Category: ice

Another Commercial Clear Ice Cube Tray

As you may recall, through much experimentation I figured out a way to make clear ice at home.

I later found an ice cube tray that uses the same principle (controlling direction of freezing) to make clear ice.

And now someone just pointed me to another ice cube tray that also uses the same principle (and has the same name as the last one). The Polar Ice Crystal Clear Ice Cube Tray is more compact than the other model, but it makes just one big cube at a time.

Like the other model, this is an insulated container with a tray inside. The interior tray is perforated, so all the cloudy parts of the ice are frozen beneath the perforation and you chop it off after it's frozen.

This one costs $18.99. More info is here.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

May 28, 2012
A Clear Ice Ball Maker You Can Buy
One difficulty with the Igloo Cooler method of making clear ice is that you get a great big block of ice at the end and have to cut it up into usable cubes yourself. I developed an ice cube tray using plastic boxes that gets the ice into long rectangles, and that's a bit closer to ideal.
But if the desired result is round clear ice balls, we need to either produce a mold that fits inside the cooler, or else carve out ice balls afterwards.

Well, it turns out that someone produced such a mold to make clear ice balls one at a time, using the same principles as the Igloo cooler method.

Alcademics reader Todd pointed me to this ebay listing for a clear ice ball maker from Japan.

As you can see, it's an insulted tube that holds a circular ice ball mold inside of it, along with extra space below the ice ball.

The important thing to note is that the ball mold is perforated. This allows any air and impurities in the water to get pushed out of it, towards the bottom of the mold, as it freezes. In other posts here on Alcademics, we've discussed that's how you'd need to build the mold in order for it to work.

It only makes one at a time, but it's pretty cool. The only not cool thing about is is the price: It's for sale at $97.60 each!

I still kinda want one.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.
February 4, 2012
Modern Day Pond and Lake Ice Harvests in America

I got it into my head that I want to see a pond or lake ice harvest, despite my contempt for winter.

Commercial ice harvests changed the cocktail landscape in America in the early-mid 1800s, allowing for the creation of juleps and cobblers and the popularization of the drinking straw and the cocktail shaker.

Today there is still ice harvesting on many American lakes and ponds. As far as I can tell it's more historic reenactment more than practical, with most of the places that have an ice harvest limited to a single day of the year.

Most places bring out the old tools – the long saws and the hooks – and allow people to cut up pre-scored sections of ice. Then they float it to the collection point on the lake, grab it with a hook, and slide it on a series of ramps (or sometimes pull it with a horse or tractor) into an ice house, where the blocks of ice are stacked with layers of sawdust in between.

I was looking for one that I might visit and came up with several places, so I thought I'd share them with you in case you live nearby.

Note that I first compiled this list several years ago so it's highly likely that not all of these places are still doing ice harvests.

Modern Ice Harvests

– Tobyhanna ice harvest – Near the Steamtown National Historic Site near Scranton, Pennsylvania. They run a train to the ice harvest. A write-up on the harvest is here.

– Howell Living History Farm – in Lambertville, New Jersey. I believe the ice harvest date is January 28th. In addition to harvesting, you can make ice cream with the ice. Information from last year is here.

– Curran Homestead – Located near Bangor, Maine. The next Ice harvest is on February 11, 2012.

– Cape Pond Ice – This is not an ice harvesting location, but a modern manufactured ice house in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They offer tours.

– Thompson Ice House - Located in South Bristol, Maine, which looks pretty far out there. The ice harvest is in February but the date hasn't been announced yet.

– Hanford Mills Museum – Not far from Cooperstown or Oneonta, New York. The 2012 ice harvest is on February 4, 2012. Besides the ice harvest there are vintage cooking demonstrations and lots of food for sale.

– Brookfield Ice Harvest – In Brookfield, Vermont, a ways from Burlington. Not sure of the website or the exact date, but last year it was January 29. Call 802-276-3959 for information. Some details here. "Activities include ice cutting and ice boom demonstrations, an ice-hauling contest, a chance to try hand-made snowshoes and view ice sculpting."

