Ice Ice Baby - How to Make Perfect Ice

Recently I was served a really great drink at a bar. Top shelf scotch. Had it a 1,000 times before. But this time it was different. Was I in a better mood? Taste-buds more receptive? Temperature of the whiskey? The glass? The moment? It took me a minute, but then I figured it out.


It was the ice.

The world's best bartenders are as particular about ice as they are about spirits: They use triple-filtered water and match cube sizes to particular drinks for proper dilution. While this seems obsessive, it can mean the difference between a great drink and a merely good one. If you don't think water affects taste, crack open a cube of ice-machine ice with an ice-pick and take a whiff of the cloudy center: That sour chlorine aroma can undermine your best mixological efforts.

The shape of the ice is important too - those ridiculous semi-circle cubes your freezer pump out are usually half hollow (melting too quickly and watering down your drink) and their shape encourages them to cling to the side of your glass - usually sliding down your throat while you drink, and killing you instantly. (Perhaps an over-dramatization) 

Here are three ways to pair the perfect drink with the perfect ice. In each case, use the ice within a day or so—that is, before that frozen pizza imparts a pepperoni note to your gimlet. You will not that like my bartender did, you need to master the use of an ice-pick to make good cubes. In addition, in order to get clear ice cubes (the most important trait of all!!) you need to use distilled water, then boil it, then freeze it into the pans as mentioned. The distilled water has few impurities and the boiling will remove as much oxygen as possible - leaving you with pure, clear, tasteless ice.

• Scotch on the Rocks: Freeze water in a 3-inch-high metal pan. Use an ice pick to break into slow-melting 3-inch cubes.
• Shaken Cocktails: Make ice with filtered or bottled water in standard ice-cube trays.
• Stirred Cocktails: Freeze filtered or bottled water in a 2-inch-high metal pan. Use an ice pick and mallet to break into rough 2-inch cubes. Eight of these will properly dilute and chill a Martini in about 30 stirs.

Ice balls are used in high-end bars and hotels in Japan, and learning the technique is part of training for Japanese bartenders, who carve the ice balls from larger ice blocks by hand. These balls are typically used for high end liquor sipping, and are about 1.5 times the size of a golf-ball - 1 per drink please. To see a video of the process, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiZDsvrGZAo. Luckily a quick internet search reveals cheap Japanese ice ball molds that you can buy and dispense with the hand carving.


For parties I often buy a block of ice and set that into a small tub and pick away at that. Costs a few bucks, but store bought ice from a water or ice store is usually from distilled water and pretty clear if you don't want to go through the trouble of "cooking" you own.


There you have it - ice in all it's glory, brought to you by a Canadian who has seen a ton of it. From curling to hockey, we know ice! Especially with Macallan 12 Scotch.