Ice Cutting and Molds! - what is the proper ice?

[Music] hello welcome back friends it's anders today slippery we're talking ice lately i've received some questions regarding the ice that i use in my drinks like the old fashioned or the rusty nail where i'm serving with the ice and the ice i use for mixing like stirring and shaking so i figured i would just get it all over with in one go and we'll discuss everything the techniques that i use so i can explain why i do it the way that i do if you're new to the channel hit that subscribe button for more tips tips and recipes and let's make some ice [Music] first and foremost whenever making ice always use clean filtered water think about the water you want to drink because about 30 to 40 percent of your cocktail is actually gonna be water that is melted from the ice that you're shaking or stirring with so always use good quality water now you have two types of ice you've got clear ice and cloudy ice and the cloudy ice is cloudy because it has small impurities mostly air pockets that get trapped in the freezing process so those small cubes they freeze fast and it just traps all the air pockets inside which makes it cloudy and it also makes that ice less dense so it's going to melt faster than the clear cube the clear ice is what most everybody strives for it's just aesthetically pleasing and it's going to melt slower because it's denser so it's going to dilute your cocktail slower now as far as which cube is better it all depends on context which brings me to mixing ice i actually have had a lot of questions about the ice that i mix with and i think that's a great question and i love that you guys are asking these questions because that just makes me feel like i don't know you're watching these videos and you're making cocktails on your own which is the whole idea mixing ice is the ice that i use to shake and stir a cocktail and at the bar we have a machine that makes perfect cubes that are crystal clear and it's wonderful it just looks good in a cocktail and the ice is really dense so it melts slowly but here at home i don't have the convenience of a commercial cocktail ice machine so this is what i use this is just a standard silicone ice mold and i pop it in the freezer and it works really quick and easy now the cubes are not going to be crystal clear but for me what's more important than the ice being clear is the fact that the ice is uniform this cube is going to melt the same rate that this cube will that this cube that that cube they're all going to melt around the same time so that gives me control which you want when it comes to dilution because proper dilution is gonna make a perfectly balanced cocktail so this is what i like it's quick and easy and you can make a lot of ice in a short amount of time i have two of these i plan on getting two more actually this one specifically comes with a little lid which is great because it protects the ice from other things in the freezer and you can stack the ice trays on top of each other now when you mix cocktails you're going to go through a lot of ice so you want a quick easy affordable way to make loads and loads of ice which this is what this does i also like that it's silicone because you can just pop out the ice like this i would like to say that i don't keep the ice in the silicone in the freezer for very long over time it can like take on some off flavors from the silicone but that's if you're leaving it in there for weeks at a time for me once it's frozen i like to pop it out put it in a bowl if i'm gonna use it right away to use my little scoop otherwise i throw it in a freezer bag and pull it out as needed when i was at the bar using the clear cubes and then i shifted and i started mixing more at home with these not so clear cubes there is a little learning curve that happens because these cubes melt at a different rate than the clear cubes so the first couple cocktails that i made the dilution was a little off so if you are having to go through this experience of figuring out your ice that's okay i do that too so yes the freezer tray some people might disagree with me because i know you gotta have beautiful clear cubes but uniform cubes that gives you control what we want is control so one quick note if you are at home and you have one of those ice machines in your freezer door as far as using that ice i don't like using that for mixing primarily because those freeze really fast so they're all cloudy which isn't terrible but you don't know when those cubes were made what's important is fresh ice now if that's your only option and you have the ice that your freezer makes just make sure you have a good filter so that the water that is making the ice is really good water as far as serving on rocks or a big cube that's where we get into the clear ice now as far as the large format clear cubes that i use i like to go with the directional freezing technique which is extremely simple and was developed by camper english about 10 11 12 years ago it's analog and easy and cheap to do in fact all we need is a mini cooler specifically this one by coleman and i've looked for other coolers that could do this but this is the best choice because the top comes completely off so with directional freezing what we do is we control how the cube freezes in the small cubes that have the cloudy little mass in the middle that's just because the air was all around that cube and it froze that cube quickly so it trapped all the impurities and air pockets right in the middle now if we can control where that cloudy mass goes then we can cut that off and just keep the crystal clear ice which is what this does because the top is exposed to the cold air but the sides and bottom are insulated so it's going to freeze from the top to the bottom so once it's all frozen at the bottom we'll have the cloudy bits that we can just get rid of and then we've got this big piece of clear ice that is just wonderful this is extremely scalable and it's all dependent on the size of your freezer at the bar we'd use this technique as well we would just use larger coolers where the top comes completely off because we have the space and we're dealing with volume if you have a walk-in freezer or you live in the arctic circle then get the biggest cooler you can and just set it outside and let it freeze but if you're like me and