perfect ice

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motobrewer

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i want to make crystal clear ice. i've tried using RO water - gets it pretty good, still a lot of bubbles.

i tried boiling RO water, didn't really change much at all.

anyone got a tip?
 
Clear ice like they use in ice sculptures is made with a special machine. It is frozen under a constant flow of water building up slowly to form a block. I believe it is also made with distilled water so there is little or no entrapped air bubbles.
 
Airplanedoc said:
Clear ice like they use in ice sculptures is made with a special machine. It is frozen under a constant flow of water building up slowly to form a block. I believe it is also made with distilled water so there is little or no entrapped air bubbles.
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yeah i know about machines. it seems my water is pretty free of minerals but there is still a ton of bubbles. i don't know how to get rid of them.
 
bottlebomber said:
OCD much? ;)
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says the guy with 1800+ posts on a hobby brewing forum ;)

ice is critical to a cocktail. go to a good cocktail bar and they have an established "ice program", be it a fancy machine, freezing in hotel trays and chipping by hand, or some other crazy method.
 
Go to youtube and root through the mythbusters ice bullet videos I swear in the first version of the experiment they spent a lot of time on trying to get the clearest, hardest ice. I think they went to an ice making place that did ice for sculptures and went into detail about how they achieve it. Like airplane said it has something to do with agitation. I wonder if a simple aquarium pump keeping the water moving would do it....\
 
I always liked a half of a gallon milk jug filled with water and chipped with an icepick, until I stabbed myself in the hand on my fifth drink :)
 
At Chena Hot Springs in Alaska there is a husband/wife ice carving couple that are world renowned for their ice carving abilities. Apparently the ice from there is the best naturaul ice and it actually gets shipped around the world. The amount of ice knowledge I had increased about 100 fold from this trip, not that I now know much of anything about ice.

And if you know what I am talking about, no way in hell did I pay $20 for a martini in an ice glass.
 
Yeah, it is tough... RO, boiled then into a really cold freezer with some tin foil over the top. You won't get perfect stuff at home. Another thing that can help is to let them freeze a bit, then break the top layer of ice with a pick. I mostly isn't worth it. Anyone who knows enough about cocktails to care will be impressed with what you have.

Do you have molds?

Also, we should probably hang out sometime... what are you mixing?
 
I saw something similar to revvy and i remeber it included a pretty continuous vibration to let air escape. Seemed pretty impractical.
 
If boiling water takes much of the oxygen out, I would suggest boiling the water and cooling it rapidly. Probably distilling the water to take out anything in there would be best, but really how much time and money do you want to spend?
 
Boerderij_Kabouter said:
Yeah, it is tough... RO, boiled then into a really cold freezer with some tin foil over the top. You won't get perfect stuff at home. Another thing that can help is to let them freeze a bit, then break the top layer of ice with a pick. I mostly isn't worth it. Anyone who knows enough about cocktails to care will be impressed with what you have.

Do you have molds?

Also, we should probably hang out sometime... what are you mixing?
Click to expand...

i have the basic silicone "perfect cube" trays

what about double freezing? boiling - > freezing -> boiling again -> freezing?

been mixing up a few things. its just like beer i guess....in a span of 2-3 months the number of rums and bitters I owned both went from 1 to 8, lol.

one of my favorites has been a Gin Basil Smash:

2 oz. gin
3/4 oz. fresh lemon juice
3/4 oz. simple syrup
1 bunch fresh basil
basil leaf, for garnish

muddle lemon juice, syrup, basil. add ice and gin, shake, double-strain to lowball glass with fresh ice.


or a Fall of Temperance, from the guys who own Bittercube:

1.5 oz. good quality White Rum (meh, i use Bacardi and the drink is fantastic)
.5 oz. Blackstrap Rum (Cruzan Blackstrap - this stuff is awesome straight up - and cheap!)
.75 oz Fresh Lime Juice
.75 oz. Simple Syrup
13 drops Bittercube Jamaican Bitters #1

shake all, strain to chilled cocktail glass. Float 7 drops Bittercube Blackstrap bitters

I recently picked up some pimento dram. Haven't tried making any yet. I've sucessfully made Falernum, and orgeat, altho my orgeat is brown cause i didn't bother peeling almonds, lol. been making a bunch of tiki drinks, Jet Pilot being one of my favorites. also the Nui Nui. good stuff.
 
Seems like the bubbles would be caused by the skim of ice on the surface trapping the bubbles as they form. Maybe if you could freeze one side first, and allow it to freeze in one direction (up), it would allow the bubble to escape?

Maybe do a partial freeze, then blowtorch the tops until the bubble is free, then freeze some more, so on.

So, maybe I'm not a cocktail EAC (in fact I will admit to being VERY ignorant about them) but I can't think why a few bubbles in a drink would make any difference at all. This sounds like a serious study on wasting time.
 
Homercidal said:
Seems like the bubbles would be caused by the skim of ice on the surface trapping the bubbles as they form. Maybe if you could freeze one side first, and allow it to freeze in one direction (up), it would allow the bubble to escape?

Maybe do a partial freeze, then blowtorch the tops until the bubble is free, then freeze some more, so on.

So, maybe I'm not a cocktail EAC (in fact I will admit to being VERY ignorant about them) but I can't think why a few bubbles in a drink would make any difference at all. This sounds like a serious study on wasting time.
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man, i'm really surprised by all the "waste of time comments" from this crowd!

how many threads are there about poor head retention? filtering/cold crashing/clearing? dialing in color? equally a "waste of time".

the ice already seems to freeze from the bottom up. and that's where the bubbles form, there's this little cloudy nucleus at the bottom and then they actually get like compressed into "bubble lines" that start from the bottom and run to the top. kind of weird
 
I don't know. I've already admitted a lack of knowledge about mixed drinks. But with head retention, that's a very subjective characteristic. Some beers don't have very good head retention. Plus, it's not a hard thing to accomplish.

Similarly, there are some beers that don't suffer from being cloudy, namely, wheat beers or IIPAs with tons of dry hop. But they are supposed to be drank young. Cloudy beer usually means lots of proteins that don't age well.

Most of the stuff we work on is related to the general public's expectations after years and years of Light Lager conditioning.

So just what does perfectly clear ice give to the drinker?
 
Homercidal said:
So just what does perfectly clear ice give to the drinker?
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the same thing a perfectly clear helles gives the drinker. and, let me calibrate a little - i'm not talking a few bubbles, there's a cloud at the bottom and a good number of vertical bubbles.

Revvy said:
This is the kinda useless yet intriguing stuff that I love....:)

Have you seen this? A Homemade Giant, Crystal Clear Ice Cube Tray

Making Clear Ice by Releasing Trapped Air

This guy seems obsessed with it as well.
Click to expand...

great links! thanks!
 
I remember reading something a long time ago about this. It took a multiple boil approach. You take distilled water and boil it for a few minutes, then let it cool all the way and boil it again. let it cool all the way and boil it one more time. Then slowly pour the water into whatever you are freezing it in, carefully, not to add any more air to it, freeze!
 
I can't believe I thought perfect ice cubes were OCD back in 2011.. This is EXACTLY the kind of useless activity that I am looking to get into lately.
 
budice40.jpg
 

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