Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2020 December 25

= December 25 =

fastest way to chlll a bottle of champagne
You have a bottle of champagne at room temperature and you want to chill it to serving temperature (I guess that is a few degrees celsius), then pop the cork and serve it the usual way. Normally you do that with an ice bucket but that can take an hour or so. Can anyone suggest a faster way? Note that you have to chill the unopened bottle before popping the cork: you can't pour the champagne through a heat exchanging coil or anything like that. Putting the bottle in e.g. liquid nitrogen doesn't sound like a good idea because of freezing, shattering, etc.

You can use fancy lab equipment if you want, including large amounts of electricity, if that helps. I'm imagining something like a subfreezing liquid bath or cold air blast, combine with gently rocking or turning the bottle to spread the cold evenly through the liquid inside.

Just wondering--thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:313A (talk) 00:00, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * There are a bunch of kitchen/wine-store devices for this. One common method is to use a liquid cooling bath (water or glycol at 0 °C or slightly below, better heat transfer than air) and to rotate the bottle (presumably this helps mix the beverage to get better cooling throughout rather than only edge-inwards). I'm not sure spinning a champagne bottle is good for the bubbliness though. DMacks (talk) 00:07, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Fan forced cooling is a solution some shops I know use. HiLo48 (talk) 00:14, 25 December 2020 (UTC)


 * If you have a freezer, wrapping the bottle in a wet towel and placing it in the freezer may work faster. There is a serious risk, though, that undercooled champagne will freeze instantly in the bottle the moment the cork is popped, thereby spoiling it, so this is not recommended. Adding cool water (close to 0 °C; can be pre-cooled) to the ice in an ice bucket speeds up the heat transfer; keep stirring and adding ice as it melts. Splintered ice works better than ice cubes. Adding some salt to the water makes the ice melt faster, lowering the temperature. --Lambiam 14:30, 25 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Anecdotally, I can attest that Lambiam's freezer + wet paper towel/washcloth method is probably your best option at home. Works like a charm. Temerarius (talk) 20:33, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I did some experiments with a digital thermometer equipped with a probe through a wine bottle cork about ten years ago. This was regular wine not Champagne. The fastest chilling I achieved was by putting the bottle in a bucket of ice and then filling the bucket with cold salt water. The most convenient way that I use quite frequently is to put the bottle into the bin of ice cubes that my freezer makes automatically. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  18:32, 29 December 2020 (UTC)