More on How to Make Clear Ice

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When I crafted a casual blog post on how to make clear ice, on Monday, I had no idea that I was stepping into one of the most divisive topics in contemporary bartending.

Thankfully booze journalist Camper English has done my work for me and carefully tested every clear ice making method and documented the results in painstaking detail on his entertaining and enlightening blog Alcademics. The winning method he suggests is the one I wrote about: freezing ice in a cooler (also known as “directional freezing”). The distilled water and hot water methods don’t work, according to English.

I also learned that the enigmatic David Rees (author of a book on sharpening pencils!), and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, did a whole National Geographic special on ice that includes a segment on making clear ice.

And did you know that clear ice sometimes happens naturally? Behold this viral YouTube hit, “Walking on beautiful clean ice in Slovakian Mountains:”

Lastly, I want to leave you with one of the most satisfying videos I’ve ever watched, Tokyo bartender Hidetsugu Ueno carving ice into diamond shapes (note the use of what I think is a soba noodle knife for the initial ice cutting):

Having a bad day? Just watch that video ten times and you’ll calm right down.

And a correction to my original post: it is both air bubbles and impurities that cause cloudy ice, not just minerals in the water.