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Cocktail Ice


plunk

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Cool topic :lol:

This is interesting...

IN Chicago, a bar named Rocks uses a giant rock as its logo. "Our signature is a 2-inch-by-2-inch ice cube," says co-owner George Manta. "My partner and I came up with the name Rocks, then the ice cube as a symbol, and we decided to have big cubes.

I think our fearless leader might have a highly-actionable tort on his hands :o

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Audrey Saunders (Pegu Club) also tackled this topic last year in a concise article about cocktail ice in volume two of Mixologist: the Journal of the American Cocktail. In addition to the proper use of cubed/cracked/crushed ice, she discusses the Japanese ice balls (too big for individual drinks), the significance of the proper amount of dilution for cocktail type (and the perils of pre-freezing ingredients), and using boiled water for ice at home in lieu of a commercial clear ice machine like the Kold Draft.

To the best of my knowledge, the ice barware and furniture mentioned at the end of the article originated with the famous Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, and specifically its Absolut vodka bar. Sometime around a dozen years ago Absolut commissioned a custom mold to cast shot glasses out of ice. I'd be surprised if ice shot glasses hadn't been attempted before, but this time it featured prominently in their advertising. A couple years later they released a consumer version of the molds, for a rather unreasonable amount iirc. Inexpensive molds are now widely available, but don't look anywhere as substantial as the large, squared-off Absolut design.

On a related note, water connoisseurs have several options for creating ice cubes with terroir :o . For a while, you could buy Chapeltown Glenlivet spring water prepackaged in sealed, disposable ice trays, under the Scotch Rocks brand. The entire concept seems unnecessary to me (chilling Scotch?!) but it's out there, if you'd prefer not to contaminate your tipple with with DelMarVa's finest. In a similar vein, Woodford Reserve bottles their own Kentucky limestone water in handy half-liter bottles for their on-site restaurant...I suppose you could cast that into cubes just as well for whiskey cocktails.

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Funny you should mention Scotch whisky.

This past summer, I set up one of my most enthusiastic whisky customers with a tour of Bruichladdich and he had a fantastic visit with master distiller Jim McEwan. One fun thing that McEwan did was, he took an empty whisky bottle and filled it up for my customer with burn water. It looks like weak whisky and smells like whisky, and my customer is now thoroughly spoiled by it, as it is the ideal water to use when bringing out the nose in a single malt, or cutting a cask-strength dram just enough to make it a bit smoother.

I'm tellin' ya, there's a market for that stuff, but I wonder if it could ever satisfy the Food & Drug Administration, or A.T.F. to allow it to be sold in the U.S.A.

Perhaps I should set up a mail-order burn water and ice cube concern? :o

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I don't have an ice grinder, but would like to make some mint juleps for the Derby. Any ideas on how to turn regular ice cubes into crushed little bits without turning them into water? Any businesses in the NoVa area that sell crushed ice? Thanks!

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I don't have an ice grinder, but would like to make some mint juleps for the Derby. Any ideas on how to turn regular ice cubes into crushed little bits without turning them into water? Any businesses in the NoVa area that sell crushed ice? Thanks!

Take a clean kitchen towel, wrap ice cubes in it, bang it on the floor a few times. Voilà! Crushed ice.

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Nope. Whack it on the floor a few times and put it right in the glass.

Thanks.

I don't have any pewter mugs, but I do have copper mugs that we use for Mules. A decent substitute, or blashphemy?

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The recent Bon Appetit has an article on Tokyo, The Cocktail Capital of the World. One of the pictures show the hand carved ice at Star Bar. A wee bit excessive, no?

The charm of Tokyo is that the outwardly pudique attitude of the inhabitants is combined with an utter disregard for what we would consider excessive--at least when it comes to food and drink. In other areas I of course have no idea.

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Do you mean something like this?

Interesting, but not the same. These are small crystal clear cubes, at least that is what they appear to be as they are showing a full ice bucket. They also have a picture of a diamond (think ring) cut from Ueno.

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There is a machine out there on the market now, by an asian company that makes a perfect ice cube for scotch that melts down at the right rate of dilution and chill for the scotch, or fine distilled spirits enthusiast. THIS ASIAN MACHINE is close to the product I am speaking of but not exactly the right one. Craft uses the product in its Bar's if that helps anyone :lol:

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There is a machine out there on the market now, by an asian company that makes a perfect ice cube for scotch that melts down at the right rate of dilution and chill for the scotch, or fine distilled spirits enthusiast. THIS ASIAN MACHINE is close to the product I am speaking of but not exactly the right one. Craft uses the product in its Bar's if that helps anyone :lol:

For something priced a bit more reasonably:

http://www.momastore.org/museum/moma/Produ...451_10001_27651

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