Dry Ice in cooler-tips
Elk
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so I was on the site a while back and someone on here worked with dry ice and knew the best way to utilize dry ice when using a cooler. Im looking to keep food a little while so I don't need to find a store in the sticks.
It's great for deep freezing meat after a kill and then driving somewhere and not having to worry about it thawing or buying more ice along the way. Just put cardboard over your meat that's in the cooler and then put 15-20 lbs of dry ice in a 120+ qt cooler, close it up, and be on your way. Really only needed for full-day+ drives.
Before you actually have an animal on the ground, I don't think dry ice has much use. Fill gallon milk jugs 4/5 full of water and freeze them in a chest freezer and throw them in your cooler to extend cooler life earlier in the hunt while camping without melting ice getting all over your food.
Maybe someone's found a way to use dry ice for a week+ of camping, but it evaporates quickly in most circumstances and will freeze solid anything you put it next to.
I use dry ice for food. You need a well insulated cooler and fill the empty void spaces. I use moving blankets to fill the voids. Dry ice will last a week if you do it right.
I've tried to use dry ice in cheep coolers for years, without much success. It evaporates too quickly, and isn't easy to find. This year, I finally bought a 125 qt Yeti, and plan to use frozen gallon jugs in it. I hope it's a better solution.
Matt
Don’t stow the cooler in your living/driving quarters (while you’re in there, at least) CO2 gas can build up. We had this happen to us in a big van on our way to Canada on a fishing trip. All of us experienced shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, etc, until someone rolled a window down. Symptoms disappeared almost instantly.
Dry Ice is awesome, but your cooler better be built for it! It will freeze your food, everything!
Crappy coolers are crappy coolers! Yeti is over priced and there are coolers out there just as good if not better!
Grizzly is one of them, (No I am not affiliated) and they are cheaper! Just as good, if not better and you can actually get them on sale!
I have had most of them, and I love my Grizzly's! I actually took my Yeti back after I found out about Grizzly... I own four of them!
I actually have a few Chinese knock offs as well, They are pretty dang good, way better than Coleman or anything else sold at Wally World!
Just my 2cents and opinion....
22 years of doing 2 day drives, with a "dry Ice burrito" made from tarped meat, inside a double sleeping bag, in the front of the truck bed. I layer about 6 blocks of dry ice on top of the tarp.
With a "heat wave" Season out West, dry ice is almost evaporated by the afternoon of the second day, but meat is near frozen. Never experienced an ounce of spoilage doing this.
Cooler takes up too much space in the truck...so, if it ain't broke...
I love my RTIC coolers. One thing I recall from past years is you should not totally seal up your cooler if you put dry ice in it as the ices "melts" by evaporation and there needs to be some way for that gas to escape.........
Im looking to keep my frozen food frozen for a week or more. that way I can have some fresh food going into week 2
I used dry ice last year; probably won’t do it again. It’ll freeze your meat but will be gone in a day.
Its over an hour away to get ice where I'm hunting. What I have been doing with great success is I have a 120qt Coleman cooler nothing fancy. I have taken a sheet of 1/4 inche foam board insulation and lined the inside of the cooler with it. All four sides top and bottom. Basically a box inside the cooler. I buy block ice to completely fill the cooler except a spot big enough to put a 15 pound block of dry ice. Cover it up with old sleeping bag and blankets in the back of my suv. I can open it up three weeks later and still have more ice than water.
You could do the same with just a layer of food in the middle. Easily get frozen food to stay frozen two weeks.
Do not under any circumstances put dry ice in a cooler in the back seat of your vehicle and take off driving. When it evaporators it takes oxygen out of the air. Puts off carbon monoxide I believe..
Do not under any circumstances put dry ice in a cooler in the back seat of your vehicle and take off driving. When it evaporators it takes oxygen out of the air. Puts off carbon monoxide I believe..
Don’t think it puts off carbon monoxide, but it is carbon dioxide, that turns from solid to gas as it melts.
Dry ice doesn't evaporate, as Dale stated it changes directly from a solid to a gas, called sublimation. The gas is carbon dioxide which does displace oxygen, obviously an issue in confined spaces.
Get a good cooler. Pack the meat tight. Put a barrier on top... towels, pillow etc. Close the lid and seal the seam between the cooler and lid with duct tape to slow evaporation. Wrap the cooler in a sleeping bag. Wrap that in a tarp. That’s as good as it gets. I’ve done the same thing without wrapping the outside of the cooler and it doesn’t compare. Good luck.
Buy a good large cooler like a Yeti and put a few blocks of ice in it before you leave to cool down the cooler. Then use juice plastic bottles or gallon plastic jugs filled with water and freeze. Fill large cooler with ice jugs to the top. Leave as little space as possible. Wrap cooler in an old sleeping bag and leave that way until you need ice. Do not open the cooler until you need ice. You will have ice for 10 days. We did this in 80-90 degree heat in NM in the back of a truck topper and we had ice 12 days later.
If you put dry ice in a Yeti quality cooler make sure you don't seal shut as the gas will need to escape.
All sciency and chit. LOL I said "melts" cause if I said Sublimation I might get tarred and feathered on here.....tuf crowd ya know.
Crazy thing about frozen foods , they just thaw out quicker than ice . I will be throwing blocks of ice out after more than two weeks but the frozen foods will be thawed some in a four to five days . A sleeping bag helps a lot.
So i use a big coleman, fill it with frozen gallon jugs of water, stuff towels in air pockets, throw in 4 squares of dry ice, wrap in sleeping bag, drive from CA to So AZ, 10 hrs, hunt ,eat open cooler only when needed for 7 days of chasin mulies in the desert. More of how you manage it than the type of cooler, in my rookie opinion.
It definitely has it's place. It keeps things frozen much longer than ice but the down side is that when it's gone it's gone. We loose about 6-7lbs per day so if you're going to be gone a week or more plan accordingly. I use it more on fishing trips than hunting. When the block starts to shrink I will fill ziploc bags with lake water and they will typically freeze overnight in the cooler. This way I have things frozen for the first 6 days or so and then in the 'fridge' for the last couple. Even though I do this I would not recommend anyone else doing this. If you're not careful the water can cause a problem with the dry ice and cause your cooler to explode. It's the only way to keep things frozen for an extended period of time rather than just cool.b
Dry ice is not something to play with. If you're careful you'll be fine. Never touch it without gloves or it will freeze your skin almost immediately.
Buy a lifetime cooler. It holds ice longer then any grizzly I own. It holds it longer then any Yeti my brother owns. It holds ice longer then any cooler I’ve ever used owned by me or anyone else. And, it’s the only cooler we put drinks in come winter time around these parts. Because they won’t freeze in it like they do the other coolers.
That’s my experience and .02 worth. Don’t worry about keeping ice. Last trip to CO two years ago, it held ice for 9 days being the drink cooler. While the Bisons, yeti’s, and grizzly coolers needed refilled twice during that time. And, they were food coolers that never got reloaded with hot drinks and got opened very little in comparison.
I built my own cooler and used 4 inches of rigid foam insulation. Held dry ice for over a week but like I said I filled all voids with moving blankets.
It’s 300 quarts total. I have a 2 inch foam divider that is removable. One side is for dry ice and frozen foods. The other side is for refrigerated foods and drinks.