One thing I was not prepared for when I started my Youtube journey was just how lazy the home bartender is. And yes. I’m looking directly at you and calling you lazy, and no, I don’t feel bad about it. Maybe I wouldn’t call you lazy if I didn’t receive a near-constant stream of emails inquiring about how someone can get the same professional result by cutting corners on just about every aspect of drink making. And maybe it shouldn’t surprise me so much; I mean, the very concept of Happy Hour is firmly embedded into the very concept of drinking. Drinking is supposed to be for relaxing and fun and shouldn’t in itself be work, right? WRONG! Just as there is no Chilling without dilution, professional-quality drinks take time and effort. And the vast majority of people don’t want to be bothered. It’s the reason why bars will never go out of business. Because they’re willing to do what many won’t. But you know what? For those of you who ARE willing to put forth the effort, it is always worth it. Always. And this article is for you.

The fact is, executing a balanced recipe is only half the battle. Presentation is just as, if not more important than the contents of the drink itself. If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a hundred times: A mediocre glass that looks like a million bucks will be received better than a fantastic drink that looks mediocre. We drink (just as we eat) with our eyes first, so presenting your cocktail is just as crucial as plating a dish in a fine dining restaurant. And one of the easiest ways to start upping your cocktail game is with custom-cut clear ice.

But Why Should I Bother?

Aside from what I have already mentioned about making your cocktail look good, there are a few reasons why using clear ice is better. Using big rocks of Ice, the increased surface area leads to less dilution of your drink. Now, although dilution in a glass is a good thing, too much will wreck your drink, so the idea here is to keep it in balance. Big rocks of Ice will help you do this. Also, using clear ice means you’ve taken the impurities, air bubbles, and gasses out of your ice, so not only does it melt slower, and not only is it pretty to look at, but the ice is also denser than its cloudy counterpart and you won’t be putting any of the water’s impurities into your drink.

As a side note: Making transparent spheres is the way to go for drinking spirits on the rocks. Spherical Ice will leave less ice exposed to the air than a square or rectangle, resulting in less dilution over time. 

How To Make Clear Ice – The Basic Theory

Clear Ice has been around a Long long time. Back in the 19th century people would go down to the lake and cut a cylinder of ice, and the middle portion of ice was completely clear. This is due to a process called directional freezing. Directional Freezing is the process of freezing ice from the top down. The sides of the freezing vessel (in this case a lake) are insulated and the top is exposed to the air. This forces the water to freeze from the top down. When water freezes, the pure water freezes first and the impurities and gasses freeze last. So as the water slowly freezes it pushes the impurities to the bottom of the ice, giving you a good portion of perfectly clear ice.

The at home directional freezing method was first created by a Spirits Writer named Camper English Back in 2009. His method uses a cooler with the lid removed to mimic how water in a lake freezes. This is the cheapest and most reliable way to get clear ice at home and you know what? It’s no more difficult than freezing cubes in a tray. Sure, you’ll have to cut the ice yourself, but it’s well worth the effort. Your cocktails will thank you for it.

THE METHOD – HOW TO FREEZE CLEAR ICE

Ok, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how to do this. It is pretty simple and only takes a few minutes. What you’re going to want to do is obtain for yourself a small cooler. I tend to use the Coleman FlipLid Personal 5 Liter Cooler. It’s small enough not to take up a considerable amount of space in your freezer, and you can get around five nice rocks for Old Fashioneds, depending on how you cut it. Camper English recommends the Igloo Legend 12, which is slightly larger, holding 9 quarts (or 8.517 Liters). It’s going to be a little larger, but you’ll get more ice. Igloo also makes a 5 quart Cooler (4.73 Liters) designed to hold six cans.

Once you have your cooler, you need to fill it with water and put it into the freezer. There has been much made about what type of water you should use to make ice, and there is much misinformation on this subject. Let me be clear: it does not matter what kind of water you use to make clear ice (as far as how the method works).

