Chilling down of a beer in a freezer!

As I was laying on the couch one early morning, I remembered that while I did have beer for later in the day, it was not in the fridge. Not liking warm beer all that much, I then had another question pop into my mind. 'Just how long', I wondered, 'what would it take to chill a beer down to 46 degrees from a start of say 68 or so?'

My first attempt proved very unsatisfactory. I had attempted to measure the degree change of a can of beer by aiming a infrared thermometer at it every 5 minutes. The freezer I was using for this experiment was a mini-Edge Star unit I had in my bedroom. But, it turned out that opening the freezer and taking out a can to get a reading didn't work out well, as the mini freezer section was also getting warmer from all those openings and closings! I scratched that idea...

Next, I took another 'warm' beer and placed it into a standard refrigerator freezer. I also decided to wait for 15 minute intervals to pass before taking another measurement. That worked out pretty well! Within a half an hour the beer's temp was approaching 50°F which was on the edge of being acceptable. The graphic below shows the result when I quit after 1 1/2 hours! Man, that just didn't seem right to me. Perhaps I was using a faulty Infrared instrument....

My final moment of inspiration for the day, came when I decided to use a regular thermometer to sample a fresh beer every 15 minute by pouring it into a glass and then drinking it! So saying, I loaded a case of beer into my freezer and started the clock. After making only about a dozen measurements, I forgot all about what I was doing and woke up the next day with a very bad hangover.