- Longfellow's Wayside Inn – In Sudbury, Massachusetts. Nothing on the calendar yet, but last year they did ice harvesting.

- Old Sturbridge Village – In central Massachussetts. Had ice harvest demos in the past, I don't see any on the calendar for 2012.

- Ice Alaska – This is more of an ice carving celebration/competition near Fairbanks. The park is open February 28 – March 25, 2012. They harvest ice from an on-site pond with a more modern tool that looks like a saw on legs. I don't know if the ice harvest is demonstrated for the public or not.

I haven't seen any case where it's a public event, but some Amish people harvest ice. There are some good write-ups online.

Saranac Lake Winter Carnival in upstate New York builds an ice palace every year and cuts ice using a 1930s power saw. A good article with pictures is here. (Thanks to commenter Climber9 for the tip.) I'm not sure if the ice harvest is open to the public or not.

Thanks to Kevin Sargent for pointing out the following additional ice harvests in New Hampshire:

Muster Field Farm in North Sutton, New Hampshire, has an annual ice harvest on its calendar of events.

Squam Lakes in Holderness, New Hampshire has an annual ice harvest operated by "Rockywold-Deephaven Camps along with David White, of the White Forest Farm." I'm not sure if it's open to the public but check the link to see.

The Remick Country Doctor Museum & Farm in Tamworth Village, NH has an annual Ice Harvest & Winter Carnival.

Kline Creek Farm in Winfield, Illinois has an annual ice harvest. In 2019 it was Feb 1-3. (Thank you Holly.)

Please let me know in the comments if you find any others.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

January 16, 2012
How Machine Ice Is Made

These are a few ways that ice was and is made, which I learned from the awesome book Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance by Mariana Gosnell.

Slushie Method

The first way is just like making ice cream the old-fashioned way: snow or cold water mixed with salt can become colder than freezing. So if you put a cup full of water (or ice cream ingredients) and stir the supercooled salt/water mixture around it, the water in the cup can turn to ice.

Expansion of Gases

As vapor and expands into a large space the molecules speed up, and to do so they take heat from the surrounding environment. This is similar to how evaporation of sweat cools you off – the liquid turns to gas and expands into the air.

Early ice machines taking advantage of this property used pistons that compressed air then released the pressure. The air expansion would pull heat from its surroundings – in this case a container of salt water – and that salt water would turn a pan of water into ice.

The next generation of ice machines used other gases instead of plain air- ether and ammonia for example. They still do.

Vintage Block Making

The Ice book also described an ice block-making operation from the Millersburg Ice Company in Ohio. They use large metal pans filled with city water that are lowered into a lake of salt water cooled to 12 degrees Fahrenheit. The pans of water then freeze from the outside-in.

Into the center of each pan they put an air hose to keep the water moving. As ice likes to be a pure crystal, the ice forming first is crystal clear, leaving most of the minerals in the water trapped in the liquid center portion. Before the block of ice fully freezes, they suck out the mineraly water and replace it with more city water. They say it looks less cloudy this way, though the center core is still a bit cloudy.

Making Ice Cubes – Bag Ice Method

Some commercial ice machines make ice in the following way: Water runs across vertically-positioned, cooled plates. Ice forms on the surface. When it reaches the desired thickness, they poke it with knobs that break it up into cubes. This ice is bagged and sold.

Making Ice Cubes – Clear Method

Other ice machines make clear cubes in the following way: Regular water is sprayed upwards onto cooled plates. The plates are cooled only to 32 degrees Fahrenheit – freezing temperature. At this temperature water freezes but minerals generally do not, thus the minerals drain off while the ice that freezes is nice and clear.

Making Flaked Ice

Flaked ice is the kind you see at fish markets- smaller than cubes but less dense than crushed ice. This is made in a machine that sprays water onto a cooled, rotating drum. After just a thin layer of ice forms, the ice falls off the drum and shatters.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

January 13, 2012
How Water Freezes

This post is about how a lake freezes, but it should be more or less the same for how an insulated container freezes in a freezer. The information is from the excellent book, Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance by Mariana Gosnell.

