Category: fun

Creepy Halloween Mask Frozen In Ice Blocks

I'm up to my silliness again. I had the idea that I could freeze masks into ice blocks for decoration, so in advance of Halloween Superstores opening around town, I bought some masks on Amazon.

I bought this terribly ugly Frankenstein mask, but as it's made of foam it just floats on top of the water rather than freezes inside the block.

I also bought a set of cheap plastic "drama party kids face masks" and tried those. They sink inside the cooler (by the way, I make them similar to how I did this dinosaur head ice block using Directional Freezing in an Igloo cooler) so I was going to suspend it in the Igloo cooler from the elastic string on the mask, but instead I just left a tiny bit of air under the part of the forehead of the mask – you can see it pokes out from the block. The mask stayed suspended in the ice block pretty well.

I left it to freeze for a few days and if I do it again I'll let it go a shorter time as the cloudy part of the ice formed on the bottom (behind the mask). But anyway it came out pretty cool.

After I thought I was done with the experiment and taking pictures, I was rinsing off the block in hot water in my sink. As I was able to pull the mask out of the block I found that the mask left the impression of the face in the block! It looked super creepy and now I'm thinking for future experiments I should see about other shapes I can press into ice blocks…

If you like this post, you might also like:

Dinosaur Head Ice Block

Eyeball Ice Balls for Halloween

and as usual, the complete Index of Ice Experiments on Alcademics is here.

October 7, 2019
Eyeballs Inside Ice Balls – Halloween Ice

I did another stupid thing!

I bought some bouncy eyeballs in the Halloween section of the drug store and put them inside the IceOlogy clear ice ball maker.

The balls float inside the ice ball molds so when they freeze they're touching the outside of the ice ball- I'd prefer them to be fully enclosed in ice. Because the balls are not food safe I would not recommend serving these to customers in a bar setting, and because they touch the outside of the ice I'd not recommend serving them in alcohol, lest it degrade the plastic.

But anyway, another fun ice project for home. If you liked this, you might also enjoy these Spiders and other Insect Ice Balls I did last year.

For an index of all sorts of exciting clear ice projects, visit the Index of Ice Experiments!

September 28, 2019
Dinosaur Head Ice Block

I was recently in Shanghai judging a cocktail competition and saw a dinosaur hand puppet for kids in a store. Naturally, I thought, "I bet this would fit in my cooler and make an awesome ice block."

Ice fans, I was correct.

The head fit perfectly into my igloo cooler. I filled it with water along with the cooler and stuck it near the water's surface. It was just touching the sides so I didn't need to support it- perfect fit.

If you're not up to speed on how the block came out so clear, it is because of Directional Freezing. I didn't allow the entire cooler to freeze, but removed it before the whole block froze; about 2 days. (In fact the bottom side of the dinosaur isn't frozen enough and pokes out of the ice a bit – if I do it again I will leave it in a little longer.)

This would be a fun presentation as a display block for events.

Even better, if I made yellow-tinted ice balls (saffron-infused water) and put mosquitos inside them, for a full Jurassic Park themed cocktail service!

For more information about directional freezing and wacky ice projects of all types, check out the Index of Ice Experiments page here on Alcademics.

September 13, 2019
Rainbow Mini Ice Balls

I purchased a couple of ice cube trays online and made rainbow ice for Pride.

I bought the trays on Amazon. The Hutzler 324 Ball Ice Tray makes 1-inch sized ice balls. It seems pretty good so far though I'm not certain of its longevity.

The Mydio 40 Tray makes small marble-sized ice balls of about half an inch in diameter. It's made of high-quality silicone and seems super sturdy.

Neither make clear ice (that's my jam, as you know), but the size of ice they make is very fun.

To make the colored ice balls I used either commercial food coloring or natural colorings like turmeric and hibiscus.

Then I just stacked them up in a glass in rainbow order. Silly, fun.

June 27, 2019
Nice Rats, But How Were the Drinks?

THIS WAS FUN: I was paid to go to a pop-up live rat bar and review it for Eater.com.

I had a good time with it, of course. In describing the drink, I wrote

On my visit the cocktail was pre-poured at least a few minutes earlier, with ice melting on top of the drink, adding a watery welcome layer to the sickly sweet entry-level cocktail dying in the cup below. The drink’s garnish is perhaps the most exciting component, featuring the root-end of a beet intended to mimic a decapitated rat’s tail (so, de-butt-itated?), which to be fair, is awesome.

Please give it a read. More pictures from the Rat Bar are below.

June 13, 2019
Freeze Liquor Bottles Inside an Ice Tube for Better Bottle Service

Using just a cooler, a tube, and a bottle you can a super funky display for your party or for bottle service at your bar.

If you're just getting started into ice nerd stuff, you'll want to check out the Index of Ice Experiments, where you can get a definition of Directional Freezing to see why this works, and see other fun projects.

I originally developed this technique for the bar Whitechapel, which was looking to do a unique Martini cart with frozen bottles.

Simply put a bottle inside a tube of some sort (this is a metal utensil holder like you'd see at a salad bar) and fill both the tube and the rest of the cooler with water. Directional Freezing will take care of making the top part of the ice clear. The cloudy part is all around the bottom of the bottle. If you wanted it 100% clear around the bottle, you'd simply put it on a short riser inside the tube.

Then freeze it (with the top off the cooler) and pull it out.

