Tag: ice

  • Spiders and Insect Ice Balls for Halloween

    I'm a sucker for an ice gimmick, so with Halloween approaching I made some clear ice balls with insects from the dollar store frozen inside. 

    As usual, I used the method revealed here on Alcademics, using a Thermos Funtainer and 2.5 inch ice ball molds upside-down. Read about how to do that here

    The plastic insects I bought from the dollar store, made in China, so they're most definitely not approved for food use. I'll serve them to myself but don't recommend non-food-safe products at a bar. (Given that I'm freezing rather than heating them, a thorough wash is good enough for me at home.)

    So, here they are:

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    A fly in a clear ice ball.

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  • Directional Freezing, Freeze Distillation, and an 1890 Story About Ice Purity

    Ice nerds will recall that directional freezing is a method for making clear ice by forcing the water to freeze in one direction, rather than from the outside-in as in a typical ice cube tray. 

    It's also pretty similar to, if not the same thing as, freeze distillation  – using freezing to separate liquids. Freeze distillation is the method by which early American applejack was made: take a cider and freeze it, scoop off the frozen ice, and then you have a more concentrated cider, higher in alcohol. Keep doing this and eventually you get something pretty high proof. 

    This was also the process used by BrewDog to make their high-proof Tactical Nuclear Penguin beer. 

    Experimenting with directional freezing shows that when using the process, the clear ice freezes first and the air and any minerals in the water are treated as impurities, pushed away from the point of freezing. But as many people have found out, it treats everything not pure water in the same way – when you try to add food coloring or a flavoring to the cooler in a directional freezing system, unless you put a ton of it in the color is treated as an impurity and your ice still comes out clear. (The bottom/last part to freeze will be gooped up with the color/flavor. )

    Jim Blakey of the ClearlyFrozen ice cube tray found a story in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, that talks about how clear ice less polluted than the lake water from which its formed. I'd assume this is for the same reason. 

     “clear ice from polluted sources may contain so small a percentage of the impurities of the source, that it may not be regarded as injurious to the health."

    Here's the story. 

     

    JAMA 1890 clear ice more healthy than water

    The original reference in Google Books is here

     

  • Boiled Versus Rested Water Clarity with Directional Freezing: A Comparison

    The main water factors that affect ice clarity in an ideal environment:

    • Gasses in water
    • Minerals/other impurities in water

    Factors of the freezing environment that also impact clarity:

    • Rate of freezing (warmer temperatures better)
    • Shape of container, which impacts whether the last part to freeze will crack the ice (as it does in a typical ice cube tray)
    • Jostling/moving of the cooler in a home directional freezing system (cooler with the top off) as this causes bubbles to form earlier

    I've been studying each of these factors carefully, as I may be contributing a section on the science of ice to the Oxford Companion to Cocktails and Spirits (which hasn't been edited/approved yet, and isn't due out for a while so don't get too excited). 

    One factor that has always confounded me is the gasses in water. We know from observation that gas in water becomes trapped in ice in the form of bubbles, whether that's in the center of an ice cube or the bottom of the block using a cooler in the freezer.

    Most kitchen sinks have aerators on them that add more air to water, so that's a factor. But there are also lots of theories (boiling water, freezing then melting then refreezing) that are meant to minimize the air in water. 

    My issue has always been: If trapped air in water is water's natural state, then if you boil the water to eliminate that air, wouldn't air just be re-absorbed into the water when it returns to room temperature?

    Dave Arnold in Liquid Intelligence asserts that you should boil the water, put it in your cooler, let it cool a bit, and then put it in the freezer. I was doubtful that this actually helps, but Dave Arnold is usually right, so I finally decided to test this.

    Click on the image below to expand it greatly. 

     

    Boiled vs unboiled water ice blocks

    Experiment

    For the first block of ice, I boiled tap water briefly, put it into the cooler, let it cool down for several hours, then froze it on the highest (warmest) setting in my home freezer. 

    For the second block of ice, I used tap water that I poured into the cooler, let it set out overnight, and froze it the same way. The theory of letting it sit overnight was that the air bubbles introduced via the sink aerator and pouring water from one vessel to another would fizz off naturally. 

