Stubby Holder

On a hot summer day while relaxing at home drinking a beer, you are likely to find your cold beer you began with is not as cold when you are finishing it. Something to do with the second law of thermodynamics and increasing entropy. A beer can stubby holder slows this process down, allowing you to finish a cool beer.
The beer can stubby holder I normally use is made of 7 millimetres thick wetsuit material. It works well. This project attempts to make a stubby holder which works even better.

Supplies

Empty beer can

Foam material

Empty chip packet

Contact adhesive

Wrap Foam Around a Can

I had some 25 millimeter thick packing foam at hand so this was used to make the stubby holder.
A piece of foam was cut to wrap around the can and another for the base. These were joined with contact adhesive, kept in place with some masking tape.

Shrink Test

I thought a chip packet may make for a covering for the stubby holder. I had heard chip packets shrink when heated up. I tested this shrinking by putting a twisties packet around an empty beer can and heating it up for a couple of minutes in an hot air oven. It did shrink around the can and so looked as though it might work around a stubby holder too.

Attempt to Shrink - Fail

A larger chip packet was placed around the stubby holder and put in a hot air oven. This was a mistake - the air flow of the oven sucked the packet off the holder and it got suck in the ovens air blades. Not good.
Next a conventional oven was tried. The chip packet didn't show any signs of shrinking and I was reluctant to turn up the heat too much.

Shinking the Cover

I would have tried to shrink the chip packet around the holder with a hot air gun but I don't have one so I attempted to use a BBQ lighter. It kind of worked and the packet did shrink around the beer can holder although in a couple of areas the packet melted through. This was done in an area with plenty of ventilation.

Drinking Test

A beer can was cooled to 2.6c by spinning it on ice. The beer was poured into a drinking can and inserted into the stubby holder. After 40 minutes of slow drinking, the temperature of the remaining beer was measured to be 7.3c.

Direct Comparison Test

In a direct comparison test with the wetsuit material stubby holder, the newly made stubby holder performed better, increasing in temperature by 1.5c over 30 minutes compared to an increase of 2.9c. With no stubby holder the temperature increased 5c over 30 minutes.

Relaxing With a Beer

A beer was cooled to 3c by ice spinning and then transferred to a pre-cooled drinking can vessel in the stubby holder. It was nice and cold throughout its consumption.

Stubby Holder Using Packing

Packing from a item delivered, looked like it would provide good insulation, so it was wrapped around an empty beer can. Then the can was placed into an empty twister's packet. The combo were put into an oven set to 180c for 2 minutes. This caused the wrapper to shrink around the can but unfortunately the packing must have melted as there was no insulation. The top was filed off and sanded smooth.

While it won't keep drinks cool, it will be a good drinking vessel for beer. Just pour a beer into the vessel and enjoy.