Rich B.

Took a training ride yesterday. 96 degrees and humid in Connecticut. My water bottle was 96 degrees and the water in it also. I got to thinking about how my father used to strap a plastic water container wrapped in wet burlap to the grill of the car on our family camping trips. As the wet burlap dried, it cooled the water in the bag! So, I wet a heavy wool sock, slipped my stainless steel water bottle into it, stuffed it into my bottle cage, and rode. Just as a control, I kept the other water bottle in the cage uncovered. It really worked! The bottle in the sock was significantly cooler than the other one. It took a little while to cool, and I had to wet the sock every few hours to keep it working. Really felt nice to drink the cooler water. Try it!

Seamless

For years I've been using a bottle cover designed to chill as absorbed water evaporates; the company now sells an integrated unit of foam shell and bottle.

https://www.maxchill.com/Home.html

From the FAQs:
MaxChillGraph..jpgMaxChillBlue..jpg

prathmann

Yes, this trick works best on hot, but low-humidity days. When I lived in southern Az we sometimes kept one extra water bottle just for keeping the socks around the other ones wet.

Bacciagalupe

FWIW I find the Polar and Camelback Chill bottles to work well. Fill with ice and water, and it's drinkable for almost 2 hours. Much easier to use on the bike than a stainless steel tank, especially with the new CB podium tops.

NoReg

I don't know if it;s true, but when I was at Princeron we had the UCLA basketball team doctor tell us not to drink cold beverages. It feels good but isn't good for you. But that was a long time ago, so maybe it's not true.

late

I got a soft insulated lunch box. Most are just big enough for two bottles and a soft, small freezer pack.
Put two bottles and the lunch box in the freezer 30-45 min before the ride. I like it best
when there is ice inside the bottle. Then just put the bottles in the lunch box, with the freezer pak, and just take them
out to drink.

You need a pannier or saddlebag, something to put it in... REI medium lunch box looks good.

There is little more refreshing than genuinely cold water on a hot day.

CCrew

It's not that it's bad for you, but it pulls energy from your core to warm the liquid to body temp. With touring that isn't a huge issue, but performance sports it can be.

Bacciagalupe

It might be, but it does run contrary to a more likely scenarios a like so:

• Especially on hot days, your body is expending some of its energy keeping your core temperature down. Cold water does a tiny portion of that work.
• If you prefer cold water, you'll drink more of it, which in almost all instances is beneficial.

I don't think anything bad would happen if you regularly drank warm water though. I really cannot imagine any problems from drinking cold liquids though.

Machka 

Rowan has been using socks around his bottles for years, and introduced me to the idea a number of years ago. We prefer cotton socks because they are thinner and the bottles fit in the cages better.

steve0257

If I'm really heated from the temp and work ice cold water upsets my stomach. Cool water is OK, but not cold.

jamawani 

Been using the wet sock since 1987.
Try to tell other people - but often get weird looks.

wheelgrabber

You could also let your bottle freeze overnight, then it will melt as you ride.

Whenever they dump the Gatorade bucket on the football players its always full of ice. No matter if its in New Orleans at 90 degrees or Chicago at -10.

dogontour

I tried the sock method on my tour last fall in Southern UT. I had a hard time getting the sock and bottle into the cage and the first time I pulled the bottle out of the cage, it peeled the sock off the bottle. I had to stop to put it back on and stuff them back into the cage. I only did that twice before abandoning the idea and ended up carrying them in my panniers for the rest of the week. How do you get them to stay on and get back in the cages easily?

Tiff

staehpj1

I don't find the insulated bottles stay cold all that much longer than the non insulated ones.

I don't see the suggestions of freezing bottles as all that useful to me while on tour with the exception being the few occasions where I get a would room and therefore have access to a freezer. The idea of a "small freezer pack" sounds even less useful for my tours at least because you have to carry the freezer pack for the whole tour even when you don't have access to a freezer for days, weeks, or maybe even months.

When ice is available... Filling a bottle with ice works well for a while and if the bottle with ice is in a pannier it stays cold much longer. If just under a pannier flap instead of in a pannier they get hot fast.

A largish camelback type bladder filled with ice and in a pannier stays cold pretty much all day. At least my companions on the TA said it did for them and we had lots of 100+ F days on that trip. They just ran a hose with a bite valve up to the bars and drank from it "remotely". The only reported drawback was that they couldn't tell how much water was left.

