How to Cocktail: Learn Exactly How to Make Practically Clear Ice
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- Опубликовано: 9 дек 2019
- You know how fancy restaurants put beautifully clear ice cubes in their cocktails? Joe teaches you exactly how you can make crystal clear ice cubes at home for restaurant quality cocktails.
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I source the clear ice for my cocktails from a glacier high in the Andes Mountains. I have my peon, Juan, and his son Fernando, climb up Mt. Guadalupe twice a year to gather ice for my well-stocked bar. I insist on only the best.
I strain some swamp water from out the back and put it in my old mother’s freezer from 1976
I've had ice harvested from a mountain by this one guy and it was great
@@rustyshackelford3590 No joke, but with a directional freezing clear ice mold, ice made from dirty swamp water could actually be perfectly clear and almost devoid of impurities. Ice samples from ponds and lakes tend to have less than 1% the impurities of the water underneath.
@@rustyshackelford3590 This is reminding me of *Baldrick's 'coffee'* in _Blackadder Goes Forth._ Which - if you're not yet initiated - is brilliantly funny. 😬☕
Of four videos I've watched about making clear ice, this one is the best one because I think boiling my purified water in a tea kettle is so easy. I like the way that you melt off the cloudy end of the ice. Thank you.
When you want to be better than everyone else.
EFFIN GENIUS
Nice
Thanks.
I did my first recipe from the book this past weekend. " The Sangria" It was so good, thanks ATK.
Out of context, the job title “Senior Editor, Books” seems like a fake job title!🤣
People bother to do that because they want the perfect cocktail and are willing to do what they must to achieve that.
Boiling water before freezing it does absolutely nothing toward making clear cubes. You have to freeze the cubes from one side, thereby forcing and bubbles out of to one side of the cube.
Smart. Quite smart
Boiling does nothing. Find a round plastic bottle like Smart Water that fits into a Yeti cup. Fill 3+" above the lip. As it freezes it pushes all the bubbles to the bottom. Cut off the bottom done. Easy.
Yeah it's kinda pointless with clear ice, but it does look better and I want it if it's not too much trouble. So this method used items you should already have. You don't need as much space in the freezer as the box needed. You also don't need to cut the ice. It shouldn't take to much time either if you use a kettle. The scraping thing is completely unnecessary though. That part will melt off in seconds when it's in the glass? Anyways I think this looks like a great convenient method.
How about a review on portable ice machines ????
My grandmother's ice cubes had vertical lines in them as if she was using carbonated water (she wasn't) and the bubbles froze as they rose. The cubes weren't hazy, that I recall. Any ideas how to replicate this?
Did her ice tray have a lid?
Lately I've been obsessed with the clear ice a coffee shop I go to uses on all cold drinks. They have those parallel bubbles you mention and I feel they decorate the drink so well. It gives the feeling of a very intentional and thoughtful craft to even soft drinks.
Next time I'm there I'll ask what method they use and post here if I find something.
I do believe the lines will be due to the freezer temperature and might not be easily replicable. You can see the ice on thumbnail of this video has some of them in the corners. They might just accidentally happen.
“what do you do? you BURN IT OFF”🤣
Would a ceramic baking dish work as well as a glass one?
Yes. So would a cardboard box.
A lot of people commenting that they don't understand why anyone would bother.
A: Not everything is for you.
B: What's wrong with trying to do things as well as possible?
C: Most things we do in life are pointless, it doesn't make doing them a waste of time.
Joshua Pearce I like the way you think!
@@stewiecountry i'm with you. many people believe if we don't agree with them we are wrong. they need to get a grip. personally, i don't agree with many of his points, but, i did learn a few things. there is nothing wrong with hearing and listening to other people's opinion. that is my social rant for the day.
The chemical “impurities” are in such small concentrations that they have almost no effect on the clarity. The biggest contributor is the dissolved gasses, and you eliminate them simply by controlling the direction of the heat flow. This is why a cooler works, especially when you only let it freeze about halfway. Using purified water and boiling is fine, but my life is too short.
Sorry folks. You got SOO much wrong in this video. Boiling the water doesn't help (edit: to prevent bubble formation). When you boil water, dissolved gases escape, but as it cools, it absorbs gas again. All you accomplished was wasting some electricity/gas and making the whole process take longer. Didn't you bother to test your method against a control? If you make two identical batches, one with room temperature water and one with boiled water, you'll see there's no consistent difference.
I'm also skeptical of your explanation of "pushing down impurities." The cracking and bubbling in ordinary ice happens with both tap water and distilled water, which contains no impurities whatsoever. Again, you didn't bother to test that?? I'm pretty sure it's about how water expands while freezing, not impurities.
I'm really disappointed in this video. I'm used to your channel producing high quality well-researched topics. Why did you just let this bozo spout a bunch of nonsense without testing any of his claims?
