I am quoted in this story about luxury ice (from Greenland, sold in Dubai) in which I manage to become an advocate for importing glacier ice for cocktails, lol.
Most of what I talked about in the interview was that we all choose our battles when it comes to where and how we support environmentalism, based on personal values. The more problematic environmental issue of Martha Stewart sipping on iceberg ice on a cruise was the cruise itself. Ever had fresh Japanese sushi in NYC or Las Vegas? It was probably flown in on a plane… packed in ice.
Anyway, I hope you'll join me in a freshly-clubbed baby seal fat-washed arctic mezcal mai tai served over a Death Valley ice sphere sometime in the future.
Well here's something I never expected when I started experimenting with ice all those years ago: The Weather Network did a segment on directional freezing to make ice for cocktails.
I wish I was smart enough to have pitched them The Ice Book when it came out!
In clear ice cube trays, one cube (or a few) almost always pops up and starts growing upward after some time of freezing. I call this The Mystery Pillar. Others call it the Sacrificial Cube, because it is usually cloudy and must be discarded.
While it would be theoretically possible to build a deformable tray that avoids this, in general I think you just need to live with it. Pull the tray out of the freezer when it starts forming- if you let it go too long, you may end up with the pillar hitting the freezer ceiling and pinning your tray into the freezer. I say this from experience.
As water cools and turns into ice, it expands. In a rigid container, this exerts pressure on the system, and it seems that pressure pushes one or more cubes up from the hole in the bottom of the tray. It seems it's the last cube compartment to freeze that becomes the mystery pillar. A sciency video that explains the phenomenon in ice spikes is here.
I think that sometimes the water pushing up into the tray pushes the existing cube up – so that it's clear on top and cloudy down the cube shaft. And other times I think water squeezes up around the cube and onto the top surface so it grows that way – cloudy on the top.
I've been asked about the Mystery Pillar four times in the past week so going forward I'll point everybody to this post!
This year I read more than 40 books, mostly about drinks. My top five favorites are below. This list is not actually the best drink books of the year, but my favorites. (And my favorite technically came out in 2022.) I wrote the title for SEO!
What I want out of drink books is new information or information presented in a new way. I don't need cocktail recipes so recipe books only really appeal to me when they present new techniques.
And if I haven't chosen your book or your favorite here, just assume I haven't read it yet. You make great choices too!
Camper's Favorite Books of 2023
5. Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks–a Cool History of a Hot Commodity by Amy Brady [Amazon] [bookshop]
Amy Brady's book about the cultural history of ice was a perfect pairing to my how-to book on ice cubes, coming out just a month after my own. This has the history of "Ice King" Frederic Tudor, plus how ice fundamentally changed America in numerous ways from food and drink to sports and travel.
4. How to Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life by Mandy Naglich [amazon] [bookshop]
It's mostly about tasting beer, wine, and spirits but it's a book about tasting everything from cheese to chocolate to honey, and approaching it like a professional taster. There are tips of developing your palate and tons of interviews with professionals in many different specialties. It makes me want to host tasting parties for everything.
3. Tropical Standard: Cocktail Techniques & Reinvented Recipes by Ben Schaffer and Garret Richard [amazon] [bookshop]
This is the only recipe book on my list, because it introduces new techniques to old drinks. Tropical Standard will probably be known as a book of tiki cocktail recipes made with modern techniques like clarification and isolated acids from Liquid Intelligence, but many of the drinks include no such razzle dazzle: It is really a book on raising the standard of tropical cocktails, optimizing them with everything we've learned in the decades since they were first invented.
2. A Field Guide to Tequila: What It Is, Where It’s From, and How to Taste It by Clayton J. Szczech [amazon] [bookshop]
The title and cover copy really undersell it: This is the tequila book the world needs. About half the book is about the production of tequila and the historical circumstances and sometimes-ridiculous regulations that lead to it being made that way. Tequila is a moving target in many ways, but Szczech has done a great job at nailing the parameters that make it what it is, along with highlighting some of the largest and most traditional players in the category. This is now the first book I recommend about the category.
1. Modern Caribbean Rum by Matt Pietrek and Carrie Smith [buy]
This came out at the end of 2022 but I read it – all 850 pages of it – this year. And it seems like it was written just for me. I am a production nerd and want to know all the ingredients, equipment, and regulations that go into making something and how those things impact how something tastes. Here we get the information on the specific stills- down to the manufacturer- used at every distillery, plus that level of detail about everything from every producer in the covered region. It's a lot, and I like it. So it is all of that wrapped up in a huge heavy package with terrific photos and design – a pleasure to flip through too.
Super Bonus!
The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts by Camper English [amazon] [bookshop]
Okay I lied again. Those weren't my top five favorite books of 2023. They're the top 5 books of 2023 that I didn't write. My favorite book of 2023 is The Ice Book, by me!
Learn to make very good ice and shape it into all sorts of amazing cubes, spheres, blinged-out diamonds, and more. I hope you'll pick up a copy if you haven't already.
This is a video about "ice spikes" that form in the freezer, and as explained it does so due to the expansion of water when it freezes.
He is talking about ice forming in a standard ice cube tray but those of us who make clear ice cubes in trays know this phenomenon as the "mystery pillar" – one cube (or sometimes two) pops up and starts forming upward out of a tray suspended atop an insulated cooler.
Interestingly in this video the host cites three factors that help ice spikes to form: distilled water, warm freezing temperatures, and a fan blowing on the surface. Well in the case of directional freezing, the water freezes out impurities so that the ice near the surface is basically frozen distilled water; the cooler impacts the rate of freezing; and fans are usually in the way.
In the case of the directional freezing system, rather than spikes forming above the surface, we usually get whole cubes popping up. My theory is that the "ice spike" phenomenon is happening not on the surface of the ice, but through the bottom hole in the tray – pushing the entire cube up from the bottom. Often the new ice forming does up around the sides, so you get something like looks like a cupcake topping on your cube. (Other times it seems the new ice forms below and pushes the whole cube up.)
In any case, I think the "mystery pillar" is the same thing as "ice spikes" as it just makes sense.
There are lots of different ice tools you could buy for yourself and others, but when someone I know moves house I tend to buy them a starter pack that takes up the least amount of space in their freezer with a lot of value in icy awesomeness.
I was interviewed for this short segment on CBS news, which went out to their various affiliate stations. The first person who told me they saw it was actually in Hawaii.
Want to give yourself (or, I suppose, somebody else) some clear ice tools for the most hands-on experience? Skip the commercial trays that make good finished ice and pick up this stuff instead.
