Author: Camper English
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Aspirational Water – A Story in The Guardian that Cites The Ice Book
The reporter for this story in The Guardian and I talked a long time about clear ice, iceberg water, and bottled water. Not much made it into the final story from me (so it goes) but I did get mentioned in the lead paragraphs! Towards the end of 2009, Camper English achieved a…
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Has Luxury Clear Cocktail Ice Gone Too Far?
I am quoted in this story about luxury ice (from Greenland, sold in Dubai) in which I manage to become an advocate for importing glacier ice for cocktails, lol. Most of what I talked about in the interview was that we all choose our battles when it comes to where and how we support…
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Clear Ice Football, Golf Ball, and Disco Ball
You can make shapes that are 3D turn out clear even if they don't fit into clear ice molds. It's as simple as putting them on top of a clear ice system, with the hole side down facing into the tray below. Resources: The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts…
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Colored Hearts in Clear Cubes for Valentine’s Day
I made these colored hearts in clear ice cubes. Resources used in this video (affiliate links): The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts https://amzn.to/48V4qzs Heart Stamphttps://amzn.to/3uljhEk Clear Ice Trays: Clearly Frozenhttps://amzn.to/3OwGQkp Dexas IceOlogyhttps://amzn.to/491hByM
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The Moist Future for MSNBC
I was invited to write a story for MSNBC.com about the coming new normal of casual sobriety, aka the end of Dry January. I made a bunch of points about generational drinking habits, parallels to vegetarianism, and flaws and challenges of serving nonalcoholic spirits in bars. Read the story here.
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Directional Freezing on The Weather Network
Well here's something I never expected when I started experimenting with ice all those years ago: The Weather Network did a segment on directional freezing to make ice for cocktails. I wish I was smart enough to have pitched them The Ice Book when it came out! Check out the video here.
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The Gibson is a New York Drink Gone Big in San Francisco
It was believed that the Gibson cocktail was created in San Francisco. In this 2008 blog post I cited what David Wondrich told us on a tour. The information is repeated in the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails: But now new information has come to light. Martin Doudoroff shared information from a tweet on…
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The Mystery Pillar aka The Sacrificial Ice Cube
In clear ice cube trays, one cube (or a few) almost always pops up and starts growing upward after some time of freezing. I call this The Mystery Pillar. Others call it the Sacrificial Cube, because it is usually cloudy and must be discarded. While it would be theoretically possible to build a deformable…
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Aqua Vitae Vs Arrak, Terminology and History
I am reading The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails in order with the Alcademics Book Club, which you may join on Facebook if you wish. (We're on the A's in early January.) I've already learned so much new information and also old information I'm seeing in a new light. One example of the latter…
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Did British Gin Come from Dutch Genever? Part 2
I watched a video by Philip Duff on the history of gin – is gin the British interpretation of Dutch genever? Or does it come from a more or less independent distilling tradition since British spirits were usually based on a neutral base distillate? I watched a seminar by Jared Brown and Anistatia Miller that…