I don't bring any fresh or perishable food when I trip but I recently switched my dog over to a raw food blend and now I find myself needing a way to keep it fresh on trips. Most of the high-end cooler bags I see are pretty large. I'm looking for something smaller that would fit inside of my Ursack. I would likely use dry-ice or at the very least some quality ice packs. Most of my trips are 3-5 days, so we're talking a relatively small quantity of food that would need to be kept cold.

Does anything like this exist? So far in my searches on and offline, I have come up empty handed and I really don't want to carry another full-size food pack.

You may consider constructing an appropriately sized and shaped soft sided cooler using bubble foil insulation and aluminum foil tape . The layers of insulation used and air tightness of design will affect thermal efficiency.

Don't think you are going to find anything small. Outdoorgearlab.com rates soft coolers and hard coolers for the time they will keep food safe and another time rating for how long they keep drinks cool. Hard coolers will last much longer. You probably can't use dry ice with soft coolers. For your 3 -5 day time period the Yeti 24 Roadie will probably work but it isn't small like you want. You would probably have to freeze a portion of the dog food before you put it in the cooler to make the 5 day limit you want. You would also want to precool the cooler the day before you leave and repack the cooler when you leave on your trip. I have one and put 4 pound Yeti ice on bottom along with ice and it works pretty good. I don't take a cooler on Boundary Waters trips but it is tempting.

Tomcat: "You may consider constructing an appropriately sized and shaped soft sided cooler using bubble foil insulation and aluminum foil tape . The layers of insulation used and air tightness of design will affect thermal efficiency.


"

This is an interesting idea, any experience with this or do you know how many layers I’d want if I placed the food in frozen? I have random bags I could maybe use. Otherwise I could use a small dry bag and wrap the inside in layers.

I’m thinking I would carry day 1 food thawed and the rest frozen.

Look at coolers marketed to people with babies who need to transport milk in bottles. These are usually nice, available and small enough for what you are describing. That said the foil tape and reflectix option is also a good one a tube or pouch shape are easy to construct with these materials, based on my experience I would think two to three layers would be more than sufficient depending on external temps.

I have used bubble foil insulation to construct food cozies and to insulate pots. IMHO the performance is marginal at best. I suggested it mostly because it is inexpensive and easy to work with and few materials will meet your requirement of fitting inside a Ursack .

I googled the " best cooler insulating materials" and for a 3-5 day cold requirement I read that 3 inch thick polyurethane foam walled and air tight construction such as in a Yeti cooler is recommended. If true, you may be out of luck for your requirements.

John

Tomcat:
I have used bubble foil insulation to construct food cozies and to insulate pots. IMHO the performance is marginal at best. I suggested it mostly because it is inexpensive and easy to work with and few materials will meet your requirement of fitting inside a Ursack .

I googled the " best cooler insulating materials" and for a 3-5 day cold requirement I read that 3 inch thick polyurethane foam walled and air tight construction such as in a Yeti cooler is recommended. If true, you may be out of luck for your requirements.

John"

I'm coming up with a lot of the same. The distributor of his food shipped it in a thick cardboard box with very dense poly foam and he said they ship it this way all the way down to the Keys (they're here in MN) without even using dry ice. They just deep freeze the food and it stays completely frozen in the box for 5 days. Sadly, I can't lug anything like that into the wilderness.

Noggin:
Look at coolers marketed to people with babies who need to transport milk in bottles. These are usually nice, available and small enough for what you are describing. That said the foil tape and reflectix option is also a good one a tube or pouch shape are easy to construct with these materials, based on my experience I would think two to three layers would be more than sufficient depending on external temps.

Been looking down this road a lot, there are some decent looking pouches that are designed to fit into purses it seems. I could maybe line the inside of one of those with a few more layers of insulation.

My backup plan is to just get some freeze-dried raw food of similar composition but the cost for 3 days worth of that for him is astronomical. Like $100+, crazy.

