Dry Ice

[skunked]

Has anybody used this for there tris? I need something for a 5-6 day trip and dont want to have watered down food by day 3 anymore. If any ideas let me know

[Scott K]

I use to use it all the time, but lately it is a little harder to come by. It works good to keep the frozen stuff frozen, but you need to keep the lid on it or it doesnt last. If your looking for keeping stuff chilled and not frozen, I dont recommend it!

[lotsofish]

If you were just thinking about using dry ice just like you would regular ice, I would think it would freeze everything and I'm not sure how long it would last.

I was just reading a page that suggested this:

Place dry ice on the bottom of the cooler and cover with cardboard. Completely cover the cardboard with regular ice, then your food on top. The dry ice will keep your regular ice frozen for about 3-4 days.

I've never tried it myself though, so I don't know how well this works.

[cribbageboy]

Where does a guy pick up dry ice? And does it usually cost you an arm and a leg? Any info is greatly appreciated.

[Duffman]

There's a place in Burnsville - Continental Carbonics.

We use to bring a block of dry ice and a block of regular ice, the block of ice doesn't even think about thawing till the dry ice is gone - about three days.

Dry ice will freeze solid anything that you have in the cooler, if you're having steaks that night, remember to pull them out of the cooler a long time before dinnertime.

Dry ice will kill nightcrawlers, not freeze them, suffocate them. Personal experience.

Dry ice will attract skeets, the co2 it gives off brings 'em in.

[mr walleye]

Dry ice runs about $1.25 pound, blocks are 5-10 pounds

unless you want the stuff to freeze it is a pain in the a$$ to deal with, and only lasts a few days, expect to lose about 1 to 1-1/2 pounds a day, unless you have a really good cooler.

when we go to Canada we use plastic 1/2 gal milk jugs filled with water and frozen, they work great and keeps food cold plus you have nice fresh cold water to drink and they last 6-7 days if you wrap a moving blanket around the cooler and keep it out of the sun.

[Walleye Guy]

We do what Mr. Walleye does but also use dry ice. Generally we buy from CC in Burnsville as mentioned above. We have one cooler that we use to strictly keep frozen things frozen. This cooler generally gets opened once or twice a day. Plan ahead and take out what you plan to eat the night before you are going to eat it. We make sure that we use our most insulated cooler and we wrap this cooler in one of those insulted moving blankets. If we are bringing fish home we put those filets in this cooler. They will freeze solid in one day or less.

We also put smaller chunks (5-10 lbs)of dry ice in other coolers with gallon jugs of water that we prefreeze before the trip. We also use these coolers to keep cubes ice frozen. We usually have 2-3 coolers set up like this. As the trip winds down and we consume our food we consolidate the food and ice into fewer coolers. The empty coolers make good gear storage.

Wrapping the dry ice in newspaper helps and make sure you have a good pair of gloves on when handling the dry ice.

[rascalP]

When we went to the BWCA, we would take the meat that we wanted to use later in the trip and wrap it with a few chunks of dry ice in some scrap closed cell foam(the dark grey stuff) and tape it shut. It would definitly stay frozen and the small size packed nice in a duluth pack or backpack. You could also put it inside a mattress pad of the same material or get a small soft-side cooler. We never brought hard coolers in. Dry ice WILL freeze everything - as stated above, use it to keep regular ice longer.

rascal

[Cicada]

Check with your local grocery store. I used to work at one and the frozen food always came topped off with dry ice. We just threw it away, but I did keep some when I went on a trip. I wrapped it in newspaper and then tried to get it airtight by using plastic wrap. It is colder than water ice so it will freeze everything in the cooler. Also, you don't want dry ice to come in direct contact with plastic, like the inside of the cooler. It will damage it.

[mr walleye]

 Originally Posted By: Cicada

Check with your local grocery store. I used to work at one and the frozen food always came topped off with dry ice. We just threw it away, but I did keep some when I went on a trip. I wrapped it in newspaper and then tried to get it airtight by using plastic wrap. It is colder than water ice so it will freeze everything in the cooler. Also, you don't want dry ice to come in direct contact with plastic, like the inside of the cooler. It will damage it.

most only put dry ice on the shipments in the summer.

look up Atomic Dry Ice they are a distributor in the Twin cities and can tell you who has dry ice in your area

[Scott M]

Yeah, I bought some from atomic south of the Twin Cities U of MN campus once. Kept my beverages and food cold-not frozen-on a trip to Florida. Just insulate accordingly. I really like the stuff, but its spendy.

[Cicada]

I worked for a Super Valu store. They used dry ice in the winter too. The frozen would be in a chest with the dry ice because the trailer had to be heated to keep the rest of the product, especially produce , from freezing.

[89Bronco]

 Quote:

Wrapping the dry ice in newspaper helps and make sure you have a good pair of gloves on when handling the dry ice.

Yeah, don't handle the stuff with bare skin...it leaves nasty burns.