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Ice is one of the most important parts of a cocktail, and while many people are perfectly happy with cloudy ice,
making clear ice is actually not that hard, not that expensive, and really adds a touch of elegance to the drink.
So today, I'm gonna teach you how to make a variety of different shapes of perfectly-clear ice.
These different shapes are more appropriate for different types of cocktails,
and uh, we'll make a couple cocktails to demonstrate that as well.
Now, there are some products on the market that are made for creating clear ice, but they're pretty expensive.
Really, all you're gonna need here is a small cooler with the lid taken off, a serrated knife, and some kind of hammer.
If you wanna make clear ice balls, you'll want a(n) ice ball mold and a shaker tin.
The technique we're gonna be using here is called "directional freezing".
So, when water freezes, the impurities actually form at the end of the freezing process.
So, by forcing the freezing to go from the top to the bottom,
we're able to separate the clear ice from the cloudiness.
And while using filtered or boiling water might help a little bit, it will not give you perfectly-clear ice.
So start by filling up the cooler.
Place it in the freezer and then forget about it for the next 24 hours or so.
The insulated sides of the cooler and the open top means that the freezing should happen from top to bottom,
and we actually don't want it to freeze all the way; that way we avoid any impurities from forming at all.
So you can see here that it only froze about halfway down.
Chip away at some of that shell that forms at the bottom and you'll be left with this clear ice block.
You can run it under some warm water to smooth out the edges.
So, we're gonna start by making some large ice cubes.
So take that serrated knife and cut a little slit, then take your mallet and gently hammer away.
Repeat the same process on that smaller block, and cut yourself a perfectly-square, clear ice cube.
As you cut these away, put them in a bag and throw them in the freezer.
Now let's cut some clear, long ice sticks. These are gonna be great for highball cocktails.
You should be able to get about four or five out of these big blocks of ice.
You can really get any shape of ice out of this ice block.
So it's up to you. If you wanna carve it up into smaller rocks, just hack away.
Now if you want an ice ball that is perfectly-clear and round, it can be a little bit more difficult,
but I'm gonna show you a neat trick here.
So fill up that little cooler as well as the shaker tin, and also fill up the ice ball mold to the top.
We're going to be using the exact same method of directional freezing,
so we need that to freeze from the top to the bottom, with the impurities being pushed out the bottom.
So what we're gonna do is turn that ice ball mold upside down and stick it on top of that shaker tin.
Now try not to let any bubbles inside of that ice ball mold and then place it in the cooler.
Let it freeze for the same amount of time, then remove the shaker tin and use the remaining ice block for carving up.
Again, the water should've frozen from the top to the bottom, and so when you pull out that ice ball mold
you should see that clear solid ice at the bottom; just chop that away.
So because you froze it upside-down, the water should've frozen down through that hole in the top of the ice ball mold...
Leaving you with a perfectly-clear and round ice ball.
This clear ice looks great in cocktails. I really love the ice sticks
Uh, they go great with a Tom Collins in a highball glass, so here we've got some lemon juice, some simple syrup, and some gin.
Top it off with a little club soda.
And one of my current favorite drinks is a bourbon maple Old Fashioned.
Just put a little bit of bourbon and mix that with some maple syrup.
Throw in some orange bitters,
some Angostura bitters,
and stir it up.
The dark, maple color of this Old Fashioned looks really beautiful against the big, clear ice ball.
And I totally understand that some people really don't care about how the ice looks; they really just see it as something to cool the cocktail down,
but I hope this video has shown how taking a little extra time to make it clear can really step up the presentation of the drink.
Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!
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Cheers!