The “Playa Grade” Stein Of Science

A while ago, sometime in the vicinity of February in the warm and boozy cocoon of the Forbidden Island tiki lounge, I seem to have promised a certain burner that I would figure out how to make a Stein of Science that could stand up to Black Rock City.  She declared the idea of loading up the stein in the morning with a cold beer, tromping around all day, and still having a cold beer in there to be perhaps the best possible thing EVAR.  I may have been a scorpion bowl or two deep into the evening and with a pshaw or two, I said that it shouldn’t be a problem and I’d get right on that.

Fast forward five months to this week.  Project Status Report – Diddily/Squat, to quote one of my favorite Bloom County strips.  UNTIL TODAY!

You see, the problem has primarily been a matter of creating a lid that:

  1. Was sufficiently airtight to not let dust sneak in.
  2. Was sufficiently watertight to not leak the delicious beverage that it is keeping cold.
  3. 1 & 2 remained so with a little bit of playa dust accumulation.
  4. Did not completely defeat the thermal properties of the dewar.

First efforts revolved around trying to cannibalize an existing airtight sealing top and adapting it to the stein.  This was a failure mainly due to the dewar’s internal dimensions not particularly matching any other extant vessel.  I do have a lovely variety of bailtop preserve jars for my kitchen to preserve…something…in I guess.

Other identified problems involved that the average airtight lid would turn the stein interior into a greenhouse while out on the playa.  Dewars are exceptionally good at keeping a constant temperature, but if you intentionally add more thermal energy it’s going to keep that too.

Working from a very simple baffled pancake design of silicone and HDPE (if it’s good enough to build chemistry labs out of, it’s good enough for my steins), I think I have a functional lid design and ordered some bits to start experimenting with.  If all goes well, I hope to have something to throw out to the world by mid-August.  But to answer these three questions right away:

  1. No, it won’t have a straw hole.  A straw through the top and down into your beverage introduces an opportunity to leak, collect playa grit and, most importantly, is a thermal short circuit from the outside world directly into your drink.
  2. Yes, I’ll sell the lid separately.  But for the sake of the sanity of your safety people, DO NOT fill a dewar with liquid nitrogen and use one of these lids.  The foam lids that dewars normally come with are vented so that expanding vapor can escape.  This lid is intended for beverages in the desert, not LN2 in the lab.
  3. Of course, the Playa Grade Stein of Science will come with a carabiner.  It would hardly be Playa Grade without one.  Dur.

And now the three rums and Coke is gone.  Perhaps another is in order.  Perhaps bed.  Hmmm…