Turnover

As temperatures lower, the water in a lake "turns over." The top layer of water is heated by the sun during the day and is therefore warmer and lighter than the layers below it. At night without the sun, the cool air above the lake cools the top layer of water, which makes it denser than the layers beneath it. The top layer of water sinks. The new top layer gets colder until it too sinks. This is repeated until the top part of the water column reaches the same cool temperature.

This temperature is not the freezing temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit, but 39 degrees. That's the temperature at which water is at its densest and heaviest. This also means that water contracts at this temperature and takes up the least space.

Latent Heat of Fusion

After the lake has reached 39 degrees throughout the top part of the water column, as the cold air above it sinks to a lower temperature than the water, the water cools off to below 39 degrees. Now, however, the water getting colder makes it lighter than the 39 degree water below it, so the water no longer turns over. It stays on top and continues to cool until freezing.

For water at 32 degrees to convert to ice at 32 degrees, a lot of energy must be given up. Normally it takes 1 calorie of energy to change the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius, but when water is changing phases to ice, it must give up nearly nearly 80 calories of energy to change phase without changing temperature at all.

Sometimes as the water is giving up the 'latent heat' to change phases, little wisps of fog are visible above the water's surface.

Nucleation

In most cases, ice crystals form at a nucleation point: a bit of something around which an ice crystal builds. This is often an impurity in the water, and in a lake can be dirt, snow, or even rain.

The ice crystals that form initially can be in weird shapes across the surface of the water rather than an even grid pattern.

Lakes tend to freeze from the outside-in, as nucleation points are on the shore and the water isn't as deep there. I assume that ice cube trays would also freeze from the outside-in as the nucleation point would be spots along the side of the tray.

Clear Ice

Clear ice on a lake is an indication that it froze slowly. As ice crystals form, the crystal lattice is is tight and there isn't room for impurities to fit inside it. (Ironic since impurities are usually needed to start the crystallization process.) Thus slow-freezing ice rejects impurities including air, minerals, and salts, and pushes them out of the way.

This is why the last part of the ice to freeze is where any trapped air and impurities are. Most ice cubes are cloudy in the middle because the water is freezing on all four sides of the container; outside-in. On a lake or by using an insulated cooler in the freezer at home, the only coldness is coming from the top.

In a lake the water doesn't freeze all the way to the bottom so lake ice is very clear – the impurities and air are beneath it still in the liquid. In a cooler in the freezer, the cloudy part of the ice is only on the bottom – the last place that freezes.

More Freezing

After the ice crystals have formed on the surface, they eventually start growing down, thickening the ice. But as the ice thickens, the water beneath it turns into ice at a slower pace. This is because ice is a poor conductor of heat, so the thicker the ice, the further the distance the latent heat of freezing has to get to the cold air above the pond. In other words, the rate of freezing slows the thicker the ice.

Saltwater

When sea ice freezes, most of the impurities – the salt- is pushed out of the freezing ice towards the bottom of the ocean. But about one-fifth of of the salt stays in pockets between crystals, in little capillaries.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

January 3, 2012
Camper’s Cocktails in Every Day with Rachael Ray

I have a two-page spread in the November 2011 issue of Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine.

It has a few trends – stuff like fresh ginger and sherry/port in place of vermouth along with some ice cube tricks (recognize that rainbow ice?).

Also it has four recipes I developed- a spirit-interchangeble mint buck, a Grapefruit Vesper, a Sparkling Cinnamon Punch, and a port/espresso dessert drink. Nothing ground-breaking but they're all pretty tasty.

Run screaming to your local newsstand and pick it up!

October 31, 2011
Carved Ice Balls: Starter Molds

Here's a method that gets ice balls started using the cooler method for making clear ice. This comes courtesy of Dave Michalowski, for I saw it on his Facebook page and asked if I could steal his pictures to share. Thanks Dave!

