Alcademics

Category: ice

  • Clear Ice and Container Shape

    Today is Ice Day on Alcademics, so stay tuned for more exciting coverage of my ongoing experiments to make clear ice in my home freezer.

    So far, I've tried:

    So far I haven't achieved… anything, but I'm gathering information that should help in the future. In recent experiments, I found that ice freezes from the outside in, which is sort of obvious, but it's important because that's where all the air is trapped that makes the majority of cloudiness in ice. So I wanted to try some different container shapes to test how and where the air bubble forms. 

    In a vertical container, such as these Vietnamese take-out soup containers I've been using, the air bubble forms toward the middle-bottom. (I've set the ice upside-down in this picture.)

    Vertical1s

    Whereas in a flat horizontal container such as a lasagna tray, the air bubble forms in a layer across the bottom of the pan.

    Icepan1s

    The experiment continues after the jump.

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  • Does Carbonated Water Make Clearer Ice than Still Water?

    This is another in my ongoing experiments to make clear ice. So far, I've tried comparing:

    Someone in the comments mentioned hearing that carbonated water would freeze more clearly than still water. As most of the cloudiness in ice appears to come from trapped oxygen, this didn't make sense to me, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try.

    I froze equal amounts of still water and carbonated water and this is how they came out:

    Tapvscarbonated

    The carbonated water is on the right, and it sure as heck isn't clear. It's got kind of a fun texture with lots of air bubbles in it, but that doesn't get us anywhere for the purposes of this experiment.

    Conclusion: Carbonated water does not make clearer ice than still water.

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

  • Nice Ice in the News

    The Associated Press released the following story on ice today, with a quote from your favorite icesperimentator Camper English. The whole story is here.

    SIP: Bartending trend calls for nice ice, baby

    By MICHELLE LOCKE
    Associated Press Writer

    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Erik Adkins spends a lot of time on ice.

    As general manager of the Heaven's Dog bar in San Francisco he's very particular about what ice goes into his cocktails, preferring hand-carved chunks for slow-sipping drinks and oversized clear cubes for lighter concoctions.

    And that's just the tip of the ice trend.

    Driven by the same quest for perfection that elevated bread, cheese and wine to objects of desire, ice has entered an epicurean age, coming in new shapes and sizes.

    Then I get the closing quote:

    On the other hand there's Camper English, a San Francisco-based writer and cocktail expert, who has blogged about his search for clarity, melting and refreezing ice at home to see if that decreases cloudiness and experimenting with distilled water.

    So far he hasn't been too successful, but that hasn't curbed his enthusiasm.

    "Ice is one of the fun projects that cocktail nerds can play with at home," he says.

    He'll go to some lengths for a chill thrill.

    "One time I caught myself asking a bartender to see their ice when I was making my drink order," he recalls, "because it was going to matter to me."

    Read the whole thing here and see the Index of Ice Experiments on Alcademics here.

  • Does Hot Water Make Clearer Ice Than Cold?

    I have been doing experiments at home to try to get the clearest ice possible. So far my experiments have compared:

    I have not yet had success. Will the third time be the charm?

    (*Update – You might want to skip to this index page to see conclusions reached after many experiments.)

    This time I compared hot water to cold water to see which would freeze more clearly. The theory is that hot/boiled water has less trapped oxygen in it, and thus will freeze clearly because there will be less air bubbles.

    As I previously saw no significant difference in ice clarity between using tap vs. distilled water, I began with unfiltered tap water. One batch of water I left at room temperature. The other batch I boiled for several minutes. I put them in the freezer while the hot water was still hot. Here is what happened on three separate attempts:

    Hotvscold123

    The cold water actually looks a little more clear, but this could be because when the center of the hot water finally froze, it burst. I can't guess why this is because it's not like I have a super refrigerator that freezes ice in ten minutes.

    Another theory about why the first experiment failed is that as the hot water cools down in the freezer, it reabsorbs oxygen and acts just like cold water. To test this, I repeated the experiment, this time covering both plastic tubs with the lid before freezing.

     

    Coveredhotcold12

    Here the hot water ice looks slightly more clear than it did when it was uncovered. However, I'm not seeing a significant difference in hot vs. cold water, though the covered hot water may be just slightly clearer.

    Conclusion: Hot water does not freeze significantly clearer than cold water, even when the vessel is covered to reduce oxygen re-absorption. 

    In all of these ice experiments so far, the major cloudy factor in the ice has not been cloudiness throughout the ice, but a cloudy spot in the center of the ice. This spot is assumed to form due to the order in which ice freezes, from the outside-in. The oxygen migrates to the liquid part (in the middle) until it is the last part to freeze.  Kold-Draft ice machines produce wonderfully clear ice cubes in part because they freeze the ice in layers- water is sprayed in layers from the top down, so that oxygen is never trapped.

