Alcademics

Category: ice

  • The History of the Ice Trade

    Frozenwatertrade I recently finished reading The Frozen Water Trade: A True Story by Gavin Weightman. The book is the story of Frederic Tudor, whose wacky idea of cutting ice in winter from ponds in Massachusetts and selling it to people in warmer climates in the summer turned into a 100 year industry until refrigerated ice became readily available. Tudor's ice was shipped as far as Martinique, India, San Francisco (around the tip of South America where there was plenty of ice already), New Orleans, and throughout the American South.

    Of course, my interest in the book was purely cocktail-related. The sale of ice was directly responsible for the creation of drink categories including juleps, cobblers, and smashes, and created the need for cocktail shakers as well as straws. Iced drinks became popular with Englishmen in India, but didn't catch on in England (not for lack of trying to sell it there). American cocktails stood out from English and other ones in their need for ice (as evidenced by books like Recipes of American and Other Iced Drinks), and grew in format and in number because of this ingredient.

    As we know the cocktail was an American invention and probably its first native cuisine, we can probably chalk up a lot of the credit for America's famous drinks and bartenders (pre-Prohibition) to this one guy who created a world-wide industry out of nothing but freebies- frozen lakes, sawdust to keep it cold through the summer, and room in ships' holds as ballast on trading routes.

    The book itself isn't the "page-turner" as described on the cover, nor does it delve too deeply into the discussion of the impact on cocktails, but with an understanding of what came later in American cocktail history, it's fascinating for its implications. 

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

  • San Francisco’s Next All-Star Bar

    I recently spoke with Erik Adkins (Slanted Door, Flora) who is the bar manager of the soon-to-open Charles Phan (Slanted Door's chef/owner) restaurant next to the Soma Grand building on Mission Street. After much wavering on the name (the code name was "Phantom" at one point, get it), they seem to have settled on Heaven's Dog. That's pretty rock and roll.

    Kolddraft-cubeAlso great is the list of bartenders who've signed on to take shifts at the place:

    The restaurant should be opening in early January. Adkins tells me that they'll keep the drink menu at a reasonable 12 or so drinks "focusing more on execution than on unusual recipes." They'll also have an emphasis on quality ice, with a Kold Draft machine for cubes, plus a freezer dedicated just to ice that they'll use to make spears for tall drinks and chunks for some of the rocks drinks.

    Brrr, who's thirsty?

  • Nerdiest Text Message of the Week

    Kolddraft2
     SAN FRANCISCO– New bar Gitane on Claude Lane has received delivery of a Kold Draft ice machine, according to reports to the Alcademics wire service.
    —

    The saddest part about this text message is not that it was sent, but that I was excited when I read it.

  • Clearly a Failure

    There are various methods people use to make the clearer ice. To remove the air bubbles that make ice cloudy, people suggest boiling or refreezing the water. I decided to give a few options a try to see what worked best. But as we'll see, my results are less than conclusive.

    Ice1

    Using individual sized apple sauce cups (these are great large cubes for drinking whisky, as you don't want the ice to melt too rapidly and water it down) I froze the following into ice:

    • Control ice- regular ice poured from the Britta filter, probably two days old
    • Re-frozen- above style ice cubes, melted and refrozen
    • Boiled in pot for about 10 minutes
    • Microwaved for about three minutes of boiling

    Then I lined up all the ice in order of most clear to least. I had two of each style of ice, and my results were: Control, Control, Boiled, Microwaved, Refrozen, Microwaved, Refrozen, Boiled. None of the ice was totally clear. And the control should have been the least clear, not the most.

    So… that didn't work at all. I will need to repeat this experiment. Any ideas on what I did wrong? the cups in the picture are upside down, so the most air/cloudiness was on the bottom of the container. Perhaps I need to pour it slowly into the tray to avoid adding air at that point? Drip it through a filter? Use a colder temperature? Suggestions gladly welcomed.

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