Category: ice

Cutting Corners to Make Clear Ice
In an ongoing set of experiments I've been trying to make clear ice at home. I've tried:
With some success on the last one. While what would be ideal would be to produce one giant solid block of perfectly clear ice, I haven't figured that out yet. However if the ice is going to be used to shake with or for cooling individual beverages, you don't need a giant block- just big chunks.

There is a way to accomplish this by cutting corners. And tops and bottoms. We've seen how the air bubble makes the cloudiest part of the ice in the center in vertically-frozen water, and mostly along the bottom of horizontally-frozen water.

And I've also found that horizontally-frozen water usually has an edge of very clear ice.

So with my ice pick, I just cut off the clear edges separated the top from the cloudy bottom
of the pan ice (easier than you'd expect, as the cloudy ice breaks off easily), and cut around the cloudy middle of vertically-frozen water to end up with a big bowl of clear ice.

Conclusions: You can make clear ice by cutting around cloudy ice frozen in large blocks. However, you waste about 85% of your ice, and a lot of time.

An index of ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.
October 23, 2009
Making Clear Ice by Releasing Trapped Air
[update: after this post, I figured out the trick to making clear ice – check here for the solution.]

Finally, I've got a minor success in my clear ice experiment to share. So far in an attempt to make perfectly clear ice in my home freezer, I've tried:
Noting that water freezes into ice from the outside-in, leaving an air/water bubble that forms the cloudy part of ice, I sought to devise a way to either change the way ice freezes, or to release the trapped air while the ice was freezing.

First I tried laying a bar spoon diagonally through the water. The theory was that the metal of the spoon might conduct coldness into the center of the ice so that the ice would freeze more evenly. The intended result was a dispersed air throughout the ice rather than just in the bottom/center layer.

But alas, the intended result did not happen. There does appear to be more air dispersed in the ice, but still the majority of it is in a layer along the bottom.

Next I tried inserting a straw into the center of a tray of ice to see if the air would escape through the straw. The plan was flawed to begin with, as water would probably just freeze inside the straw so no air could get out.

In reality the freezing ice pushed the straw up so that it was only inserted about half an inch into the ice by the time it was fully frozen. This had no effect on the amount of cloudiness.

For something that did work, keep reading after the jump.

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October 23, 2009
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.)

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

The experiment continues after the jump.

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October 23, 2009
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:

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.
October 23, 2009
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.

October 23, 2009
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:
- Distilled vs. Tap water
- Multiple melting and freezings of water
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:

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.

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.
October 23, 2009
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:

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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August 28, 2009
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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August 21, 2009
Moldy Ice

I got these alphabet ice molds on Amazon.

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.

August 5, 2009
Easter Ice

You 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!

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

April 7, 2009