I did this again with a bottle Zucca as I'm using it for a talk. I no longer had the metal utensil container so I put in a plastic pitcher. I wouldn't say it is the ideal container given that is has irregular sides, but it did the trick for proof of concept.

The bottle is a bit problematically tall for my freezer – I almost couldn't get the cooler out!

Cheers!

Check out all the ice experiments on Alcademics at this link.

June 22, 2017
Fire Inside Ice (Okay, Fireball inside an Ice Ball)

For years, bars including Chicago's Aviary have been serving drinks inside hollow ice balls. The procedure to make one is easy, at least in theory.

Freeze a balloon or an ice ball mold filled with water for a few hours. An ice shell will form on the outside.

Poke a hole in the ice ball and dump out the water. Refill with a (very well chilled) cocktail. Some bars do with a syringe so that you don't have to open a real hole in the ice ball.

Then serve it. I did this at home and thought it would be fun/funny to create Fire Inside Ice – so I filled by ice ball with Fireball cinnamon whiskey.

Then for a bit of a show I filmed dropping it in slow motion. Enjoy.

June 14, 2017
How to Monogram your Ice Cubes with Ice Brands

It happens to everyone: You pick up an ice cube and can't remember if it belongs to you or someone else. Frustrating! If only your cubes were monogrammed there would be less confusion in the world.

Kidding! But I've seen bars around the world imprinting their clear ice cubes with logos and monograms, so I decided to test out some methods of doing so at home.

Three different easily-getable types brands are below, with pros and cons.

If you're new to Alcademics, you'll want to read up on how to make perfectly clear ice first before you start branding it.

Method One: Use a Wax Seal Stamp.

I bought this brass stamp off Amazon. Copper is the best conducting metal, and I think that's what the bars use to do branded ice in volume, but I found this brass one can easily imprint ice without being heated.

One downside is that there are only fancy versions of letters and symbols available. Oddly, there seems to be a lot more variety/simpler designs for steak brands than for wax seals stamps. The other downside is that it doesn't stamp the ice very deeply.

But still, this is my favorite of the three branding methods.

Method Two: Use a Steak Branding Iron.

I bought this one, with an A for Alcademics. There is a lot of variety in BBQ/steak brands (who knew?) so look around for one that suits your needs.

The downside to this is that the brand does need to be slightly heated. I held this over the flame on my stove for about 2 seconds, so it doesn't take much heat though. You could probably use hot water, or even a lighter!

Method Three: Use a Craft Hobby Tool/Soldering Iron/Woodburning Tool.

I bought this one, plus a set of letters that attach to it.

There are a couple of downsides to this – first, you can only do one letter at a time. Then you have to let it cool down and switch out the letter on the tip before doing the next letter.

Second, the soldering iron gets very hot, so you barely touch it to the ice and it makes a deep imprint. You lose a lot of the subtlety of the letter design.

And third, with the letters/words you have to imprint them backwards.

So this is probably the least clean way to brand your ice, but you can customize it the most with the full alphabet. Then, just for fun, I put back on the basic needle-shaped tip on the soldering iron (that comes with the original iron; no need for add-ons) and wrote some words freehand.

Because I have the maturity of a 15-year old, this is what I made:

But you know, you can make other designs and words freehand that are better suited to adults.

The full index of ice experiments is here – lots of other fun projects with ice.

May 30, 2017
Summer Cooler Cocktails to Enjoy in 1967

My friend gifted me a 1967 "Friendly Host" calendar from a liquor store in upstate New York. On the backs of the calendar months are helpful advice for cocktailing and hosting.

The dates from 1967 align with this year, though the drinks are a little bit different to what we enjoy now…. or are they? (Yeah, for the most part they are.)

This page is for Summer Coolers. I'm not sure I would categorize a Jack Rose or this "Five-Legged Mule" as summer drinks, but hey I'm just a guy living in 2017.

Plus as a bonus, here's the calendar's Party Preparation Guide. The Tips for "Good Mixing" start out well and then…. you'll see.

Related articles

Popular Scotch Cocktails of 1967 – Alcademics.com

April 3, 2017
With Pokemon Ice Balls You Can Catch All The Drinks
Pokemon Go is taking America by storm, but if you want in on the action without leaving the comfort of your home bar you might try making these Pokemon-themed ice balls instead.

The process is really easy. I did it with two different sized ice ball molds:
- These smaller (roughly 2 inch diameter) Final Touch ice ball molds
- These large 2.5 inch diameter Arctic Chill ice ball molds
Step 1: Fill the bottom half of an ice ball mold with red liquid. I used cranberry juice in one (the darker one) and one of the red flavors of Gatorade in the other. Let it freeze overnight.

Step 2: Chill some water. Put it in the refrigerator for a long time, then into the freezer for 20-30 minutes so it is just above freezing. You don't want to add hot water to the mold or it will make the red color bleed into the other half of the ice ball.

Step 3: Attach the top of the mold and fill the other half with the cold water.

Step 4: Wait for it to freeze then pop it out and catch all the drinks.
These Pokemon ice balls would be fun in non-alcoholic Pokemon cocktails or perhaps in a Pokemon Gin & Tonic.

Related articles

Clear Ice Cubes Using a Tray in a Cooler

A New Clear Ice Ball Maker That Seems To Work Okay

Make Perfectly Clear Ice Balls Using Insulated Mugs

Fact-Checking the Clear Ice Balls Method
July 13, 2016