Video: Ice is very important to me. Outside of beer and orange juice, I believe that every drink can be improved with ice. But even I know my love for ice has its limits. It’s just frozen water, after all. But to Ross Simon from Bitter & Twisted Cocktail Parlour in Phoenix, Arizona, ice is so much more than that.
He wants the ice in his drinks to be crystal clear, without frostiness, fogginess or any impurities trapped in it. That’s understandable! Having a perfectly clear, giant ice sphere in cocktails looks very cool and kind of, sort of, enhances the drink by not watering it down as much.
You can see how the perfect ice is made in the video below by Andrew Gooi. The bar uses a nanofiltration water filter system and a directional freezing method that freezes the ice from the top down (to prevent trapping air particles inside). The ice is then frozen for 43 hours before it’s shaved, then it’s cut down to 8cm3 blocks before it’s finally hand-carved into an ice sphere. It’s totally obsessive and crazy and almost silly (to the point of parody) to focus on ice so much, but if it’s in the pursuit of perfection? By any means, I guess.