The Quick Take:

• Clear ice is better than ordinary ice for several reasons.
• It’s easy to make clear ice—try True Cubes.

Need more information? Read on.

Ice is so much more than frozen water.

Do you ever make cocktails “on the rocks” at home, or do you ever plunk an ice cube into your glass of wine? (I’ll pause while the gasps of feigned horror subside; come on, friends—ice in wine happens!)

If yes, then this post is for you. Let’s take a few minutes to think about why we use ice and what we expect of those cubes.

There’s clear ice and there’s ordinary ice. So what?

Ordinary ice is what you get from trays in your kitchen freezer or from its ice maker if yours has one. It has a characteristic, fuzzy white cloudiness in its center, because it freezes from the outside in, trapping the gases and particles your tap water contains—and not just your tap water, everyone’s tap water. Even the clearest well water in the world contains gases and particles, and (sorry to disappoint) so does distilled water, which some folks use in hope of making clearer ice. It helps, but it’s not the solution.

‘Clear’ ice has no cloudy, entrapped gases or particles because it’s made differently; we’ll come back to how you can make it. It virtually disappears when you use it in a cocktail.

Obviously, ice’s core mission is to chill our cocktails, but it’s more than a refrigerant.

Ice can and ideally should also be a visual enhancement to your beverage, especially when your drink is clear or translucent. Think of a gin and tonic, or a Manhattan on the rocks, or just a pour of your favorite straight liquor over ice. There’s a significant aesthetic difference between crystal clear ice, such as I hope you’ve been served in some good bars, and the cloudy ice we make at home. Drinks using clear ice are more beautiful, and I think we’d all agree that more beautiful drinks are more enjoyable.

Shaking or stirring a cocktail with ice adds an ounce or more of water to the typical drink (I checked!), and in a rocks drink the ice will continue adding water and its flavor until the last sip, so ice can also become a flavor component in our cocktails. That may be good if you added flavor to the ice on purpose, but more often it’s unintended and undesirable. How good is the water that went into that tray? How long has the ice been sitting open and unattended in your freezer? Ice evaporates gradually, and in ordinary ice that cloudy core becomes more and more of the flavor. And did you pile other things on top of your ice in the freezer? Half-thawed cartons of ice cream? Bloody steaks in their store packaging? Eeeew. Don’t do that! Ice tends to pick up flavors and odors from its environment, so regardless of ordinary or clear ice, keep it fresh, and keep it away from other things in the freezer. (I may or may not have learned this lesson from my mom’s freezer years ago.)

Returning to the matter of chilling our cocktails, clear ice is simply more dense than ordinary ice, because that cloudy mush of gas and particles in the middle of your ordinary ice cube lowers the density of the ice lattice and lowers the melting point. Therefore, clear ice melts more slowly and lasts longer than ordinary ice, so it won’t dilute your drink as much.

Bottom line: The ideal ice in a rocks cocktail is a single large hunk of slow-melting clear ice. Size matters, too. One large piece of clear ice melts more slowly than would several smaller pieces totaling the same volume, because it presents less surface area to the warming cocktail. That will chill the drink most effectively, with the least dilution, while looking elegant and beautiful.

Then how do you make clear ice?

While bars and restaurants often buy clear ice from vendors or own expensive ice-making machines, home mixologists can use remarkably simple devices and a minor bit of physics trickery to make all the clear ice they need, easily and affordably.

The principle is “directional freezing”—freezing water in an open, insulated vessel that allows normal freezing at the surface while slowing freezing from the sides and bottom. That forces gases and particles downward into still-unfrozen water, building a layer of clear ice at the surface until it’s thick enough to harvest and make beautiful ice for cocktails.

Look at an ordinary ice cube and you’ll see that the ice around its edges *is* perfectly clear; there was just no place for the gases and particles to go, so they wound up jammed together in the heart of the cube. Directional freezing gives the gases and particles an escape path.

Here’s a two-minute YouTube video that will give you the idea, demonstrating the “cooler method” of making clear ice—but as you view it, keep in mind that this is the hard way, and I’m about to show you an easier way. It’s worth understanding how directional freezing works:

But the cooler method is messy; try True Cubes.

I made clear ice for years using the cooler method. After a few batches, I got pretty good at containing the mess—and it is messy, as you saw in that video, between a couple of quarts of unfrozen water to drain and ice chips flying around as you cut the block of clear ice into useful sizes. But even after lots of practice, the cooler method remains messy. Also, it produces a lot of ice you’ll need to store; my cooler batches fill two or three one-gallon freezer bags. That’s fine if you have the freezer space, but not everyone does.

There is a better way now, and here it is. In a recent Whisky Advocate article, a bartender mentioned a device from True Cubes. “Device” is a bit of overstatement; it’s a small, purpose-built cooler with nested silicone molds—but it very cleverly applies directional freezing within a compact footprint and saves users a lot of time. I found it on Amazon’s website, bought it, tried it, and I love it. Not only does it eliminate the mess of the cooler method, but it also takes you straight to four perfect two-inch cubes of clear ice—no cutting needed—after less than 24 hours in the freezer (about 16 hours in mine). For $40-45, it’s a smart investment. Here’s how it works:

Are there any caveats? Only very minor points. Two-inch cubes are perfect for a double Old Fashioned or rocks glass, but you may need to split them for use in smaller glasses, and that’s simple. You’d just use the serrated knife technique demonstrated in that cooler method video above. True Cubes ice *may* have a few small bubbles around the edges, too, as the gases in the water attach to the surfaces of the mold—but I consider this acceptable for the added convenience. You can minimize those bubbles by filling the True Cubes device with very hot water (as noted in the video) and letting it sit out for a few hours after you fill it; that will allow most of the gases in the water to dissipate.

I quickly settled into a pattern of making two True Cubes batches on consecutive days, so I’m storing no more than eight cubes at a time, and then I put the device away until I need it again. Since I make more ‘up’ cocktails than rocks cocktails, eight cubes last me a couple of weeks or more.

Will I ever use ordinary ice again???

Well, yes; don’t throw away those trays or unplug your icemaker. Keep using your ordinary ice when you mix or shake your cocktails, but for serving and enjoying the outcome of your mixology magic, use clear ice.

And keep it away from those bloody steaks and your melty ice cream!

[Note: As of this posting date, True Cubes’ four-cube tray is backordered, but the company expects to resume shipping by the end of February. Also, I don’t represent True Cubes in any way and receive no commission or other consideration for reviewing its product. Thank you to True Cubes for permission to use its photos and videos.]

Just for fun, here’s another True Cubes video, and don’t we all wish this could happen in our home?