giant tank of something standing in the closet under the machine. We are just seeing the business end of it sort of like a beertap or soda machine at any restaurant. We are not seeing the big tanks of ingredients. So there might as well be an industrial sized canister of something hidden away or a compressor, even tho I would think Richy Richy doesn't want to hear the sound of a compressor everytime he is chilling his drinks with boozecubes (or whatever we should call them) -- that said looking at the picture it doesn't even look like the machine is actually making ice cubes but instead some sort of ice ellipse blobs.
One wonders if there is some kind of gauge or button depending on what you put in, after all Vodka - Beer and Wine have very different freezing points. You could freeze Beer and Wine at home with much issue so the freezing point there is just a few degrees below zero (C) (depending on how solid said freezing is). To make it easy you could just freeze everything to Vodka levels but that might be excessive, take more time then needed etc.