If you think ice is insignificant, then you haven’t been paying attention to your booze, experts say.
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Building blocks for the perfect cocktail
The cold and hard truth is this: the most important component in your cocktail creations might very well be the thing you pay the least attention to — ice.
Casual drinkers probably don’t give a second thought to the frozen chunks bobbing in their highballs, but mixologists throughout the country are learning that the most important building block of a perfect cocktail is perfect ice.
When the partners of Houston’s Anvil were planning what has become the city’s premiere destination for top-shelf hooch, they invested about $15,000 in a top-quality ice machine (Kold-DraftQ, considered the Cadillac of ice makers by the country’s elite bartenders).
“It’s colder and harder and allows you to mix better,” said Kevin Floyd, one of Anvil’s owners. “It’s out-and-out better ice.”
The rocky road to better ice has been a long time coming, despite the fact that in-the-know cocktailians have preached the good-ice gospel for years. Now, at least in serious bars, they’re chipping away at quality ice.
“It’s a trend in the geeky bars, without a doubt. But it says a lot about where the profession is going,” said master mixologist Dale DeGroff, considered by many the father of modern bartending. “There’s a trend for different types of ice for different beverages.”
Serious cocktail bars now employ varieties of ice to match the glass or the alcohol or to aid in the proper construction of the drink. There’s chipped ice, cracked ice, shaved ice, ice balls and ice sticks. The Velvet Hour, a bar in Chicago, offers eight types of ice. Japanese whisky giant Suntory is advocating the use of an “ice ball” — a solid sphere of ice, 2 inches in diameter — to enjoy its Yamazaki Single Malt.
And then, of course, there’s the classic cube. In the case of Kold-Draft, it is a clear, cloudless 1¼ inch cube that is harder than other commercial ice, melts slower and so pure it will not distort the taste of liquor. In short, it is a flawless cube.
DeGroff said it’s the only ice he uses. As a career bartender he’s had it with the cheapie ice disks, hollow barrels and tiny cookie-cutter cubes that melt quickly and seem to be designed to fill the glass in order to make the drink look fuller.
Cheap ice, he said, “was the friend of the [bar] owner and enemy of the guest.”
Today, however, as cocktails have evolved as bespoke creations, quality ice plays a key role in bartending. “Ice serves so many purposes in a cocktail. In many ways, it is the most important ingredient in a cocktail,” said cocktail consultant Jonathan Pogash of TheCocktailGuru.com. “With the resurgence of the classic cocktail you have a throwback to the 19th century when they’d chip off a block of ice from frozen ponds.”
Thankfully we don’t have to turn to frozen ponds for good ice anymore. A good bar with a Kold-Draft machine will suffice. Bartenders like Anvil’s Floyd love their flawless cubes so much, they start talking about things such as the “velocity” of the ice in the shaker when they’re making a drink. “I even like the sound of good ice in a shaker,” he said, “It makes a different sound.”
Ah, the sound of two cubes clinking. If you think ice is insignificant, then you haven’t been paying attention to your booze, experts say. Ice makes all the difference in the flavor of the drink, said Danielle Eddy, spokeswoman for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade association representing American spirits makers.
“A friend said, ‘Sex in a relationship means nothing unless it’s bad — then it’s everything.’ How does that relate to ice? If it’s good, it means nothing. But when it’s bad it can totally kill a drink,” Eddy said. “You would never know ice means anything until it sours the drink.”
Resolution for the new year: Better sex. If not that, then at least better ice.
source: chron.com