you just have a standard freezer at home you want a small one and this is a good size it's five quarts also comes in blue if you want to coordinate with your ice packs in your freezer but i went with red alright now i can show you how i turn this into this this is really cold and heavy okay before we do anything else you might want gloves because it will get very cold if not if you're going to be like me and use bare hands make sure you have clean hands because these ice cubes these beautiful ice creatures are going to go into your cocktail once you have your cooler this is going to be really easy you want to fill it with filtered water so good clean water and fill it up until there's about an inch of space at the top because the water is going to expand as it starts to freeze and you don't want it filled all the way to the top because then it's just going to spill over in your freezer so leave a little space on the top pop that right in your freezer and let time do its work a lot of people will say let this freeze for 24 hours because in one day that ice isn't going to freeze all the way through so you'll still have some on the bottom that's going to be just water and that's where all the air and the impurities are going to be so you can pop that out and drain the water now i've tried that before and in my experience it's a little difficult to get the timing just right maybe it was my freezer but one time i took it out and i only had a little band of clear ice so what i do is i let the thing freeze all the way through so it's going to take about 48 hours but that way even if i'm getting the cloudy bit at the bottom of my ice cube i know that i'm getting the most of the crystal clear ice once the ice is frozen take it out of the freezer and let it sit on the counter for about half an hour this is gonna do two things number one when it comes time to take the ice outside of the cooler it's just gonna pop right out when you turn it upside down but you're also tempering the ice right now which makes the eyes stronger so when it comes time to chip at it it's not going to shatter it's going to make a nice clean break once it's tempered then we can flip the cooler over onto a good even flat surface and let the ice pop out i like to have a double rocks glass beside me because that's where i'm going to put the ice when i'm done when i serve a drink this is the vessel it's going to be in so i like to customize each cube for this glass now obviously at this point you want to be sure that you've got a good solid foundation to chip your ice on you want to have in my case a giant bowl to catch the ice that i'm not going to use but if you want you could do it next to a sink you're also going to want either an ice pick or a serrated knife and then one or two dry towels because things are gonna start getting wet here pretty soon and you wanna keep your hands dry so have that handy i know that a lot of bartenders like to have a perfect cube for that you're gonna want the serrated knife the serrated knife you can score your cube so for this one i'm going to cut it in half first and i'm going to score with the knife just all the way around and you can set it where you want it to break and then just tap the knife and you're going to get a nice clean break to break it in half at this point once i cut it in half i like to break away the impurities so all that cloudy bit i'm gonna score all the way around and break that off and now this you could crush this ice and use it in a tiki drink if you want or you could just get rid of it in my case i'm just going to get rid of it so now i've got big clear cubes and what i want to do is break them up into smaller cubes personally i like kind of an irregular shape i just find it more interesting the organic shape and it makes every cocktail a little bit different from the other so it has its own identity that's just me aesthetically if you want the perfect cube then you should do the perfect cube i like the irregular shape and for that i use ice picks i've got two right here i've got the anvil pick and then the pitchfork pick today i'm going to use the pitchfork because that's just what i want to use i do go into further depth on these tools what's the name of that video i did a video on this it's about like how to up your game it's five cocktail tools anyway i talk about ice picks there so i'm not gonna talk about ice picks the only thing i will say is be very careful with this and the serrated knife there's sharp edges you're dealing with ice it can get slippery and it's cold and just please be careful that's the disclaimer okay let's break this up lightly tap and score that ice and then let it break on its own once we have all of our cubes we can go in and round off all the edges because those edges are going to melt pretty quickly so i like to have just kind of soft round edges and i don't care if there's like little bumps on this cube i'm not working for a perfect sphere i'm just doing a mini iceberg so i'm just gonna chip all the way around gonna see how the size fits in my glass when that cube's finished i just pop it right back into my little mini cooler and i'm gonna get a collection of these cubes when they're all done then you have a crystal clear cube on demand at this point you can do whatever you want with you can give this out to to friends here you want a cube ice is actually pretty simple it's important but it's simple remember controlling dilution makes you a good bartender whether you're behind a professional bar or at home so whatever ice you have get used to that ice if you like this video like and subscribe hit that notification bell to be notified the next time a video comes out and i will see you next time bye everybody [Music] you

Channel: Anders Erickson

Views: 304,256

Keywords: ice cutting and molds, what is the proper ice, ice cutting vs molds, proper ice for mixing, proper ice for mixing vs serving, what is proper ice, proper ice, proper ice for drinks, proper ice for mixing and cocktails, ice cutting for drinks, proper ice for cocktails, clear ice, ice to use, how to make clear ice, mixing ice vs serving ice, mixing vs serving ice, which ice to use, mixing vs serving, is cloudy ice okay, ice 101, cocktail ice, ice cube, big ice chunk

Id: iE1CkrUMztk

Length: 11min 45sec (705 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021