Even if you use Tap Water, the process will work just fine. I think that most of us, because we will be consuming a portion of the water contained in the ice, would opt for filtered water because you don’t want a ton of guck in your ice, but it’s up to you; the process will work fine regardless of whether you use distilled, purified, ionized water. It doesn’t matter. One thing to consider before you start is your freezer temperature. 

If your freezer is set to a very very low temp, it is possible to freeze the water too quickly, and the process won’t work. So make sure the temp of your freezer is Close to 0 degrees Celsius (32 Fahrenheit). If it’s a bit lower, it won’t matter, and unless you have a fancy freezer like a Sub Zero or Thermadore, you probably won’t have to do much with the temp, but if you do, make sure it isn’t set to -17 degrees Celsius or something.

Now that we got that worked out and the ice is freezing, you have a decision to make. There are two methods you can follow. The first is to allow your block ice to freeze for 24 hours. If you do this, the block will only freeze halfway, so you’ll have a nice section of clear ice and at the rest of the block will be a skeleton filled with water. You’ll have to cut and drain this water, which is convenient because it serves to temper the block for easy cutting, but the drawback here is that you will get a very thin piece of ice, so your Old Fashioned rocks will be on the smaller side. And I like huge Old Fashioned glasses and Ice cubes, so this is not the way to go for me.

The other method allows the block to freeze for a full 48 hours. This will enable the block to freeze completely, and you will have a bunch of cloudy ice at the bottom of the block. The upside to this is that you get more clear ice. The downside is you’ve got to process a much larger block, and if you’re not careful, you could lose a bunch of ice to fracturing. This leads me to the next section….

HOW TO CUT YOUR ICE

Now is the time to cut all those extraordinary, fancy shapes for your cocktails—Rocks, Collins Spears, Large Format Shaking Ice, Etc. Without making too much of it, cutting ice is an art, and you will have to be patient with yourself while you learn.

First and foremost, you’re going to want to make sure you temper your ice. Ice just out of the freezer is very brittle, and if you try and cut it, it’ll fracture off into pieces and not give you the shapes you want. So make sure the ice has sweat and is beginning to melt. Once this is done, you’ll want to cut from the middle of the ice. I’ve found this helps minimize fracturing and gives excellent clean cuts. I’ve also found that using a sharp serrated knife is the way to go; I’m not sure why, but you get better cuts than a non-serrated blade. If you have opted for the 24-hour method and have a small block,  ignore this last part and begin cutting as your block will already be tempered and ready to cut into shapes.

So that’s about it, there’s not much more to it. As you can see it’s almost as easy as freezing ice cube in an ice cube tray.

Do-It-Yourself Clear Ice Alternatives

If YouTube has taught me anything it’s that there are a lot of you who aren’t going to want to bother with the whole making ice yourself thing so here are a few companies who make some great clear ice molds.

GHOST ICE

The Ghost Ice System was created in 2020 by Los Angeles bartender Tony Gonzales. He did not create the method, I’ve seen this method employed in Jerry-Rigged systems all over the internet over the past few years but he was the first one to make a commercially available one for us to buy at home. The system is very straightforward employing the exact technique I write about in this article, only with the addition of an ice mold sunk into the cooler. He has two systems one made for commercial us tin bars and restaurants and the other made for home use. The system make very good perfectly clear ice blocks and they’re some of the biggest blocks I’ve seen to date. Both systems are a little steep in price but you do get either 48 (commercial) or 12 (home system) blocks and it will begin paying for itself by saving you time and money in no time.

WINTERSMITHS

I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Wintersmiths system but have yet to try it myself. Again it’s a bit more expensive than some of the others out there, the Ice Chest comes with molds for Spheres but you can buy a separate blocks mold separately. At 120 bucks, it’s a bit steep for a system that only makes four spheres or cubes, but it does make perfectly clear ice.