I've also been looking at these Icemule packs, designed like a stuff sack. The smallest is 9L so it wouldn't fit in my 10L Ursack but maybe in the larger one that I have. Seems folks are going 1-2 days with these and still have solid ice.. Perhaps with a little tinkering, this could work, and I would just pack it separate outside of the Ursack until camp, and hang it up in the bag.

Yeti makes some soft sided, smaller coolers. We have their lunch bag and it works very well. However, it is only sort of soft sided and doesn’t bend or squash as easily as some other ones we have. Also, probably pricey. But I got it as a gift and so didn’t have to worry about that.

Definitely lots of other good ideas here.

Alternate thought experiment: can the fresh-food dog food be dehydrated and then rehydrated one day at a time to feed your dog?? Eliminates the need for a cooler, and also makes it lighter and less bulky to carry.

Hockhocking: "Alternate thought experiment: can the fresh-food dog food be dehydrated and then rehydrated one day at a time to feed your dog?? Eliminates the need for a cooler, and also makes it lighter and less bulky to carry."

Probably yes on that, it's just a ground up meat-based food. I unfortunately do not have a dehydrator yet and this food switch was just a week ago. Stupid me didn't think about it thoroughly ahead of time and I have one last trip planned for the year NEXT weekend, so time constraints are going to prevent that this time around. I want a dehydrator anyway for myself and have plans to invest in a nice one this winter for future trips. What I would pay about $50 for 3 meals in the store right now is essentially the same thing.

The worst-case scenario here is that he goes back on the dry food for those 4 days, then we figure this all out for next year and do it the right way. He will for sure have liquid shits the whole trip and probably be miserable but I dont know what else to do besides lug around a real cooler or cooler bag.

OR, I just spend the $300-400 on the dehydrator and be done with it.

andym: "Yeti makes some soft sided, smaller coolers. We have their lunch bag and it works very well. However, it is only sort of soft sided and doesn’t bend or squash as easily as some other ones we have. Also, probably pricey. But I got it as a gift and so didn’t have to worry about that."

The lunch box cooler is probably the perfect size for just the food (6lbs total), but then no room left for ice or packs and that other personal bag they have is just a flap on the top so that is out of the question.

andym: "Yeti makes some soft sided, smaller coolers. We have their lunch bag and it works very well. However, it is only sort of soft sided and doesn’t bend or squash as easily as some other ones we have. Also, probably pricey. But I got it as a gift and so didn’t have to worry about that.


Definitely lots of other good ideas here. "

I've got one of these yeti. If I can find it? Where are you located and when ate you going on a trip? Maybe you could borrow it.? Pete

pswith5: "

andym: "Yeti makes some soft sided, smaller coolers. We have their lunch bag and it works very well. However, it is only sort of soft sided and doesn’t bend or squash as easily as some other ones we have. Also, probably pricey. But I got it as a gift and so didn’t have to worry about that.



Definitely lots of other good ideas here. "

I've got one of these yeti. If I can find it? Where are you located and when ate you going on a trip? Maybe you could borrow it.? Pete"

I am in Duluth, but I'm second guessing the yeti lunchbox idea in terms of size. I laid out 6lbs of his food yesterday and I think dehydrating is probably my only option.

Where are you? If you’re in central Ohio I can lend you my dehydrator to prep for your trip.

Ok. Use your regular oven for this dehydrating.

Hockhocking: "Ok. Use your regular oven for this dehydrating."

Yeah I just discovered this yesterday morning as I was pondering my other options and thought "why can't I just set my oven really low". Did some googling, turns out lots of people do it and its super easy. So, this is plan, and we start prepping tomorrow.

Saved me some money temporarily at least.

Here’s an inserting link to materials with the highest r-value.
https://learnmetrics.com/insulation-r-value-chart-per-inch/

I have at times constructed my own custom-sized coolers with pink foam.

Tom