Boiling can help if you have shitty tap water, for example. And it won't reabsorb gases instantly, so that can still help.
@@GamesFromSpace how exactly would boiling tap water improve its taste? If you boil away some of the water, the result is a higher concentration of dissolved minerals, not lower. Yes, the absorption of gasses is pretty immediate. Unless you plan to carry out this operation inside a vacuum chamber, boiling it has very little effect. I know because I tried. A few years ago Cocktail Chemistry did a video on this and I was surprised that he said boiling the water didn't do much. I was surprised because I had been believing this myth. So I put boiled water and regular water in ice cube trays and froze them. They came out identically. If you follow Cocktail Chemistry's instructions there's no need for boiling. You can get completely perfectly clear ice without all this fuss. ruclips.net/video/bUHcCHbgX_o/видео.html
Of course this method's advantage is you don't need to cut the ice yourself. If that's what you want, then these instructions are fine. But you can skip the boiling and use Cocktail Chemistry's advice: take them out BEFORE they finish freezing, because that's when you get bubble and crack formation. No need to melt away one side if you take it out on time.
Lmao edit for "ABSORPTION" not "abortion" hahahaha
@@d.lawrencemiller5755 I don't know about your tap water, but mine smells like pool water unless I boil it or leave it out for a day or two. While you concentrate *some* impurities by boiling it, you're not boiling the water long enough for much of it to evaporate.
@@GamesFromSpace Ah. Then our tap water must be very similar. We have a water softener system to remove some of the mineral, but the choline taste is still there. Yes, I think you're right that both boiling and doing nothing for a long time can disappate dissolved chlorine. But! It's not going to prevent the formation of bubbles in ice. Unless you perform the operation in a vacuum, the water will still contain lots of dissolved gasses. That's the issue that directional freezing aims to solve.
@@d.lawrencemiller5755 I agree that boiling won't solve all the problem (because I also tried it, from the same video you saw), I was only saying that it's not completely useless: Not all the contaminants in water will be solids, or even normal components of air.
FWIW, I've also tried directional freezing, and it wasn't any better. And distilled water. I think there are a lot of variable at play, probably including the freezer temperature.
(Now I have to try freezing at as warm a temperature as possible, then chilling further. And perhaps boiling and freezing it in a sealed container, since vacuum would be overkill.)
You can't actually get fluoride out of water unless you use a reverse osmosis water filtration system.
Directional freezing goes a long way as it is.
Distilled water doesn't contain fluoride.
He specifically mentions to use _distilled_ water at 1:55, when it's also clearly written on the screen.
Distilled water contains neither fluoride nor chlorine as those are water additives, added by municipal treatment works.
Did we watch the same video?! 😆🥃
"Why would you do that?" - Because it's fun and looks cool
"You shouldn't drink whiskey like that" - There are few things more pathetic than caring how other people enjoy things
"I just wasted x minutes watching this" - You're on RUclips, isn't that what you came here to do?
Seriously, children, grow the fudge up.
The whiskey tribe motto “Good whiskey is whiskey you like to drink and the way you like to drink it”
Mud puddles freeze with clear ice on top!!!!
I'll give you the same tip you use if you own aquariums and need to add water. Take a gallon of water (or the quantity you like) and let it sit for 24 hours. The gasses and chlorine leach out. It is now safe to add to the aquarium or make ice cubes and they will be clear and taste better.
However hard you try, you won't get enough air out of your water to freeze it clear in a regular ice cube tray.
The center of my ice is always filled with bubbles.
Cloudy ice is easier and quicker!
You don't need any sort of special equipment to make clear ice. All you need is water, a freezer and a fairly large tupperware container.
The key to making clear ice without special equipment or water is extremely precise timing. You want to fill the tupperware with water and put it in the freezer long enough for the outer layers of ice to freeze and push the impurities to the center, but not long enough for the dirty water in the center to freeze. It's the same principal at work in the cooler but instead of the contamination being isolated to the bottom, the isolation is isolated to the center. Then you simply remove the tupperware from the freezer. Wait five minutes and the ice should self release from the container. Cut it in half to allow the dirty water in the center to drain out and you should be left with two halves you can cut down to more manageable sizes.
In summary. Using the tupperware you're going to make one gigantic ice cube but remove it before the impure center has a chance to freeze. Drain the impure water core and cut down the frozen clear ice.
Timing doesn't matter, insulate from below so it freezes from the top down. There are loads of molds available that do all this with a reservoir at the bottom for the last ice to form, so you can easily separate the two.
Somehow this man made me excited to learn about clear ice. Bravo!
A quick comment for those asking "why bother?" There are two things that ruin whiskey: 1) air, 2) too much water. Milky ice melts much more quickly, and as it does, it releases those trapped gases straight into the spirit, actually making it stale. For that reason alone, clear ice is worthwhile. But the presenter does not address the fact that whatever impurities are there will still be trapped in the tray, and therefore in the ice.