He says, "I am using the round containers for the ice balls. I got them at the Container Store and they work perfectly. I believe they are three inches across and will snuggly fit into most old fashioned glasses. I saw off the end off the cylinder so the air doesn't get trapped in the bottom."

Dave carves his spheres from the cylendars using a Japanese paring knife, something I've not been brave enough to try yet.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

June 21, 2011
Tales of the Cocktail Preview: The Chainsaw Shift

This is a preview of a seminar that will be given at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, which takes place July 20-24, 2011.

The Chainsaw Shift

There are two seminars this year at Tales about setting up an ice program. I'm pretty sure this one will be the only one with chainsaws though. The other, How to Build a Cutting Edge Ice Program, is part of the professionals series, though both seem geared toward professionals.

I was treated to a preview of sorts of this seminar in San Francisco, as Andrew Bohrer came down and gave bartenders a demo of cutting a huge block of ice into workable blocks at Heaven's Dog.

For those of you who saw this post on Alcademics in August 2010, the below is a repeat of that post, and hopefully a preview of what we'll witness at Tales.

Note: there is some NSFW language in the videos along with chainsaw noise.

First they started with the giant block and shaved off slices.

Then they cut those slices into rectangles

Then they cut those rectangles into cubes.

Then Andrew Bohrer demonstrated cutting an ice cube into an ice sphere using the shaving method.

Then he showed how he makes shaved ice by shaving ice.

Then he showed how he takes a big chunk of ice and with a knife can reduce it down to cubes.

Then Amanda Womack shows how she cuts ice spheres- by tapping at the outside with a knife rather than shaving.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

The Details:

Time: 10 AM to 11:30 AM
Date: Friday the 22nd of July, 2011
Venue: La Nouvelle Orleans Ballroom, Hotel Monteleone
Moderators: Andrew Bohrer
Panelists: Anu Apte

The Chainsaw Shift is about offering to you a shift in thinking about the buzz phrase, “ice program.” The Chainsaw Shift is the lowest waste, highest quality way to have an, “ice program,” as well as being the simplest way to do so. This seminar is a shift in thinking on how bartenders treat their most essential and common ingredient: ice. Quality ice allows the bartender to reevaluate and reimagine every step of the drink making process and brings new joy and beauty to the simplest cocktails.

This seminar will cover the basics of safely and efficiently processing 300 lb. blocks of crystal clear ice with the aid of carpenter’s tools and a trusty chainsaw. We will also discuss and demonstrate techniques for cutting ice to improve aesthetics and quality of every cocktail. Examples will include in-glass ice sculptures, crushed ice, shaved ice, cracked & cubed ice for mixing and carving spheres, diamonds and other shapes. The Chainsaw Shift will never replace the ice machine; rather it will make every bartender into an ice machine.

June 10, 2011
Stovetop Ice Balls: A First Attempt

Now that we know one way to make crystal clear ice, what are we gonna do with it?

One thing I've wanted to attempt is to make ice balls. These can be carved by hand, but that's a lot of work. The big copper ice ball makers make lovely ice balls, but these cost a ton of money. I've been trying to think of a new solution.

When they send bars the copper ice ball makers, they send an ice cube tray that makes a big enough cube to use in it. Unfortunately that tray produces cubes that are cloudy in the center, for reasons described earlier on this site.

I am a big enough nerd that I have brought my own clear ice to a bar that had the ice ball maker to produce a clear ball. It was lovely.

So I made a first attempt at another way of creating ice balls with conventional equipment: The Stovetop Ice Ball Method.

Don't get too excited: So far it doesn't work.

The theory is that I'll start with a clear block of ice and melt it into a heated metal bowl, creating a half-sphere. Then I'll turn it over and make another half sphere joining that one to form a complete sphere.

I bought a bowl at Ikea that's probably four inches in diameter – too big for a glass but fine for an experiment. I sat the block of ice on it, and set the bowl on the stove burner.

Click the link below (if you see one) to keep reading.

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May 5, 2011
It’s Easter Egg (Ice) Time Again

Here's the Easter Ice project from a couple years ago that I'm reposting. Go here to learn how to make it.

April 22, 2011