Blog

A Perfect Fit for 2.5″ Clear Ice Cubes
I found a cooler and ice cube tray combination that makes clear 2.5 inch cubes. The tray fits into the cooler at the top perfectly – you don't need to make any special effort to hang it nor do you need a riser to sit it on.

This extra-large size cube fits the Cocktail Kingdom 55mm ice ball maker or you can just use it as a starter cube from which to cut diamonds.

The equipment for this is:
- The Igloo Mini Playmate Cooler, 4 quart, 6-Can Capacity
- Cocktail Kingdom 2.5 inch square ice cube tray
You might also want a drip irrigation hole punch to poke holes in the bottom of the ice cube tray. (A larger hole punch would work great too.)

(Note that I also tried purchasing a different 2.5 inch ice cube tray on Amazon but it's not actually 2.5 inches – closer to 2 inches. It's this one.)

Instructions:
- punch holes in the bottom of the ice cube tray
- remove the top handle from the Igloo cooler. To do so, you can't just pull off the top. You pop out the disc cover on each side, then there is a screw that you unscrew. This video demo shows this. (Note- apparently you don't need to completely remove the lid – I see in the pictures that you can just open it all the way with the lid still attached. but oh well I did anyway!)
- place the tray into the cooler – it should hang from the top.
- fill the cooler and the tray all the way up
- put it in the freezer and let it freeze for 2 days or so- until the level of the clear ice is beneath the bottom of the tray
- remove the cooler from the freezer, let the ice slab slide out, and remove the cubes from the tray. I'm impatient so I speed up the process by breaking out the tray from the block with an ice pick.
October 29, 2023
Halloween Ice Round-Up
I'm a total sucker for Halloween, and my only artistic medium is ice, so every year I do a post or two or three with dumb stuff I've frozen into cubes, blocks, etc. Here is a round-up and gallery of some:
Or read about how to do all this stuff in The Ice Book!
October 16, 2023
Monks can’t make enough of this famous spirit. Can an alternative from S.F. replace it?

For the San Francisco Chronicle, I wrote about the Chartreuse shortage and how some bartenders are looking locally to Brucato Chaparral as a stand-in.

September 12, 2023
Here’s How to Make Perfect Clear Ice for Cocktails

Sunset Magazine published several excerpts and lovely photos in this story.

Read it here, or just pick up a copy of The Ice Book, or join me in one of my Ice Bling Classes!

September 9, 2023
Whiskey and the New Ice Age on Wine-Searcher

In a new story on Wine-Searcher, W. Blake Gray covers ice and whiskey:

Are you ruining your prized Pappy van Winkle with the wrong ice cube?

Whiskey lovers spend a lot of time pursuing the best one-off bottlings. But you may not have put much thought into the only thing generally added to good whiskey: ice.

Camper English is the world's leading expert on ice for bar usage. A cocktail and spirits journalist, English recently published The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts. The first press run sold out immediately, because bartenders have a high level of interest in ice. The book shows you neat stuff like how to freeze a cherry inside an ice cube, and how to create your own bar-style large block of clear ice.

Read the whole story here.

September 4, 2023
A Guide to the Best Types of Ice for Cocktails

For this article on Liquor.com, writer Audrey Morgan interviewed Don Lee and I extensively.

Whether it’s the mountain of crushed ice on a Mint Julep or a single oversized rock in an Old Fashioned, the right ice can set the right mood, and take a drink from good to great.

“Ice serves several functions in a cocktail,” says Camper English, a pioneer of clear ice and the author of The Ice Book. “It chills and dilutes them and it can also look so good that it functions as a garnish.”

Read it here.

September 1, 2023
A Mention of The Ice Book in the New York Times Magazine

I had a little unexpected treat today, when I saw The Ice Book mentioned in this story "Is Ice the Ultimate Luxury?" in T, the New York Times Magazine.

This is the third time the New York Times has written about my little book on ice cubes!

