I was browsing in the dollar store for stuff to freeze into ice cubes, as I do, and found a bag of party favor rings. They’re made for kids and so can only fit about halfway up my pinky finger, but it’s proof of concept.
To freeze the rings into ice, I used my IceOlogy clear cube tray, which has an open top. I simply put a piece of bamboo skewer across the top of the opening, hanging the ring in the top part of the water.
They came out great. One of the rings was a little deeper into the ice than the other (making it really hard to wear), but that can easily be controlled.
Here are some pics.
For more information about clear ice and my book The Ice Book, check out this page.
I did an interview with America’s Test Kitchen a long time ago, and it just went up. The first half of the episode is on the history of ice. I come in at around 27 minutes in.
The reporter for this story in The Guardian and I talked a long time about clear ice, iceberg water, and bottled water.
Not much made it into the final story from me (so it goes) but I did get mentioned in the lead paragraphs!
Towards the end of 2009, Camper English achieved a major breakthrough in his kitchen in San Francisco. After months of experimentation, English, a drinks industry consultant, created the perfect piece of clear ice: a cube with minimal fissures and microbubbles, as transparent as air.
His method for making clear ice – freezing water in an insulated container, which forces tiny bubbles towards the edge and leaves the rest of the block clear – is now widely copied in bars. English has also written The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts, and has found his algorithmic niche as Instagram’s top “ice cube reporter”. He regularly shares pictures of bevelled spheres, ridged gems and crystalline pebbles on his account @alcademics, all tagged with #IceBling.
The story has some good points – the most important one being that bottled water does not compete with tap water.
But anyway, if you want to geek out about water with me, I have an upcoming water class in April 2024 you can join!
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.
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.