    Is there a way to freeze ice in a home freezer similar to a Kold Draft machine? Can we manipulate the way water freezes or change the shape of the container? Can we vibrate the container or stir the water so that the surface stays liquid and freezes last?

    We shall see, in future ice experiments.

    *Update – For a solution to the ice problem, see this post for a method that works. Also, an index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

  • Does Distilled Water Freeze Clearer than Tap Water?

    In my last set of icesperiments, I froze, melted, and refroze (tap) water to see if it became clearer on successive refreezings. It did not.

    This time I compared tap water with distilled water to see if one would freeze more clearly than the other. I froze it, then melted and refroze it four more times. Though neither froze super clear, there were differences:

    DistilledVsTap 

    The tap water seems to freeze either clear or not clear, where the distilled water freezes in more of a bubble starburst. But in the end I'd say there's not enough of a difference to matter. 

    After the break, a closeup of the distilled vs. tap ice.

    The icesperiments shall continue!

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

     

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  • Does Refreezing Ice Make it Clearer?

    I am trying a series of experiments to find the best and most practical way to make clear ice in my home freezer. Future experiments include distilled vs. tap water, boiled vs. not boiled, hot vs. cold water, different shapes of containers, etc.

    For this experiment, I started with plain tap water. I then froze it, took a picture, let it thaw back into liquid, and repeated the process. 

    The test was to see if freezing and refreezing tap water would make it become clearer on successive freezings (due to the release of oxygen trapped in the ice) each time. 

    So did it become clearer? The short answer is No. The long and visual answer is below.

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  • Moldy Ice

    I got these alphabet ice molds on Amazon.

    Iceicebaby500

    They're fun because I can send love notes to myself in my cocktails, and leave subliminal messages in other peoples' drinks.

    The item description says they can also be used in the oven and for things like butter molds and chocolate, but that sounds hard. I'll stick to ice. because I'm cool like that. Get them here.

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

  • Easter Ice

    CleareggssYou know how I made those cool ice balls before? Well, they really come out looking more like eggs, which inspired me to make some ice eggs for Easter cocktails. Again I just used water balloons filled at the sink.

    Note: I experimented with water to see if the powder inside the balloons was changing the taste of the drinks. It does a little, but this can be softened. Since I have to fill these from the tap, the influence of tap (versus filtered) water is present. But I noticed a big improvement when I rinsed these balloons after freezing to remove a slight plasticy taste. So: rinse before filling, then rinse the outside of the ice after freezing.

    Then I got to thinking: clear eggs are boring. This is Easter, after all, and the only thing good about Easter is decorating Easter eggs. (Revision: the brunch drinks are another good thing.)

    So after filling my balloons with water but before tying them, I added a drop of food coloring to the balloon stem then tied them up. The results are awesome!

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

  • Ice As Art

    Gawking at ice isn't just for cocktail nerds anymore!

    BoilerStrachanIce1

    I saw this art review in New York Magazine of an exhibit at Boiler in Williamsburg.

    In 2004, Strachan cut a 2.5-ton block of ice from the Alaskan Arctic, shipped it to the Bahamas (where he’s from), and exhibited it there in a hermetically sealed refrigerated room powered by solar cells. Pictures suggest that it was interesting there; now, installed in a former boiler room, it’s like hell freezing over. Far above the case two fans blow two flags: one at the current wind speed of Mount McKinley, the other at the Bahamas’ Nassau airport’s. The piece looks like a weird cryogenic chamber and touches on environmentalism, earthworks, entropy, autobiography, and race (making an oblique reference to Matthew Henson, a black explorer who was with Robert Peary at the North Pole).

     

    It seems kind of ironic to ship arctic ice to the Bahamas and then Williamsburg to show the plight of global warming, but whatever.

    I can't help looking at the picture thinking it would make a cool feature at a bar. Instead of the walk-in vodka freezer, you have a see-through ice room with someone in there hacking up a giant ice block for cocktails. For more ice ideas, see the Index of Ice Experiements on Alcademics here. 

  • Ice Balls Made Easy

    While everyone in their right mind would love one of those fancy giant ice ball makers that go for $1300 and up, they're not the most practical solution for the home mixologist.

    [Note: since this post went up we've come up with lots of great solutions for clear ice balls and other ice technology. Check out the Ice Experiments Index Page.]

    So I used my superbrain and did all sorts of math with equations and integrals and all, and came up with a way to make these at home:

    Orbsinbowl
    Threecubesshortglass Iceinglass
    (glasses by CB2, by the way)

    To see my highly scientific secret method, continue reading after the jump…

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