4. How to make Clear Ice - Tipsy Bartender Course

OK , check out this beautiful crystal clear cube .

Can you see this , this right here ?

This excites me because ice is light ice is very important because it's a part of the mixing process .

It's going to be in your drink .

You are going to taste it .

So I'm gonna give you five tips for making better ice at home .

I'm also going to teach you the ultimate method for making clear ice , which is the cooler method .

And if you guys don't wanna do the cooler method , I'm gonna also show you some ice molds that you could buy to make clear ice .

Really simply let's get started .

Ice is important .

We get that .

But what can you do about it here ?

Five tips for upping your ice .

Game number one , prepare and advance can't be in the middle of making drinks and then all of a sudden wonder where's the ice ?

You have to think about ice even before you start making the drink number two , make it if you can freezer ice has a ton of impurities .

Store bought .

Ice is a regular shape and sometimes hard to work with when you make it using the cleanest water possible , then you can control the shape and the flavor of your ice .

You can use a Brita filter distilled water .

You name it number three .

Keep it fresh after you've made your ice .

You have to cover it with something because ice takes on flavors from other stuff in the freezer , like your sausage .

OK ?

And if you just put it there without it being covered , it's gonna , other ice is gonna build up on top of that .

So keep it in a sealed Ziplock bag or some ice storage container , but keep your ice fresh .

Number four size matters because different drinks require different kinds of ice depending .

Are you shaking ?

Are you stirring ?

And this like a but we have crushed ice .

You name it .

Number five , clear ice is the best .

If you watch tipsy bartender , we pretty much only use clear ice because it is the purest it is the best and now we can show you how to make it today guys .

I'm gonna show you how to make this clear ice .

Now , why do you need to know how to make clear ice ?

This is freeze ice .

This is clear ice .

Now automatically you could see number one , it looks better .

Number two , it's gonna taste better because all the white stuff in there , it's impurities , oxygen bubbles and when that melts that leaves behind a little residue .

So if you're drinking some fancy whiskey , some expensive drink , you really don't want that in your drink .

And the most important piece , clear ice melts a lot more slowly and you notice less bubbles too .

So here's some of the tools you need to make clear ice .

The first thing you need is just a small cooler .

OK ?

With a removable to second thing is you want a nice bread knife .

You have one of these in the kitchen somewhere because you can use this to cut ice .

This is one of the best tools for cutting ice .

And then you want one of these a wooden mallet .

If you don't have a wooden mallet , you could use a hammer that you might have at home .

It'll work the same .

And of course , these , these ice tongues , you just pick up your ice , the tons of varieties of this .

So once I've removed the top of my cooler , I'm gonna fill it with tap water sky .

That's a ton of work .

I don't have to go through all that .

Why can't I just boil some water , make ice cubes or get the still water , make some ice cubes or maybe I know someone at the Vatican .

OK .

I could ask the Pope for some holy water , freeze that and get some clear ice cubes because it does not work that way .

You don't think I hit the Pope up .

OK ?

I tried that did not work .

I told him it failed .

OK .

So what we have here with this cooler is the sides of the cooler are insulated , the bottom of the cooler is insulated because with , when you make it ice , the purest water freezes first .

So you want that purity to start at the top and work its way down and then you're gonna take it out of the freezer before it's all the way done and you're gonna drain off the impure water and you be left with a nice clear chunk of the purest water you've ever seen .

So now let's get our baby into the freezer .

OK ?

Ice is my baby .

Trust me .

I'm really crazy about clear ice .

So I'm back with my eyes , ok ?

It is frozen here .

Now , before I touch this and do anything to this , I need to allow this to acclimate to room temperature .

Don't pour water over it , don't put your hands on it , just take it out of the freezer , put it aside and allow it to begin to melt a little bit or to sweat .

I can show you why .

This is a piece of clear ice that just came straight out of the freezer , ok ?

And this is like lukewarm water .

Watch what happens already here cracking .

You notice how it cracked up and so that would happen to your clear ice .

The minute you put your hands on this , it would have lines and waves run through it and defeat the purpose of you having nice clear seamless beautiful ice .

Ok ?

So my ice has been sitting here for a while it's began sweating .

It , it's nice and loose now and I could just flip this over and this should come right out .

It's gonna be a mess .

So you wanna do this over the sink .

So all the impure water that just , that was what just spilled everywhere .

And you have this pure water that froze and gave us this nice clear piece .

So I'm gonna just break this and look at that .

Now , we have a nice clear chunk of ice .

So I take my bread knife , let me just start cutting a nice layer of across here and I could grab my mallet and as I tap this , that line should just continue down , this whole piece should break off .

And now you could cut this up into nice ice cubes for your glass .

Sometimes a knife just goes straight straight through .

If not , all you need to do is give it a nice little top and it should separate .

And so you want a nice rod for your Collins glass , just pick out kind of cave man in my Collins glass .

But hey , gotta keep my drink nice and cold .

One of the cool things you could do with clear ice is you could shape it into a sphere .

This is an ice press .

It's made of aluminum and aluminum has this high heat conduct conductivity .

And so as this aluminum presses down between the pieces below , it's gonna shape the ice into a ball bingo .

So now we have a nice class .

So guys , you got a party later .

So what do you do ?

Because it takes so long to make you get a nice freezer by and you put your clear ice in , seal this up , put this in the freezer and we're good to go sky .

I don't wanna do all that .

I just wanna have a little mold that I could pour some water in and automatically have clear ice .

Well , I meet you halfway .

So these are two molds that you can buy online to make clear ice and just using regular tap water .

This one right here is from Winter Smith .

This costs about 100 and 20 bucks and it takes about 24 hours .

This one right here is from ice and it costs about 50 bucks and it takes 12 hours .

So this one's a little bit faster .

Right ?

Let's break it out .

So you put in your regular tap water and then you break this out and I should have crystal clear ice SPS .

Look at that beautiful , ready to go in 24 hours .

Put that in my glass and that's delicious .

Ok .

Next up with ice , I should have nice cubes here that I could just drop into my glass .

Perfect .

So both of these work the same way as the cooler method , but on a smaller scale .

So what you have is you have the purest water freezing up here .

First and then all the impure water at the bottom .

Same thing here , pure clear water here .

Impure water at the bottom .

It's the same principle .

Just a nice little fancy mold that can cost you 50 bucks or 100 and 20 bucks .

Stay tipsy friends .

Stay tipsy .

Get your clear ice .

Oh , man .

I love clear ice .

It's hard for me to drink a drink that does not have clear ice in .

I'm spoiled .

I spoil myself .