    For the third block of ice, I put tap water through a Brita filter, and was generally extra careful to not introduce air by splashy pouring. (I was hoping the filtering and light handling would further reduce aeration.)

    Results: The fully cloudy, opaque (unusable) section of of the block is slightly reduced in the boiled water vs. unboiled. If I were making ice in an industrial capacity using coolers, it probably wouldn't be worth the time/effort/heat to boil the water to produce rather than getting it done 5 hours earlier and having a half an inch less usable ice. 

    However, the amount of thin streams of bubbles in the clear part, which look okay but not perfect when cut into cubes (though a bit more dramatic in pictures), seems significantly reduced in the boiled water block.

    Conclusion: Boiling water before freezing in the directional freezing system does appear to improve the clarity of ice, in particular by eliminating bubble streams in the section of ice just before the solidly cloudy final bit.

    It does not improve ice clarity on its own more than directional freezing does in the first place, and therefore won't replace directional freezing (and boiling water was the first experiment I did in trying to make clear ice eight years ago), however it can make directionally-frozen ice better. 

    It seems the natural aeration of water poured from the sink is reduced, though certainly not eliminated, by boiling the water before freezing it. 

    A future experiment (not sure if I'll actually do it) would be to let the boiled water cool down to the same temperature as the unboiled water before freezing, though I doubt this would have any impact. 

    How will I change the way I make ice at home? I will not. I try to use filtered water, frozen in a cooler, removed after 2-3 days so the cloudy bottom part hasn't formed at all. 

     

  • New Business Models for Large Format Cocktail Ice Providers

    Large format cocktail ice providers have been around for a while, but now big cube/sphere/spear providers are branching out into new shapes, sizes, making machines, and pushing into retail. 

    In a story for SevenFifty Daily, based in part on my talk at Tales of the Cocktail, I wrote about what several companies are doing to bring more larger clear ice to more people. 

     

    Big ice copy

  • Make Amazing Frozen Liquor Bottle Displays using Directional Freezing

    Using just a cooler, a makeshift stand, and a bottle you can make cool-looking displays for home, parties, or the bar. 

    If you're just getting started into ice nerditry, you'll want to check out the Index of Ice Experiments, where you can get a definition of Directional Freezing and see other fun projects. 

     

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    I previously shared how to do this on this post.

    In short: inside an insulated cooler, lay a bottle atop a small riser of some sort (I used a plastic box lid) so that the bottle is raised up a few inches off the bottom. 

     

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    Fill the cooler with water (tap water is fine) so that it covers the bottle. Leave the top off the cooler and let it freeze. In my home freezer, that takes 3-4 days. Thanks to Directional Freezing, the top part of the cooler (so the front part of the bottle) will be clear, while the bottom (back of the bottle) will have all the cloudiness in it. 

    You can see from this back view that the plastic riser is still stuck in the back. From the side view, you can see that thanks to directional freezing the top part of the block is super clear (so you can see the front of the bottle), while the back is cloudy. It turns out the cloudy part actually makes a nice backdrop.

     

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    Remove it from the cooler than your display is ready to go. I've done this at parties (putting some LED candles in the ice beneath the standing block) and it was a huge hit. 

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    Check out all the ice experiments on Alcademics at this link.

     

  • Freeze Liquor Bottles Inside an Ice Tube for Better Bottle Service

    Using just a cooler, a tube, and a bottle you can a super funky display for your party or for bottle service at your bar. 

    If you're just getting started into ice nerd stuff, you'll want to check out the Index of Ice Experiments, where you can get a definition of Directional Freezing to see why this works, and see other fun projects. 

     

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    I originally developed this technique for the bar Whitechapel, which was looking to do a unique Martini cart with frozen bottles. 

    Simply put a bottle inside a tube of some sort (this is a metal utensil holder like you'd see at a salad bar) and fill both the tube and the rest of the cooler with water. Directional Freezing will take care of making the top part of the ice clear. The cloudy part is all around the bottom of the bottle. If you wanted it 100% clear around the bottle, you'd simply put it on a short riser inside the tube.

    Then freeze it (with the top off the cooler) and pull it out.

