Sounds like glamping. I keep my beers cold using a rock I hollowed out with a stick.
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With a stick? Man - those titanium trees are endangered!
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I have always wanted one for canoeing. When the canoe tips over in a rapid a normal cooler will pop open and your drinks and food for the next two days is now sunk in the river. Bungee cords kind of fix that problem, but after every rapid someone will need a drink, and the bungee ritual with wet hands and exposed skin in a wobbly canoe gets really old after the first time.
I don’t believe even the xtreme coolers have latches?
Its a common method for repairing/improving vintage metal side coolers where the solid block insulation has collapsed or didn’t exist. It seems to be the default approach to making custom coolers from shit like surplus ammo boxes and old crates. Don’t know how well it works compared to a decent modern cooler.
Most of the times I’ve run into in person it was jockey boxes for dispensing beer at out door events. And with that insulation is only minimally important. Because how long your ice lasts is down to the temp of the beer you’re pushing through it, and the length of the chill cool or efficiency of the cold plate together with dispense volume. If you keep it out of the sun a trash bag full of ice with a steel coil running through will use newrly as much ice as a yeti.
I don’t believe they do, and neither do they have a gasket so water could get in. But there are other brands that do. And I suspect with the rotoformed coolers you’ll run into the bulkyness problem for canoeing. At a given size they have a shockingly small capacity and rotoformed coolers are heavy. And anything with the rubber toggle latches tends to be harder to open than a bungie situation.
I considered mounting my jockey box in one, for looks and durability mostly. But the only size Yeti that’ll fit even one of my coils is like $400 and massive for the space. 175ft of 1/4" stainless tubing is already heavy, I don’t need to add 30lbs to that. Even with the cheaper brands you’re still spending a couple hundred for the same bulk problem.
I’d look into the soft coolers. There are a lot of well insulated dry bag style coolers (including from Yeti at the usual price premium).
Coleman Marine (white) Extreme for the win. For less than $100 I only needed one block ice run over the week at Burning Man. I kept it in my shaded tent covered by a down sleeping bag most of the time.
I spent many hours researching and comparing coolers, and came away with no interest in the Yetis. You might get slightly better performance compared to xtreme but pay a huge penalty in price,weight, and capacity. And those rope handles on the Yeti add insult to injury by making it unstable to carry. It seems designed for people with sherpas.
Most diy coolers have the same weight and capacity problems as the yeti, and more seams or absorbability to make mold hard to control.
I just don’t understand why white coolers are so rare. If your cooler is in the sun, why absorb the solar radiation with the dark colors many coolers come in.
Most of my cooler experience is with a cheapo picnic-grade cooler, someone else’s cast off.
It can’t possibly have a very thick layer of insulation, but it will keep ice frozen outside for several summer days, which surprised me a lot when it was new-to-me.
It is large (so it holds a lot of ice from the start) and it’s close to a cube shape. Both the size and the shape contribute to a low surface-area to volume ratio, and I suspect that’s a factor. I haven’t seen anyone bring that up in their cooler reviews or their DIY musings, etc.
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They show dirt and damage more. I’ve also heard that the white plastics used in typical coolers break down faster with sun exposure than the colored ones. And that lines up with my experience, the white coolers I’ve had (or white portions of others) seem to be the first to get thin and brittle. So its a longevity thing. Barring the ones with hard plastics like the lids of Igloo Playmates. And ideally you shouldn’t be keeping the cooler in the sun if you can avoid it, even with a white cooler cold will fade faster.
But even most colored coolers have a white or lighter colored top. And most of the major brands make a “marine” line that’s totally white. To matched your boat, and because its impossible to avoid the sun on a boat deck. White is usually the only thing marine about them.
One trick I’ve learned is to put in a bag of ice the day before you need the cooler. That first bag will be used to bring down the inside temperature of the cooler itself so all subsequent bags last longer.
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First of all, cooling length be damned; You put the beer in first, then the ice! Then, as you drink the beers, you add more beer to fill the cooler. Then, you drink those and add more, but now you miss the cooler sometimes. It’s okay, they’ll get in there eventually.
Add more ice! Kneel on the ground, add more…um…BEER! Yeah! Then drimk some mo0re.
NOw, fuck it…add mores beers and while youse is laying there…drink sum beez am thimk
bout moo ice…IZ COOLLD!
…drim sub bore beesh. Addz eyz…
…fug it…
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You would need it if you’re on a week long float trip on the Colorado river. Or a 4 day hunting trip where you need ice to chill game and keep beer cold. Anything where ice isn’t available.
The rope handles make it so you don’t have to lift it high off the ground. It saves your back and makes your center of gravity lower.
RTIC makes a comparable product which is still pricy, but a lot cheaper than the Yeti,.
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