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A Homemade Giant, Crystal Clear Ice Cube Tray

As you're probably aware, I've been dabbling in experiments making clear ice at home. The way I've found that works best is to freeze ice in an Igloo cooler with the top off. (Please read the post before you tell me to boil the water in the comments- it doesn't work.)

This is now how I make all my ice at home- I haven't used trays in months.

Now I am working on ways to best carve ice and also trying to create an ice cube tray that will work in this directional freezing system. I found a method that works that I need to perfect.

Here's what I've done.

I went down to The Container Store and purchased these plastic gift boxes. They're 2 inches by 2 inches wide (4.5 centimeters) and around 5 inches tall (11.5 cm) with the tops off.

These I put in my Igloo cooler. I've done it with the open top of the container facing up, and also facing down. Facing down works better, actually, because the air in the rectangles gets pushed out the bottom. Facing up, you get a 1cm cloudy patch at the top of the cubes. No big whoop.

Then I fill the cooler with water and freeze it. It comes out as a block of ice with the cubes stuck in it.

These separate surprisingly easily from the block.

Also surprisingly easy is how the ice pops out of these plastic containers. I just leave them upside-down for a couple minutes and the ice cubes slice right out.

As you can see in the above picture, there is a little bit of cloudiness when the trays are left with the open part facing up. I repeated this experiment with the open part facing down and there was less cloudiness. Either way, there isn't much to worry about as it can be cut off when cutting these big long cubes down to 2 inch by 2 inch by 2 inch ones.

Conclusions:

• These ice cubes are fricking awesome.
• I need to try it with cutting off the bottom of the containers so that they're a rectangular tube rather than a box. 
• I think this is actually scalable to make an ice cube tray with some tweaking. 
• Hooray!

Ice Meets Chainsaw

Ice nerds got a real treat this Tuesday, for Andrew Bohrer from Seattle was guest bartending in San Francisco along with Amanda Womack from Cask. 

He brought chainsaw Thursday to the city in order to chop up giant blocks of clear ice from an industrial ice maker into big cubes that could be further cut into ice balls. 

Keep scrolling for videos of hand ice carving...

First they cut slices off the big blocks, then cut those into long rectangles. Then they cut those into cubes. 

Click below for the videos. 

Percent Cloudiness in Top Frozen Block Ice

I'm somewhere along the process of creating an ice cube tray that takes advantage of the top frozen ice that I make in an Igloo cooler. As the cooler lid is off when I freeze water in it, the water freezes from the top down like a pond in winter. The cloudy part of the ice (where air an impurities migrate as the water freezes) are only in the bottom of the block.  

In the below picture the block has been turned upside-down after removing it from the cooler. 

 Most of the time when making ice for myself at home, I leave the cooler in my freezer for a couple of days then dump out the ice before the bottom portion starts to freeze and get cloudy- that way the entire block of ice is clear and I don't have to cut any of it off.

In a recent set of experiments, I wanted to see what percent of the block of ice was cloudy if I let the block freeze entirely. So far I've done three measurements. 

As you can sorta see, a portion of the ice has bubbly streaks in it but is mostly clear, then there is an all-cloudy last bit. 

Trial One:

Total height = 3.75 inches
Somewhat cloudy  =  last two inches
Very cloudy, unusable = last 1/2 inch
Percent unusable cloudiness = 13%

Trial Two:

Total height = 6 inches
Somewhat cloudy  =  last three inches
Very cloudy, unusable = last 1 inch
Percent unusable cloudiness = 17%

Trial One:

Total height = 6 inches
Somewhat cloudy  =  last two inches
Very cloudy, unusable = last 1 1/2 inch
Percent unusable cloudiness = 25%

So we're looking at an average of 18% of the ice is too cloudy to use in a cooler of this shape and size. 

Why might this information matter? If I develop an ice cube tray that fit into this cooler I would want to be able to remove the last cloudy bit so that it wouldn't get into the ice. I wanted to know about how much waste we're looking at. 

But one thing I'm learning with repeated experiments is that by freezing from the top down the water expands and puts a lot of pressure on the bottom of the cooler. (Think of how a plastic bottle will bulge when put in the freezer.) With repeated experiments that cooler is starting to warp on the bottom, plumping out in the center. A better freezing vessel would be flexible on the bottom. 

To see all of my ice experiments use this link.

That Ice Story is Online

The short piece on making crystal clear ice at home I wrote for Wired Magazine is now online. Check it out!

Another Ice Banner Attempt

You may think all I do is futz around with ice all day, and you'd be mostly correct. I attempted to make another site banner today using a clear piece of ice stamped with ALCADEMICS, but I think I like the orange peel one (too big as it is) better.

Click it to see it bigger if you're interested.

An Icy Weekend in Monterey

This past weekend I spent about 12 hours cutting ice and it was awesome! As part of a bartender catering gig with Rye on the Road I worked a wedding and rehearsal dinner in Monterey. With a trusty ice saw and my new ice pick from Cocktail Kingdom I went to town on those blocks of ice, chopping out fat cubes, attempting to carve spheres, and even making a heart to show the ice how much I love it.

Despite how it looks in this picture I didn't have my hand replaced with an ice saw, but now I'm thinking about it.
   

Making Crystal Clear Ice in Wired Magazine

Run screaming to the newsstand to pick up the June issue of Wired magazine, because there is a story by me in it. Sure it's only 100 words long and it's about how to make clear ice, something you may have read about here, but you can consider it a collector's item. 

 

 Update: The article is online here. 

It's Easter (Ice) Time Again

Here's last year's Easter Ice project that I'm reposting. Go here to learn how to make it.