Clear ice is actually much purer. It's called fractional freezing, and it's how extremely strong beers are made, although there the point is concentrating the impurities in the liquid phase.
I prefer cloudy ice cubes, they crunch so nicely when chewed. The cloudier the better in my opinion. I might be the odd one out though, I’ve had a thing for chomping cloudy ice cubes for many years.
I'd never be so OCD. After 2 bourbons, dilligaf?
This does not work at all. I have the exact same casserole dish and silicon ice cube trays. I tried boiled water. Cold water. Room temp water. Water that sat out to off gas before placing it in the freezer. Back of the freezer. Front of the freezer. Also they take a lot longer to freeze. Cloudy. Partially clear. Crystals suspended in the cubes. Air bubbles. Partially frozen. Not replicable. I call shenanigans.
I like a Bloody Mary l can read through......
Have you ever tasted distilled water? Try it. It tastes terrible. I’d never put in in a drink.
....but who would drink good whiskey with ice?
nice change, British touch and aproach for starters...
At most; I'd add a few little bits of ice to a good whiskey...plus this seems like way too much effort, nice to know how to do it, though.
Also bonus points for this vid being new content rather that reuploads that they have been spamming recently.
Too much effort to boil water before pouring into ice trays?
@@amc78 Leaving aside the gross energy waste of boiling water to just freeze it.
You should watch the vid again and pay attention this time....they do alot more than just "boil water before pouring into ice trays".
The ice cubes from this method are too small. If you want a large cube for a lowball glass, ala the modern presentation of an Old Fashioned, this method does not work. Plus boiling water does nothing for directional freezing.
I agree with those who said this was a poor video. Especially with the staging of the “special chair and lamp”. ATK doesn’t usually seem so pretentious. Or lacking in science.
I'd rather save some time and just make regular ice.
Water, ice, salt, aye
It ain't never gonna freeze cuz it's boiled, it's boiled, it's boiled
Clueless.
Ice sculptures, which are clear, are made by pouring boiling water into a mold and freezing it right away. Same for cubes. Freeze them HOT.
That's not exactly true. To freeze water into clear ice, the water needs to keep flowing or it needs to freeze top down. Typical large scale methods is with something called a cline bell. Look it up.
ATK is scraping the bottom of the barrel!
Just use distilled water.....problem solved.
So why the dish towels under the cube trays? Unlike any ATK video I’ve ever seen.....lower standard of quality.
Insulation so the ice freezes top-down instead of from the sides, like in the cooler.
Good science--- but sad considering the “reason” you needed the clear ice.
The ice tray is made of silicone, pronounced "SILLY CONE". The thing you said is silicon, which is what sand is made of.
If we're going to split hairs, sand is made from silica (silicon dioxide), not silicon.
Silicon is what transistors are made from.
Fuku
I’d rather watch paint dry.
I don't understand why you're doing these alcohol videos, ATK. You already have a good formula -- stick with that instead of trying to look "cool."
Who would bother to do that
The sort of person that would search for, and watch, this video. Is that too difficult for you? …but then, putting a question mark at the end of a question is too difficult for you.
@@jimw6659 shut up you nerd
Alcoholic geek🤭🤭
I mean seriously 😂
You're not supposed to drink whisky with ice. It should be imbibed at room temp.
You should drink the whisky you like the way you like to drink it. If that is with ice, so cold and slightly diluted, clear ice might be a thing you want, not just easthetically, but because it doesn't melt as quickly, thus giving you a longer time in whatever is your sweetspot for dilution while maintaining that temperature.
@@Quintinohthree Well, you can drink whisky with ice if you prefer, however, whisky is fragile and the low temperature of ice changes the chemical properties of it in a way that reduces the full flavor.
@@A_Random_Person27 Maybe you want that. That's alright and you're a snob if you tell people they can't.
@@Quintinohthree I literally said, and I quote, "You should drink the whisky you like the way you like to drink it." How do you go from what I said to misunderstanding it as "you're a snob if you tell people they can't."?
@@A_Random_Person27 1) That's not a quote, that's a paraphrase, and that matters.
2) Following the much weaker statement "You can drink whisky with ice if you prefer", which says nothing about all the other also acceptable ways to drink whisky, with "however" weakens it to the point of meaninglessness.
We'll leave it there. It doesn't just matter what you want to say, it also matters how you say it.
That was a waste of three minutes of my time
Wow, it took you 28 seconds to type 10 words?!? o^O At least you saved time by leaving off the period. Good job! ;)
Wrong
The cloudy ice comes from density changes as water cools to freezing. Go back to high school chemistry!!!!!
No, it doesn't. If that was true, lakes wouldn't freeze clear but cloudy.
1st.
Wow just how many drunks work at ATK anyway?
What a huge, huge waste of time.