I provided some context for a story about carbonated water for Wine Enthusiast.
“Naturally carbonated mineral spring water was thought to be extra healthy compared with regular mineral water, and far healthier than surface water from rivers and streams,” English notes. “European and American mineral springs rich in iron or other mineral salts were recommended to settle the stomach or treat conditions including anemia.”
Lately I've been making designs on ice cubes using the Ice Designer tool or these Cookie Stamps. I even wrote a story about how Patterned Ice Conquered Drinkstagram.
Well in my fairly regular perusal of Amazon for new ice stuff I came across these stamps that are used to impress patterns into clay and other materials. I thought they just might make cool patterns in ice cubes, and surprise, surprise – I was right!
The first step is to make clear ice in one of the many ways demonstrated in my ice experiments.
I first tried them at room temperature and the pattern didn't go deep enough. Then I heated them up a bit – atop my toaster actually. Then pressed the ice on them. It worked great!
As you know, I make ice in an insulated cooler in the process known as directional freezing first demonstrated here on Alcademics in 2009.
Lately I've been playing with an ice sphere press to make super nice looking ice balls.
But the problem is that the ice spheres are about 2.7 inches in diameter and there is no 3-inch ice cube tray that I know of. In order to make roughly 3-inch cubes, I make a whole cooler full of clear ice and then cut it up to the size that will fit in the ice ball press. Cutting up a slab of clear ice into these shapes isn't that much of a hassle, but still I am lazy and want to find a better way.
So I decided to hang dividers in my cooler that would make the ice easily break into sections. This is a work in progress. I first tried one thick plexiglass divider that didn't fit across flat. It was really hard to get the ice out of the cooler afterward, and I figured out that it works best when you can see all the edges of the plastic. But anyway it worked.
Next I experimented with a thick plastic sheet I purchased from Tap Plastics, and then cut to size. It works best when the plastic is straight across the cooler, rather than curved.
Then I realized the defrosting plate that I use to smooth the edges of ice actually fits flat across the width of the cooler. It actually slides right into the grooves in the cooler. Unfortunately, this defrost plate is no longer offered online, so I've been experimenting with others. I'll let you know if I find another one that fits perfectly.
In any case, the metal plate slides out of the ice easier than plastic does. I also learned that it's far easier to separate the block from the dividers if I don't let the block freeze for more than two days, which gives me about 3 inches of ice in the cooler.
Not that I have three sections of ice instead of one block, I can cut each slab in half to get roughly 3-inch cubes just like I wanted. It's a start!
Anyway, I'll keep you posted on the progress of this project.
You can make clear ice cubes in a tray in a cooler by punching holes in the bottom of each cube compartment and setting the tray on a riser. This is described here. Most commercial clear ice cube trays work similarly.
But cubes are not the only shape of clear ice you can make in this method. Using these cheap silicone cupcake liners from Amazon:
I poke holes in them (using this hole punch) and set them on a riser in a cooler. I then filled the cooler with water up to the level of the top of the cupcake liners. I let them freeze for 24 hours, though I could have pulled them out sooner.
The silicone cupcake liners pulled out of the ice surprisingly easily, and the ice slipped right out.
They were hard to photograph with liquid in the glass, because they're so clear the ice disappeared. For the ones with liquid in them, I only have a little bit of liquid in the glass.
I'd love to think of a way to best display them in cocktails. Perhaps tucked into crushed ice at the surface of a drink. Of course they'd also look great with colored ice, but then we wouldn't have had to poke holes in the cupcake liners in the first place!
As you're probably aware, patterned ice is the new logo ice.
You can make patterned ice with an ice designer ($160) or a meat tenderizer ($13), and recently I purchased some cookie stamps ($27) to give those a try.
The round shape can be limiting, but they're pretty large and will cover a 2" cube. A new addition to my icy arsenal.
Check out all my recommended ice tools at this page, and all my ice experiments at the Ice Index Page.
I spoke with Martini and Rossi’s Master Blender, Giuseppe “Beppe” Musso, and Senior Master Herbalist Ivano Tonutti to learn how they made their new nonalcoholic vermouths.
It was fascinating!
The story is now live at AlcoholProfessor.com.
Previously the Wall Street Journal had posted an excerpt from my book Doctors and Distillers, so I wasn't expecting this review from wine writer Eric Asimov to come in.
A very nice review by Kevin R Kosar in The American Spectator!
Walk into the average American grocery store and you will see the spices in one aisle, herbal cures in another, and beer and wine somewhere else. Over-the-counter medicines have their own section, and drugs are locked up behind the pharmacist’s counter. And distilled spirits, well, you likely will not find them on the shelves — they typically are exiled to dedicated liquor stores. Separate products for separate purposes, all packaged, marketed, and sold separately.
This state of affairs developed only in the past century, as one learns from Camper English’s diverting Doctors and Distillers: The Remarkable Medicinal History of Beer, Wine, Spirits, and Cocktails (Penguin, 2022). Hitherto, these foodstuffs were united in the form of boozy health tonics and curatives, which the sick or simply thirsty acquired from apothecaries, monks, barbers, or other medicine men.
…
Camper English’s Doctors and Distillers is a delightful way to journey back in time and see the many and often crazy ways that drink and medicine merged. Having finished reading this expansive book, nonetheless my yearning for those remarkable days of yesteryear remain. So off to a bar I shall go, where I can relive them by paying a mixologist to serve me an elixir of Fernet-Branca and cola, or perhaps a slug of herb-loaded Jägermeister.
In my first story for Vinepair.com, I wrote about patterned ice – the history and the trend.
I'm pretty proud of this one! Read it here.
In 2021 I hosted a group of bartenders to taste a big batch of nonalcoholic spirits. Read that write-up here.
Since then, many new brands have come onto the market or been newly imported into the USA. I lined up 17 expressions and tasted them. Fifteen are pictured below, plus I tried the new nonalcoholic vermouth/aperitivos from Martini & Rossi.
I am not going to take the time to write out my tasting notes, sorry, but I'll share my favorites.
Note that the previous tasting was blind, mostly in Daiquiri format. For this tasting I tasted them neat and not blind. To be truly fair I would do a cocktail taste test with each, because sometimes the flavors in n/a spirits that are overwhelmingly perfumy on their own (a huge negative to me) aren't so intense when mixed.
Nonalcoholic Spirits that are Pretty Good from this Group, Kept the Bottles and Will Drink:
Nonalcoholic Spirits I Think are Good Enough to Maybe Drink Without Mixers, just neat or on the rocks (The Best of this Tasting):
The rest I didn't think were worthy. But this list has a lot more winners than the last tasting!
Notes:
agave alcademics Angostura bartenders bitters bodega bourbon bowmore Campari Camper English chartreuse clear clear ice cocktail cocktail powder cocktails cognac curacao dehydrated dehydrated liqueurs dehydration directional freezing distillery distillery tour distillery visit france freezing objects in ice hakushu harvest history how to make clear ice ice ice balls ice carving ice cubes ice experiments isle of jura jerez liqueur makepage making clear ice mexico midori molasses orange orange liqueur penthouse pisco potato powder production recipe Recipes rum san francisco scotch scotch whisky sherry spain spirits sugar sugarcane sweden tales of the cocktail tequila tour triple sec visit vodka whiskey whisky