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    I did this again with a bottle Zucca as I'm using it for a talk. I no longer had the metal utensil container so I put in a plastic pitcher. I wouldn't say it is the ideal container given that is has irregular sides, but it did the trick for proof of concept. 

    The bottle is a bit problematically tall for my freezer – I almost couldn't get the cooler out! 

     

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    Cheers!

     

    Check out all the ice experiments on Alcademics at this link.

     

  • Fire Inside Ice (Okay, Fireball inside an Ice Ball)

    For years, bars including Chicago's Aviary have been serving drinks inside hollow ice balls. The procedure to make one is easy, at least in theory.

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    Freeze a balloon or an ice ball mold filled with water for a few hours. An ice shell will form on the outside. 

     

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    Poke a hole in the ice ball and dump out the water. Refill with a (very well chilled) cocktail.  Some bars do with a syringe so that you don't have to open a real hole in the ice ball.

     

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    Then serve it. I did this at home and thought it would be fun/funny to create Fire Inside Ice – so I filled by ice ball with Fireball cinnamon whiskey.

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    Then for a bit of a show I filmed dropping it in slow motion. Enjoy.

     

     

  • All About Ice in the Washington Post

    I guess M Carrie Allan is becoming my personal biographer, because in addition to the story I posted yesterday on dangerous drink ingredients in Imbibe Magazine, her story with quotes from me about ice also went live in the Washington Post.

    The story is called, You’ve made a good drink. It deserves the perfect ice.

     

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    It's an examination of different types of ice and my Directional Freezing technique that makes ice clear. It's good stuff. 

    Maybe in the future Carrie will write about tonic water history, and then all my pet projects will be covered 🙂

     

  • How to Make the Death Star Ice Mold Turn Out Clear

    Update: Learn more about this in The Ice Book, out May 2023!


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    Did you receive one of those cool Star Wars Death Star ice molds as a gift (or buy one for yourself), only to have it come out looking not like the advertisement:

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    Image from the ad on Amazon.

    But more like this?

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    Yeah, more like post-Skywalker Death Star. 

    Don't worry, I have a fix for you. The trick is take advantage of Directional Freezing, a technique I pioneered here on Alcademics.com. 

    In a nutshell, the regular way ice ball will freeze is from the outside-in. The ice "wants" to be clear in a nice neat organized lattice so it pushes trapped air into the center of the ball, where it appears cloudy and also cracks as it expands. With Directional Freezing, we make sure the ice ball freezes from the top to the bottom, pushing that trapped air out the hole in the bottom. 

     

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    We accomplish this by using a Thermos Funtainer (or other similar insulated mug, but this one fits the 2.5" ice ball molds perfectly and takes up the least amount of space in your freezer). 

    1. Fill the Thermos with water
    2. Fill the Death Star ice ball mold with water (I use water from a Britta filter)
    3. Hold your thumb over the hole in the Star Wars ice ball mold and turn it upside down, setting it on the Thermos with the hole facing into the thermos. 
    4. Put it in the freezer and wait 12 20 hours or so for it to freeze, depending on your freezer. 

    The ball should now be super clear. 

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    Common issues are that it comes out more egg-shaped or that it's a touch cloudy on the last part to freeze (where the hole is). If you're experiencing that, try:

    • Move it so that the hole is either directly down in the center of the thermos, or a little on an angle towards one side (depending on if your freezer is excessively cold or warm)
    • Beware excessive vibration/jostling the container in your freezer, usually caused by opening and closing the door a lot. This can cause bubbles and stop the directional freezing process. 
    • Some super-obsessed Alcademics readers claim that to get every last cloudy bit out of the ice ball (often the last part to freeze is slightly 'frosty' in appearance), use bottled water. We haven't figured out why this would make any difference, but they claim it does. 
    • Most sink faucets have a aerator on them – even if your water doesn't need to be filtered, letting it sit a while or removing the aerator can help if the ice is still cloudy and freezes fast. 

    Enjoy your super clear Star Wars Death Star ice balls, and may the force of Directional Freezing be with you.

     

    To see all the many, many ice experiments on Alcademics, follow this link to the Index of Ice Experiments