Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting freezing a nalgene

I know these are tough bottles, some I have are 10 years old. As I ready for heading out west I would like to fill my nalgenes and freeze them bringing our great well water with...any problem doing so?

No

Don't fill them all the way, leave a little room for expansion. My wife didn't follow this advice and broke the top on one. Bottle was fine, top cracked off.

turn em upside down when freezing them would be my advice, it makes them easier to open and while it seems like it should be self evident, yes leaving room for expansion is a wise move, keeps the bottle intact or at the very least keeps you from having a bottle that's a wobbler.

I froze a Lexan Nalgene bottle a couple months ago and it shattered. I had left and inch or so of head space. I'd go against the convention and say don't do it.

Of course REI has a satisifaction gurantee so they gave me a new one that I have not tried to freeze.

Leave room for expansion..AND make sure the top is loose so the air has somewhere to go as the water freezes-expands.Jim

As was mentioned above the Nalgene bottles are very tough. Water expands approximately 10% when frozen so be sure to leave that amount of volume empty in your bottle and you'll be fine.

Levi

Air is very, very compressible. It would require a liquid with a much higher expansion coefficient than water to create enough air pressure to break a nalgene of any plastic. Of course you won't want to drink that liquid.

That's a lot of weight to take with you. Another option is to dehydrate it first, then all you need to do is add water to reconstitute it.

IB where is that winking smiley????

This'n?

I did that a few weeks ago and then headed up to the Sierra; trouble is two days later the bottles were still ice. Couldn't break the ice so where I did have nice cool water to drink, I was only using a half a bottle at a time. Imagine how dumb I felt breaking out the MSR to boil water to melt my ice!.

Lesson learned, consider the temps of where you are headed, because this rookie sure as hell didn't.

Nalgene originated in the bio labs. We used them, among other things, to spin down bacteria cells and freeze either the pellets or the supernatant, most times at -70*C so ice crystals wouldn't readily form. I think you'll be fine as long as you heed the advice about ice expanding relative to water.

I froze them during the summer for a cold drink. Had a cheap knock off break but the nalgenes held up. But I do leave some room for expansion etc. Funny thing is that a free plastic soda bottle can be frozen solid with never any issues. Froze nalgenes during winter when the temps fell overnight. Seemed ok too so guessing they don't know the difference between man made frozen and nature.

Just take the top off cover w/saran wrap(keeps frig or freezer smells out), leave a little space in top, freeze........works fine......done it for years......

Joe