On my last trip we used a filter to get cool water from cold mountain streams when we could. In the past I had not thought the filter was worth carrying, but in the heat of my last trip I was happy to have it along. We also packed our bottles full of snow when we were on mountain passes that still had snow in patches on top. The snow was filthy on the surface, but scraping down a ways got us to cleaner snow.

NeilGunton

I like cold water, and I don't like the taste that plastic bottles give water. I tried Kleen Kanteen stainless steel bottles, but they warm up very quickly in the hot sun. Then I found out about insulated stainless steel bottles, e.g. Pure Hydration (https://pure-hydration.com/). I got one from Amazon and tested it by filling with ice cubes, topping off with water, and leaving it on the kitchen counter, with the cap on. I checked it periodically. One day later there was still a significant amount of ice. To my amazement, there was still a little bit of ice floating in the water two days later! I know this is "ideal" conditions (the bottle was not being exposed to a lot of direct sunlight or other heat sources), but still, that's pretty impressive.

I had some issues fitting them on the bike, since these bottles are wider than usual, so they don't fit regular cages. I got a couple of the Topeak Modula cages, and wrapped electrical tape around the metal clamp so that it wouldn't scratch the bottle. This seems to work ok - though the tape doesn't look like it'll stay on there, it works in principle.

The other problem is that the bottle cage mounts on my bikes are too close together - expanding the Modula cages to their max makes them foul each other (I'm talking about the ones on the seat tube and top of the downtube). So I used a strip of metal to move the downtube cage up an inch or so, and that worked fine (basically it's a mount from a Bike Buddy cage, I bolt the bottle cage to this mount and then bolt the mount to the bike - I raise the mount off the frame a little by using nylon spacers, to stop it scratching the frame paintwork).

The downside of stainless steel bottles is that you can't squeeze them, and of course they are heavier than plastic. Also, I don't have flip or "sports" caps on mine, so I need to stop, unscrew the top and drink rather than do it on the go. However I think that on tour, this isn't too big a deal, and the win from not having any plastic taste, and also having cooler water for longer, is worth it.

Incidentally, I also cut off the plastic strap that attaches the little cap to the bottle, since I found it annoying.

It doesn't get very hot here in Eureka, and I haven't had a chance to try these out on an actual tour with real heat. But so far on day rides they have worked well, keeping the water cool and taste-free. I don't mind the screw cap.

Neil

BigBlueToe

One reason I like using a Camelbak is that it keeps the water cold for quite awhile. If you fill up with cold water in the morning it will still be fairly cool a couple hours later. If you really want cold water, fill it with ice first, then fill with water. You'll have ice water for 3-4 hours on the hottest days! I know some people don't want anything on their backs, but after awhile I get so used to it I hardly even notice it, and having the cold water on a hot day makes it worth it for me.

jamawani 

What's sweet about the sock technique is that it is both low-tech and cheap. Camelbaks run $50. Super insulated bottles run $20 to $25. You can pick up the odd sock in a laundry "odds & ends" box for free.

Granted - it works better in the West than the East - -
But why would anyone want to tour in Georgia in the summer, anyhoo?

Jtgyk

We use to use these all the time on the ranch in Colorado...haven't thought of them for a long time.
They sure kept the water amazingly cool. They were made out of flax duck canvas, held around 1 gallon, and sweated just enough to allow evaporation to cool the water.

Perhaps hung from the top tube and stabilized at the bottom somehow....it'd definitely work on a trailer.

cyccommute 

Not true. Cold water is absorbed faster.

The bolded statement is the key. Drink 90 to 100 F water vs ice water. Which do you prefer? I'll take cold any day...ice cold

cyccommute 

Freezing a bottle (overnight or not) will have little effect on keeping the water cold for more than a few minutes in summer heat. There's just not enough mass in the bottle to keep the water frozen for very long.

Truer words were never spoken.

Yup. If you wear the Camelbak you can tell how much water is left. There are other benefits...see below.

The added advantage of wearing the pack is that the ice in the bag will cool your back...and your core...as you ride. Ice water, personal cooling device, easy access what more could you ask for?

Machka 

You keep the socks on the bottle with an elastic band (or better, an elastic hair band), and you choose relatively thin socks. We like the thin ladies' or childrens' socks. I can post pictures if you like ... three of the four bottles within sight right now are "socked".

KD5NRH

Well, maybe if you only use those little sissy bottles. Get a real water carrier and you won't have that problem.

cyccommute 

You just have to wait a week for it to thaw enough for a drink