Category: ice

  • Frozen Juice Makes Nice Ice Balls

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    In my previous experiments with making colored ice balls, I found that the color from food coloring in water didn't evenly distribute, even though it made pretty patterns.  But when I visited the new MKT Bar at the Four Seasons in San Francisco, I had a drink with an ice ball with well-distributed color. It…

  • Perfectly Clear Ice Balls – A Clever Trick

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    One of Alcademics' readers figured out a simple way to make perfectly clear ice balls by using a silicon ice ball mold, a piece of wire, and a pot of water.  His name is Craig Belon and so he calls it the Belon Method. No actual parrots are required. [update: Check out easier ways to…

  • Make Easter Egg Ice for Easter

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    Check out this post from a few years back on making ice shaped like Easter eggs.  Short answer: water balloons. 

  • The Ice King of the Internet

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    I was interviewed recently for a story in a magazine for the iPad/iPhone called The Magazine. During the interview we were joking that I'm the Ice King of the Internet. The quote didn't make it into the story, but I've adopted that as an official title. Hail your new king!    In the story, writer…

  • Ice Info for New Readers

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    Hello new readers – The best of the ice posts are: – How to make clear ice using a cooler – How to make giant crystal clear ice cubes Then some fun projects with ice are here and here and here and here. 

  • Making Clear Ice Using a Blast Freezer

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    A few weeks back I was talking to Charles Joly, beverage director of The Aviary in Chicago, about ice. (This happens a lot.) We were talking about the cooler method I use to make clear ice.  The Aviary has a Clinebell machine that makes 300 pound blocks of sexy, clear ice that they then cut…

  • A Dramatic Video About Ice from The Aviary

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    Here's a video from Chicago's molecular mixology bar The Aviary with cool slow-motion shots of ice.     And here is an index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics.

  • Another Way to Make Clear Ice at Home

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    I am honored to have as Alcademics readers people who are just as huge cocktail nerds as I am. Many take on projects that I run out of time to do, pass along better information to me, or fill me in on the science I'm missing. Kevin Liu, who has recently started the blog Craft…

  • Another Commercial Clear Ice Cube Tray

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    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…

  • A Clear Ice Ball Maker You Can Buy

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    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…