The Drunken Tailgate

Keep Your Jager Cold on the Go

Need to take a bottle of Jagermeister around campus but are worried that a brown bag won’t keep it ice cold? Luckily your local liquor store may be selling bottles of Jager that come with these handy orange koozies. Theoretically this would also keep 1.75ml bottles of vodka cold as well. Which is good since I don’t imagine Ketel One will be featuring a koozie as part of their packaging anytime soon.

Quick Draw: The Beer Holster

So I stumbled across this Halloween costume from a Wake Forest tailgate. Normally dressing as a cowboy would be a bit of a cop out, but I must say I was impressed with the Leather Beer Holster. Turns out you can buy them from beeroutlaw.com. Their cheapest one costs $29 and you can get one personalized with a college logo for $40. Not a bad way to mosey around campus.  If you were to get a pair of holsters and top it off with a belt buckle bottle opener you could become some type of drunken Billy the Kid.

Cap a Cooz: Koozie with built in bottle opener

Over the last few years bottle openers have been popping up everywhere. On the bottom of flip flops seems like a good idea until you step in dog crap that first time. The bike rack for my car is outfitted with them as well. But it’s easy to keep a bottle opener in a car anyway. But a koozie with a bottle opener built in is ingenious. A beer, a koozie, and a bottle opener. You’re set. Check out Cap-a-Cooz and either get a smooth looking koozie featuring their own logo or you can also create your own (the 36 unit minimum at $4.49 is reasonable). They appear to fit both bottles and cans well.

A Koozie for Your Keg

At home there’s a certain amount of comfort to placing a keg in a tub and filling it up with ice. The tradition of it just makes a party more fun. Unfortunately that tub becomes quite the pain when tailgating. If you have any distance to cover, hauling a tub, 6-8 bags of ice, and a keg requires a herculean effort. Luckily, Keg Works has created a koozie for your keg. Now for the brilliant part, the koozie is actually just a neoprene jacket that holds an ice blanket in place. The ice blanket is supposed to keep the keg at the same temperature for 3-4 hours and you can also purchase additional blankets. The koozie costs $110 and an additional blanket is $32.50. So if you figure you spend about $10 on ice each time you get a keg, this thing would pay for itself after 15 drunken tailgates. So unless you have wheels on your kegerator, this isn’t a bad option for the adventurous kegger.

(HT: TailgateLot)

Thermos Brand Steel Koozie Review

Thermos has finally thrown their hat in the beer insulation ring with a stainless steel koozie. Vat19.com sent me over one of these stainless steel can insulators for a test drive. It uses vacuum insulation that has been developed for other Thermax technology products. So with out getting into details, it’s going to keep your beer colder than a cheap piece of fabric. On the product page on Vat19 you can see a video on the comparative temperature change. Tailgating Ideas also tested the change over a koozieless can.

But in reality, it shouldn’t take you longer than 20-30 minutes to finish most of your beers. So temperature change is actually pretty low on my priorities list for a koozie. I’m more worried about practicality and appearance.

Pros:

- The hard metal design and rubber bottom makes this koozie quite sturdy when sitting on a flat surface. When using a cloth koozie at home I often get a little anxious when I sit my beer down on a table. As the beer gets lighter is more likely to flip over. It takes a pretty strong effort to tip over the Thermos insulator.

- Fits a can snugly. It’s slim enough that my hand fits around it well. The outside of the insulator stays at room temperature and doesn’t get wet so you maintain a good grip.

- Sleek and unique look

Cons:

- This is more of a koozie for around the house. The main issue for tailgating is that you can’t fit this in your pocket. Which isn’t always a problem but it could be. Also at this price you don’t really want to lose it when you get drunk.

- It doesn’t hold bottles well. They jostle around quite a bit which makes it a can only situation.

Overall: It gets the Drunken Tailgate seal of approval. I’ve been using it for three months now and I’m very satisfied. I use it every time I’m drinking a beer from a can inside my house.