The End of Warm Beer!

A UK student has come up with a solution to ensure that drinks stay cold, in an invention that could spell the end for pints of warm beer.

The Coolboy is a portable drinks cooler, only the size of a cocktail shaker. The device is mains powered with the inside filled with electronic cooling cells. All you do is pour the liquid into the Coolboy and it passes through the chamber where it is chilled. The inventor, Ian Thompson, a MA Design student at Northumbria University, believes that the Coolboy could revolutionise the way we drink in the future. “I think the beauty of the Coolboy is its flexibility: when some drinks lend them selves to being chilled by ice cubes others don’t, e.g. a beer with some ice cubes?! For the Coolboy that’s no problem; just pour your beer through and it’s cold. Give it a rinse under the tap and you’re onto wine or even vodka, just make sure you don’t use the Coolboy too much! And have some Alka-Seltzer around for the next morning. “I would also like to think of the Coolboy as a cocktail shaker for the hip urban spy of today, a kind of up to date version of James Bond and his shaken not stirred cocktails. “I’ve always fancied being a spy but never quite got around to it. A spook today is more likely to be seen in a pair of Diesel jeans, carrying an Ipod, so why not update his drinking equipment too? I can see him chilling a Hoegaarden or a Mojito through a Coolboy after some crazy mission, involving secret documents, snowboards and pretty girls.” The Coolboy earned Thompson, 29, a place in the final four of the Electrolux Design Lab 2005 contest, which seeks to find innovative new designs that could meet the needs of tomorrows consumers, with over 3000 entrants from 80 different countries. Ged Howard