Why not just drink decent beer, that doesn’t need to be ice-cold to be drinkable?
OK, bottle were switched, filled with water. Freezer still cycling on.
Both registered at 71.1 at filling time.
Bottles were removed after five minutes. Shaken vigorously.
Wet bottle registered 62.6
Dry bottle registered 63.5
Poured into glass
Wet bottle registered 63.0
Dry bottle registered 63.9
So wet bottle appears to cool about 1 degree more in 5 minutes.
Even the beers meant to be drunk “warm” are served at cellar temp, which is around 55F-60F max. I tend not to have enough fridge space, so I often drink pretty much any beer as high as 72F-76F, but a slightly cool beer is nicer.
Actually any material, no matter how high the thermal conductivity, wrapped around the bottle will act to impede heat transfer.
If a wet paper towel helps to cool the bottle it’s probably because the tap water was slightly cooler than the bottle temperature.
Mythbusters did this one. Fastest way to chill a can of beer was in a salt water/ice bath. It took them longer than 4 minutes. On the other hand, their target temp was 38° f.
I love this! A couple years ago during spring cleaning binge I found an old pair of ChemLab goggles. I put them in the drawer of my bedside table for a long con. Talk about bringing hilarity into the bedroom!
ETA: and I can totally see The Denizens repeating their experiment, then finding the lab notes, stained and wet, the next morning. As the coffee is being brewed in a beaker over a gas flame.
How 'bout some numbers? Based on the data supplied in the thread so far it’d be easy to include that you and your husband are easily impressed, but one important fact is missing. What kind of freezer are we talking about? -4 degrees C? -10, -15?
I can guess an explanation :
The freezer thermostat turning on and off depends on the surface temperature of objects in the freezer.
In the case of the aluminum can containing the beverage, the freezer turns on just long enough for the aluminum surface to turn cold and then turns off. When the Aluminum can has had time to transfer the heat from the beverage inside - the freezer turns on again. The thermostat has a natural lag time due to inertia,
In the case of the towel containing water, the towel has extra thermal capacity and can act much better as a heat sink long after the freezer thermostat has turned off.
Just anecdotal, but when we used to drink a lot of champagne, trial and error convinced us that the fastest way was to fill the wine bucket with ice water - not just ice. Never tried salt, but that would make sense. But ice water was WAY faster than the freezer.
Similar with beer. Stick your beer in the cooler and dump ice over and all around. But if you want to cool a few off fast, use a bucket of ice water.
Tho I second the idea above - drink beer that tastes good…
And the bottle of vodka should never leave your freezer unless shots are being poured.
Of course, I’ve been sober 11 years now, so the laws of physics might have changed in that time! 
Of course, we know that hot water cools more rapidly than cold water. So if you wet the towel with hot water, the hotter the better, it should chill the can even faster.
Oh, good point. For the record, the freezer I used in my experiments above registered at 0.1 F on my thermometer, or -18C, which is a fairly standard temperature for a household freezer in the US.
yes, it works in less than 15 min.
I had an outdoor temp bottle, about 90 deg.
Wrapped it in a wet paper towel, stuck in freezer on ice tray.
Moved a bed and some boxes to small truck, beer was cold enough to drink in about 10~15 min. when it was time to go.
Don’t need any salt…just lay the beer on a bed of ice and “rotate” it constantly for a couple of minutes (I don’t think it takes four even).
I’ll have to try the method suggested above on multiple beers by stirring.
The mythbusters went for fastest. The salt will significantly speed up the process by lowering the temperature of the mix well below the freezing point of fresh water.
Salted ice water is the best by far, but has a serious drawback: salty beer. Unless you dry the bottles thoroughly, salt water will drip into your mouth when you drink it. And face it - if you’re the type of person who chugs beer directly from the bottle, drink beer that needs to be ice cold to be potable, and can’t wait 15 minutes for your beer to cool, you aren’t going to be the type to wipe down your bottles!
I’ve seen this used at a bar I go to. It spins the can/bottle in a mix of ice and water. Seemed cool at first, but it leaked water on the counter and broke after a month of use.
They can use a straw, or a drip guard, or just learn to love salty beer. It’s salty snack and beer in one!
Once I get some cans of beer I’ll poke a hole in the top to insert a remote read thermometer and measure the rate of cooling in my big upright that maintains at around 0F. There’s no way a beer from room temperate to below 40F in 4 minutes, but a comparison with a can not wrapped in a wet towel may show a real advantage to doing this.
I bought a similar device over ten years ago at Big Lots. It will handle a 12 oz. can or a wine bottle. It has a motor with a suction cup that spins the can or bottle on its side in a trough of ice. It’ll get a drink cold in five minutes. I paid less than ten dollars for it, and it still works fine.
Recall an experiment that did something like this, but of course for Coke in cans, not beer.
Obviously, aluminum conducts heat better than plastic.
Next, immerse the can in cold water - the wet towel will reach equilibrium with the can pretty fast. The only advantage is that the wet towel adds the loss of heat through evaporation.
Cold air was marginally effective (i.e. put it in a freezer.)
Immersed in ice water was much better - the ice kept the water at 0C (32F) and the water ensured good heat transfer from the can. You are, of course, relying on convection inside the can to spread the cooling, so rotating probably helps stir.
Immersed in salted ice and water was best. Salt causes the ice to melt below 0C (As low as 0F, -17C) so the can is immersed in a much colder environment. A can could be chilled in as little as 4 minutes according to this scenario.
Immersed (liquid) as opposed to just touching the ice in a few spots, air gaps elsewhere) was better.) Heat transfer happens all over.
Maybe a suggestion would be to have a drink cooler full of non-salt ice water to rinse off the bottle or can when done chilling.
(of course, water is densest at +4C, so you need to keep stirring the ice water to ensure uniform chill)