A Brief History of Clear Ice Cubes

Ready to geek out on ice production methods? Clear ice itself isn’t new – nature invented it! But, human inventions go back a long time–some quite unusual. Here’s a brief highlight reel of some of my favorites:

The reason an ‘ordinary’ ice cube gets cloudy is that it freezes from the outer surfaces inward. Air and impurities move inward and are trapped in the center. The idea of Directional Freezing is to allow a cube to freeze from only one direction - usually the top - which pushes the impurities to the bottom. In practice, that bottom cloudy part is separated from the clear ice on top by a permeable material so that the tray of clear ice can be easily peeled away once frozen.

Many people try to make clear ice at home. Either by trying techniques they have heard about or building their own DIY clear ice makers. Unfortunately, a good number of these techniques result in cloudy, freezer-burned ice cubes.

Let’s take a look at some of the pitfalls associated with DIY clear ice methods.

Boiling first makes clear-er ice, but it’s rarely totally clear. Some people advocate double boiling. That’s time-consuming and is still unreliable.

This method involves setting your freezer just under the freezing mark, which is 32 degrees Fahrenheit ABOVE the recommended temperature for a freezer. Not only is this approach hit-or-miss, but you also run the risk of ruining all of the food in your freezer.

This method is hugely complex and nearly impossible to get right. To make it work, you need to freeze the bottom of your cubes first, while keeping the tops of your exposed cubes unfrozen until the very end. Just try to picture how you might do that! This is less a repeatable method than it is a science experiment.

I just mentioned this a few paragraphs back as the one effective method suited to home use. If you are going DIY-style, you’ll first need to fit an insulated cooler inside your freezer. You’ve got to make sure it is a well-insulated cooler too. Then you’ll want to suspend a regular ice cube tray in the cooler so that it is nearly submerged, but has it’s top exposed to the air–it won’t float, so you’ll need a creative solution to get this just right. Just remember to make holes in the bottom of each cube mold first–finding the right size and concentration of holes will take experimentation. Lastly, be careful with your trays. Silicone trays don’t have handles and are hard to remove from your icy-hard cooler once frozen–they are also thin and flimsy and usually end up ripping before long. Even once everything is set-up, there are still many variables at play and often the ice you make still isn’t totally clear. This is a frustrating pursuit; I’ve been there, done that before, and have seen how challenging it can be. Feeling this frustration was what actually set me on the track to design Ice.Made.Clear.™

Seeing the difficulties that came along with using these traditional, DIY ice-making methods, I was inspired to create a higher quality, simple to use, clear ice cube maker that could be used at home reliably – in anyone’s freezer.

ICE.MADE.CLEAR.™ (IMC) employs a natural phenomenon, the principle of Directional Freezing (which you’ve heard enough about by now), but simplifies the process for the user, and eliminates all the uncertainties.

Looking at a frozen lake in winter, you may notice that the top layers are clear. Like the lake, IMC is insulated on all sides but the top (the lake is insulated by the earth). This allows the water, as it freezes, to release dissolved gasses into the unfrozen reservoir below, and deliver stunning clarity to the ice above.

IMC takes this physical principle of nature and brings some important proprietary adaptations that are largely invisible to the user and allow anyone to easily make amazingly clear ice cubes.

By now, you may be asking yourself, Why would Joe go to all the effort of designing this thing (ask my wife about the middle-of-the night 3D printing noises that went on for years...) What really makes clear ice so great?

Let’s dive into just some of the benefits of clear ice, shall we?

Clear ice has less dissolved, yucky freezer air. Thus, clear ice is clean-tasting, allowing the subtleties of high-quality spirits to emerge.

Clear ice melts slower. The absence of air pockets on the outside creates a smooth exterior with less surface area to encourage melting. Because of this, drinks stay cool longer and don't get watered down as easily. Clear cubes also have more ice in them. Though that sounds impossible, it’s not. Think of it - where there could be air bubbles, there is instead more ice.

The glass-like clarity makes them nearly invisible in drinks, and provide a striking look that highlights the subtle coloring of any beverage.

Is this really a reason that clear ice is great? You’ll have to decide. :)

You can take your cocktails to the next level with clear ice, but there’s so much more that you can do with it! Here are a few ways people enjoy their clear ice cubes:

• any drink - even a simple seltzer - more elegant by freezing a piece of fruit inside of a cube - a strawberry, lemon slice, a bit of orange rind, or even a sprig of mint!
• Add them to cold-brew coffee. The clear cubes create a super-fun vertical-tunnel effect, allowing you to see down through your otherwise opaque coffee.
• Cool down any beverage, and keep it cold (and tasty) longer.