Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
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Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
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Re: Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
#2Former bartender here. Having nice cocktail ice chunks at home isn't as complex as this might make it seem. No need for a clunky box in your freezer or costly gizmos.
I keep a travel-sized coffee thermos in my freezer with about 2-3 inches of water at the bottom. Takes 18-24 hours to create one chunk. If you time it right, 90% of the water freezes, and the water impurities pool at the bottom – pop out the frozen chunk and the result is clear ice. I store 4-5 of these in a zip-top bag until I have friends over and serve drinks.
Best to use a thermos with a slight conical interior so it's easy to pop out the ice. Makes a nice plug-shaped, clear ice chunk. Then refill and restart the process.
Re: Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
#3I always thought the key to getting clear ice was to boil the water first so the oxygen goes out of solution.
Re: Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
#4Somewhat related interesting fact, the UK ice market is dominated by one player who has brought out almost all other manufacturers, The Ice Co.
This is a good article from a couple of years ago about them: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/dec/10/super-cubes-ins...
They have created a few "innovative" products, such as larger "clearer" ice cubes for cocktails - related to TFA - by spraying water into super cooled upside-down moulds.
Re: Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
#5I always thought the key to getting clear ice was to boil the water first so the oxygen goes out of solution.
Doesn't really work – the real trick is to make sure your ice is crystallizing directionally. The impurities are the last to crystallize, so this pushes them out.
Then you take your ice out of the container when it's 90% done, and your ice chunk is clear.
Re: Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
#6When I was working on an ice climbing robot we spent a lot of effort trying to get large blocks of clear ice to test on. The thought was that we wanted repeatable experiments. But then we realized that perfectly dense water ice is so hard and tough that our robot would not be able to get an ice screw into it. So we ended up trying to make something more similar to glacial ice. To do that we bought a nugget ice machine, filled large aluminum bins of that, and then backfilled with water, and had the robot climb on those in a walk-in freezer.
https://eos.org/articles/meet-iceworm-nasas-new-ice-climbing...
Re: Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
#7I always thought the key to getting clear ice was to boil the water first so the oxygen goes out of solution.
You might mean air, not oxygen. Air is mostly nitrogen. Water ice is 1/3rd oxygen atoms (or about 8/9ths by mass).
Thinking more, molecular oxygen, O2, dissolved in water is a thing and it does have better solubility than nitrogen so maybe you did mean molecular oxygen.
And yeah, we tried that, putting water in a vacuum chamber and pumping out the dissolved air. It didn't seem to make much difference.
Re: Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
#8I always thought the key to getting clear ice was to boil the water first so the oxygen goes out of solution.
Interestingly freezing hot or boiled water can be quicker due to the Mpemba effect.
Re: Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
#9I've been making clear ice at home for a while--it's a great party trick and much easier to do than it seems.
The best part is chiseling ice cubes from a large clear block of ice: use a serrated knife and a hammer and you will end up with perfectly square blocks of ice.
Re: Experiments in Making Cocktail Ice
#10Former bartender here. Having nice cocktail ice chunks at home isn't as complex as this might make it seem. No need for a clunky box in your freezer or costly gizmos. I keep a travel-sized coffee thermos in my freezer with about 2-3 inches of water at the bottom. Takes 18-24 hours to create one chunk. If you time it right, 90% of the water freezes, and the water impurities pool at the bottom – pop out the frozen chun…
>If you time it right, 90% of the water freezes, and the water impurities pool at the bottom
And even if you don't, worst case you end up with a cloudy end on your clear ice that can be easily removed by rubbing it on an aluminum sheet pan