August 22, 2023
The Cobbler is Hot in Cold San Francisco

I wrote a story for the San Francisco Chronicle about cobblers, mostly Sherry Cobblers. Read it here.

While hot weather bears down on much of the country, summer in San Francisco is more of a state of mind than a change in the weather. And many bartenders around the city are addressing the abstract concept of hot temperatures by placing cooling, ice-filled cobblers on their seasonal drink lists.

At new downtown venues the Dawn Club and Heartwood, the drink appeared on their opening menus; at Pacific Cocktail Haven, also downtown, and Canteen, in Menlo Park, the cobbler joined the list for the season; and bartenders at the Treasury in the Financial District are swapping out their spring sipper for a new summer variation.

The cobbler, a century-old low-ABV classic, most likely takes its name from the cobblestone-shaped pebble ice used in the drink. Along with the julep, the cobbler helped popularize American-style iced cocktails around the world, as well as the use of the drinking straw.

August 12, 2023
Distillation in Ancient India? Not So Fast

After reading my book Doctors and Distillers, Harold McGee (On Food and Cooking) pointed out to me that proof of distillation in ancient India (supposedly from the fifth century BCE) is not as well established as previously thought. Many histories on distillation cite work from 1979 that claims that elephant head stills were found along with other equipment that shows that there was alcoholic distillation in Northern India this early.

McGee recommended that I look at the book An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian History and Religions by James McHugh. I added it as a suggestion that the SF Public Library should pick up, and thankfully they did. When it arrived recently, I took it out.

The book is dense and academic, and I decided that I wouldn't have time to read all of it. So instead I just searched for the sections on distillation. There were only a couple.

McHugh writes, "… the evidence for early stills in South Asia is more questionable than is often assumed…. John Marshall's 'still' excavated at Taxila was not found as a connected assemblage; Marshall assembled it himself from quite disparate finds, no doubt on the model of contemporaneous stills, in order to explain the function of just one of the vessels. Allchin [the 1979 reference that's referred to in places such as the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails] built on Marshall's hypothesis regarding the function of these vessels, and his textual evidence is not convincing. Allchin likewise did not find a still assemblage but rather a large number of one type of vessel, with very few other parts."

"The earliest explicit description of alcoholic distillation that I am aware of is from a medical text… dating from around 1200 CE…. It is absolutely clear that distillation is described here and that the liquid distilled is a fermented, sugar-based drink…. An important point to note here is that, when Sanskrit texts mention alcoholic distillation, they are quite clear about it, using specific vocabulary."

Note that at the end of the 1100s is when we first find real evidence of alcoholic distillation in southern Italy as well. McHugh notes that the distilled spirit is distilled medicine, not beverage alcohol. This is in line with distillation in Europe at this time.

Later text references to alcoholic distillation pop up at the end of the 1200s in Indian texts, and now refer to recreational drinking. Note: nonalcoholic distillation in the West dates to probably 300CE; Arabs were distilling rosewater after I believe the year 700, but as I wrote in Doctors and Distillers, it doesn't seem that even if/when they distilled wine, they concentrated the alcohol with heads/tails cuts, so it was closer to filtration.

In a later chapter, McHugh mentions a book "The Elucidation of Distillates (Arkaprakasa), dating from the seventeenth century CE or later, is a treatise on distilled medicines." That might be a fun book for me to find if it has been translated into English sometime.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting.

July 31, 2023
How to Make Big Clear Ice for Your Distillery Bar – Distiller Magazine

I wrote a story for Distiller Magazine about the various ways to implement a big ice program. It was written with distilleries (that have sampling bars) in mind – they often have a lot of floor space, but even those with distillery bars don't often have a ton of freezer space.

I tried to be cognizant of the specific needs of distilleries, the possibility for take-out ice sales, and the notion that maybe if it's easy you could just buy it.

Check it out here.

July 28, 2023