There's one ingredient that is common to almost every drink that gets passed over
the bar and usually makes up about a quarter of it, and yet often gets overlooked,
and that is ice.
Ice and cocktails go hand-in-hand and it's
believed to be one of the main reasons that cocktail culture took off so much
in the States. If you look at the original definition of the cocktail in
1806 it only mentions water, because ice just didn't exist on a commercial level,
but around the same time at the beginning of the 1800s a man named
Frederic Tudor started harvesting ice from glaciers in huge blocks and it was
actually delivered around the country by horse and carriage, and this is where we
start to see the rise of ostentatiously cold drinks like juleps and cobblers.
In fact during the gold rush in Australia ice was imported all the way from Canada
just so that people could show how wealthy they where by how frosty their
sherry cobbler was. By the mid-1800s the first ice machine was invented and we
have never looked back to room temperature drink since. So the big
question: Are bartenders trying to rip you off by putting lots of ice in your drink?
The short answer is absolutely not. The simplified long answer is the ice
keeps ice cold and keeps cold liquid cold, so the more of it there is
the colder and less diluted your drink will be. Asking for less ice just means that
you will get more mixture in your glass, and the whole thing will end up a watery
mess much faster. It has absolutely zero effect,
I repeat zero effect on how much booze is in there. This is also why drinks
which have been pre diluted, ie cocktails which have been stirred or shaken already
should be served on the biggest block of ice you can get your hands on,
as you just want the drink to remain cold and not dilute much more.
Which takes us onto shaking and stirring, both chill and dilute the cocktail.
But shaking does it faster and changes the texture at the same time,
hence why booze forward cocktails such as old fashions and
martinis should be stirred and fresh and spritzy cocktails such as daiquiris and
margaritas should be shaken. And hard. Either way the same goes as for mixed
drinks, the more ice the better, so cram as much in your shaker or mixing glass
as physically possible. As an industry we are in a glorious second Ice Age.
Bartenders really care about the ice going into your drinks. You might have
seen or used the beautiful big clear blocks of ice. They usually come from
specialized equipment which freezes massive blocks of ice from one end to
the other, meaning that all of the impurities get
forced out of the block rather than getting trapped in the middle and going cloudy,
A good way to achieve this on a budget is to fill a drinks cooler with water
and freeze it with the top off as it will freeze from the open end first
and so leave you with the cloudy part at the bottom, which you can just chop off
with a bread knife. This is obviously it not feasible for everyone, it's kind of
more of a bar situation, so the best way around that is to boil the water before
you freeze it so that it's as pure as possible before it's frozen and as a fun fact,
hot water actually freezes quicker than cold water anyway. To be perfectly
honest, unless the water where you live is particularly unpalatable or
you're freezing your ice in a freezer which is also host to particularly
strong smelling foods, I wouldn't stress too much about it in a home bar situation,
just invest in some 1 inch ice molds for shaking and stirring and big
blocks or balls for serving. And freeze way more than you think that you're
gonna need. And if in a pinch you can only get your hands on some party ice,
don't stress about it, just take that into consideration and stir or shake for
a little bit less time. So basically, size really does matter. For those of you that
want to have a little bit of a geek out, I've got some links to some more
scientific explanations below, but hopefully you'll all give this humble
ingredient the respect that it deserves from here on out. So now you know,
and keep watching it to see how to chill the perfect margarita.