Looking at your link and a few others, that does seem to be the case. That’s a distinct difference from what I saw when I built mine ~10 years ago.
I wonder if this is a function of either legal action or refund claims? Because while I do think the clear ice is crucial to the experience, these presses don’t do anything to get you said ice. So I can see people buying a $1000 press, finding that it produces ugly ice and that they have no means of producing clear ice, and then returning the unit. Maybe they get less of that if the advertising only shows cloudy ice.
Here is a mold which seemingly implements the directional freezing method I mentioned (note the styrofoam box). But it likely has problems with seams and other distortion.
I used expanding foam to make directional freezing units. It’s sort of a lot of trouble, but the ice balls do look very nice.
I got this one as a gift last year. Makes great, clear ice.
The only seam is a small nub on one side (bottom side as the ice makes). I usually just put it down in the glass. But, one time, for a fancy party (bourbon tasting), when I pulled the cubes, I took a flat metal spatula sitting in hot water and quickly melted it off.
I usually keep some in the freezer (once they’re made, you pull them out and put them in a baggie) for when I’m feeling hoity-toity.
The claim is that the reason for the ice being spherical is that it melts more slowly and at a more uniform rate. Which would be true, for what it’s worth, though one might of course question whether it actually makes any practical difference.
It would be interesting to know whether the decreased melting speed benefit you get from the spherical shape, is outweighed by the fact that in using one of these presses you warm up the ice to some degree.
I just tried “cleaning up” an ice cube with an aluminum screwdriver (trimming off some lumps on the side, I think of them as “flash”). Works like a charm, even at room temperature.
I wonder if the $1,000 versions make that noise. I feel like the patrons at my home bar would rather have cloudy ice balls with a small ridge than listen to what sounds like audio piped in from a Taco Bell restroom.
It’s pretty quiet in any normal setting. I brought the device to many parties and you couldn’t hear it at all over ordinary conversation.
Regardless, a few small holes to allow the water to escape would have solved the problem. I didn’t have such long and narrow drill bits available (let alone an electric discharge machining setup). It wouldn’t have added to the cost significantly for a commercial device.
Yes, a sphere has the least surface area to volume of any shape, which would mean that it would potentially melt slower than another shape.
But that’s missing the point. If you have an actual cocktail, you want a degree of dilution. It’s baked into the recipe in fact. Chilling and dilution are like flip sides of each other- if you cool a drink by a certain amount, you’ve by definition melted a specific amount of ice to do so, diluting your drink.
If you’re drinking straight spirits of some kind, you may or may not want it to melt- generally most higher proof whiskies benefit from a little bit of water, and AFAIK the thinking is that you don’t want to chill it down, because it numbs your taste buds and damps down the aromatic elements.
So there’s no actual point to a sphere of ice; you either want the dilution as part of the chilling, or you don’t want to chill it at all.
Exactly. And of course there are ways to chill a drink without diluting it. Keep the ingredients and/or glass in the fridge or freezer. Use blue ice (or something fancier like chilled stones). Dunk the mixing tin in an ice bath. Use dry ice or liquid nitrogen; it’s pricey but the visual effect is stunning. Ice spheres just look cool; there’s nothing special about their effect on a drink.
The shape of ice doesn’t matter.* Thinking back to High School Chemistry, adding 100g of boiling water to 1000g of 32 degree ice then finding out how much ice melts, never needed to know the shape of the ice, only the mass. A hunk of ice will only ‘melt less’ if it ‘cools less’ too.
** The exception is the amount of ice exposed to the air, which I don’t think is what the claims are referring to. Furthermore, the optimal in that case is to use less ice.
Because this is like the titanium croquet mallet (egad - that’s a thing!) it is custom made, takes special tools to make, and has a very limited market.
It’s not the amount, it’s the rate. And the thinking is that the rate is affected by surface area. Look at it this way- if you had to chill down 4 liters of water, would it chill down faster with say… 500 grams of crushed ice, or a single 500 gram block (both at the same temp)? The crushed ice would definitely chill it down faster. However, when the whole thing is in equilibrium, the same amount of ice will have melted either way.
It’s the same thinking with a glass of whiskey- the sphere will have the least surface area when compared to its volume, so it’ll melt the slowest, diluting your drink the least. And by definition, not cooling it as much either, which may be problematic as I pointed out upthread.
The advantage to a sphere (or any large block) is that the system is never really in equilibrium - the liquid is always absorbing heat through the sides and bottom of the glass, and through the air. So if you toss in 100 g of crushed ice, it will melt quickly and get your drink really cold, but it will warm up over time. If you put in a 100 g sphere, it won’t chill it as fast, but it will keep chilling it for a much longer time.
