What causes the differences between store-bought, bagged ice versus refrigerator ice cubes?
I notice (much to my consternation!) that refrigerator ice causes excessive amounts of “fizz” when used with cola drinks where bagged ice is much more subtle and friendly to my carbonated beverages – and refrigerator ice is always cloudy-white where bagged ice is clear.
Finally, this may be a psychological reaction, but I could swear that bagged ice makes drinks get colder.
There was a nice article on this subject in the New Yorker a few weeks ago.
I seem to recall that store ice has fewer impurities due to the ice making process.
The cloudiness is due to dissolved air in the water. I don’t know the details, but apparently, the stores use some method of freezing that lets the air settle out first. You can make clear ice cubes yourself, by bringing the water to a boil or letting it sit out for a long time before freezing.
As for making the drinks cold faster, no, you’re not just imagining it. It’s because store-bought ice usually has more surface area than homemade, what with being weird shapes and having smaller pieces. If you have an ice crusher at home, you can cool off your drinks even faster.
The icemaking machines I’ve seen in pubs can make clear ice by constantly running water over a refrigerated metal plate. The water is never still, and the ice grdually builds up without any air in it. When the desired thickness of ice is there, a heated grid of thick wires is passed through the sheet of ice, melting it into squares.
Ice companies use a chemical that precipitates (settles out) the minerals. They also use better filters than your home has. I don’t know the name of the chemical.
I don’t have any thing substantial to back this up with but I could swear that I have always gotten white ice from using warm-to-hot water and clear ice from cold water. I just always assumed that was how it worked.
Thanks for all the replies about “milky” ice.
However, I haven’t seen anything about the phenomenon that I have noticed where refrigerator ice seems to cause cola products to fizz excessively.
With refrigerator ice, I’ve seen times when I pour cola in and end up with about 90% fizz that takes 30-60 seconds to settle down.
On the other hand, with store-bought ice, it is noticable that this does not happen. I can pour cola over store-bought ice fill it up completely without much fizz at all.
Ideas?
The excessive fizz means that the ice is too cold. change the thermostat so you freezer is just a tad warmer and it will go away.
If the ice is too cold, the coke will freeze on contact ( you can see the ice pickup a little of the cola color), which drives ALL of the CO2 out of solution giving a bunch of fizz.
If you really need to keep the freezer that cold, you can also run cold water over the ice (and pour out the water) first, which will warm up the outside of the ice cubes enough.
-Luckie