Aluminum Vs. Glass... Which Beer Bottle Stays Cooler Longer

The popular Pittsburgh Brewery Iron City Beer released an aluminum beer bottle to replace the typical glass beer bottle. In the promotion of the aluminum bottle, the Pittsburg Brewery claims that beer in their aluminum bottle will remain cooler for “fifty minutes” longer than beer in a typical glass bottle. The principles of heat transfer and the thermal conductivities of both aluminum and glass would suggest that this claim is difficult to justify. In this work we experimentally and mathematically assessed the validity of their claim.

Our experiments have shown that the fluid in the aluminum bottle cools much faster than the glass bottle, and once removed from a cold source and exposed to room temperature, the glass bottle remained cooler longer than the aluminum bottle. Further investigations are being made into how the Pittsburg Brewery experiments were conducted. It is possible that cooling the bottles for a fixed time (rather than to a fixed temperature) may generate results similar to those claimed by the company.