Unless you own a Lucas refrigerator you probably don’t enjoy drinking warm beer, and unless you own a Land Rover you probably don’t get the joke (Lucas used to make all the sub-standard electronics for Land Rover that made Hasbro toys look like super computers).
Here are DirtRoadTrip, we pride ourselves on being professionals at drinking beer. Between Ben and myself we’ve probably consumed more crap beer such as Natural Light light beer in 4 years of college than most people either care to admit, or have done in a lifetime. Whether it’s out of a dirty cup at a fraternity house, or an aluminum can with a high tech frost brew liner, only one thing matters; temperature.
So, since we care about keeping our beer cold, it only makes sense that we should explore all available options. This is where the infamous koozie comes into play, but all koozies are not equal. They come in a wide variety of materials, colors, and logos, but do they all perform equally? That’s what we set off to find out, so we gathered 5 of the only best koozies we could find and got ready to “do bro-science”.
For the test we placed all 5 koozies in the shade under an awning, and used 5 bud light beers that all came out of my National Luna fridge. The ambient temperature was 98 degrees, and we took temperature readings with an infrared thermometer every 10 minutes for 30 minutes.
The Koozies:
ExOfficio Boxer Briefs
You don’t always have access to a koozie and sometimes you just have to improvise. After a quick discussion we agreed that a set of ExOfficio Give-N-Go Boxer Briefs would most likely always be available us to in the field and so we decided to give it a go. I think you’ll agree with me when I say, I’d rather go commando before I’m forced to drink a warm beer.
DirtRoadTrip
The DRT model is the BMW of koozies. While it may not be the most expensive or made of the best materials (neoprene) it delivers the best drinking experience money can buy.
Thermos Thermax
The Thermax is a double walled stainless steel koozie that is advertised to be 10 times colder than the competition. It is also sweat proof so you don’t have to worry about leaving watermark on your wood overlanding furniture.
ARB
The ARB koozie will be remembered in history as a watershed moment for beer drinkers. It includes integrated magnets so you never have to worry about where you’ll place your beer ever again.
Kayla and Jacob: AKA The Wedding Koozie
This koozie represents all the freebies you come across, whether it was from a wedding you were too drunk to remember, or a sweaty Sprint guy handed you one at a ball game.
Results:
| Initial | 10 Min | 20 Min | 30 Min | |
| ExOfficio | 34° F | 40.6 | 53.2 | 66.3° F |
| DirtRoadTrip | 34° F | 49.2 | 60.3 | 73.1° F |
| Thermos | 34° F | 41.3 | 49.8 | 64.6° F |
| ARB | 34° F | 48.7 | 58.4 | 70.5° F |
| Wedding | 34° F | 49.3 | 61.4 | 72.7° F |
Obviously the Thermax performed the best with it’s double wall stainless construction, but what really surprised us was how well the ExOfficio Boxer Brief held up to the rest of the competition. Not only did it outperform every koozie besides the Thermax, but the beer inside was only about 2 degrees warmer. The takeaway should be that if you are in a pinch, you can always rely on your ExOfficio underwear for more than just preventing swamp ass.
The DRT koozie came in dead last, but we still think it’s the best value and provides the best overall drinking experience, so in our eyes, regardless of the empirical data, it wins the shootout.
[…] So what is it good for? It’s good at doing table stuff which includes a prep station for meals, a place to eat, games of flip cup, lines of cocaine and keeping your gear off the ground. Mine is usually placed next to the rear of the JK, where I use it in tandem with the Adventure Trailers Combo Slide setup. It’s also proven to be very durable by regularly holding my 7 gallon Reliance Aqua-Tainer and for our easily supporting our high stress Koozie experiments. […]