Which Ice for Which Drink

Ice is an ingredient. In most drinks it is the largest one by volume, it is the only one that keeps changing after you have poured it, and it is the cheapest thing you can improve about a home bar.

What ice actually does

Two things at once, and they pull against each other. It chills the drink, and as it melts it dilutes it. A finished cocktail is typically 20 to 25% water that came out of the ice, and that water is not a flaw. It is what takes the burn off the spirit and lets the other flavours through.

The variable you control is the ratio between the two, and that is decided almost entirely by surface area. Lots of small pieces chill fast and dilute fast. One big piece chills more slowly and dilutes far more slowly.

Big cubes

A single large cube or sphere, roughly 5 cm, for anything served over ice and meant to be sipped: the Old Fashioned, the Negroni, a spirit on the rocks.

The point is not the look. A drink that takes twenty minutes to finish will be water by the end if it is sitting on six small cubes, and this is the whole reason large-format ice exists. Silicone moulds cost very little and are the single best upgrade available to a home bar.

Standard cubes

Ordinary tray ice, for shaking and stirring, and for long drinks. Fill the tin or the glass properly: two-thirds for a shaker, right to the top for a Gin And Tonic or a Moscow Mule.

Half-filling a highball is the most common mistake in home bartending and it is counterintuitive. Less ice means the drink warms faster, which means it melts faster, which means it ends up more dilute, not less. A glass packed to the rim stays cold and stays strong.

Crushed ice

For anything in the tropical category, and for the Mint Julep and the Caipirinha. Crushed ice chills and dilutes very fast, which is exactly what a strong drink needs to be drinkable straight away.

A Mai-Tai is roughly 60 ml of rum. Served over a big cube it would be undrinkable for ten minutes; over crushed ice it is ready immediately. That is the tradition doing something sensible rather than something decorative.

You do not need a machine. Wrap cubes in a clean tea towel and hit them with a rolling pin, or pulse them in a blender and drain the meltwater off.

Does clear ice matter?

Visually, yes. For flavour, almost not at all. Cloudy ice is cloudy because of trapped air and dissolved minerals, and in a drink you will not taste the difference.

What does matter is what the ice has been sitting next to. Ice absorbs freezer odours readily, and old tray ice in a freezer with fish in it will make a Martini taste of fish. Keep it in a sealed bag and remake it often.

The small rules that add up

• Never reuse shaking ice. It is already wet, already broken, and it will over-dilute the next drink.
• Chill the glass. Ten minutes in the freezer, or fill it with ice and water while you build the drink and tip it out. For anything served up this matters more than the ice in the shaker.
• Ice straight from the freezer, not from a bucket. Freezer ice is well below zero; ice sitting in its own meltwater is at exactly zero and already melting.
• Strain shaken drinks off the ice unless the recipe says otherwise, or the drink keeps diluting in the glass.

None of this is expensive and most of it is free. It is the closest thing to a shortcut between a drink that tastes homemade and one that does not.