For those who prefer to grab a cold beer, ice is generally not important.
But when you are mixing up a world-class cocktail, will homemade ice suffice? Or does your cocktail require something a bit nicer?
Stone Cold
Drink your bourbon on the rocks – literally.
Whiskey fans are so devoted to taking their drink straight up that the beverage has its own cooling method on the market. Whisky Stones – cubes of carved soapstone – can be used to chill whiskey again and again. Teroforma makes the stones in Vermont at one of the country’s oldest soapstone mills.
The company also recently started offering a soapstone shot glass to chill shots from the outside in.
Mix up this Bacon Old Fashioned and pour it over Whisky Stones to make a bold statement
$20 (9 stones)
Bacon Old-Fashioned
2 oz. bacon-infused bourbon*
¼ oz. Grade-B maple syrup
4 dashes Angostura bitters
Mix in cocktail shaker and strain into a glass with chilled Whisky Stones. Garnish with a strip of bacon.
*To make bacon-infused bourbon, cook 4-5 pieces bacon in a skillet and reserve bacon fat. Once it is cool, pour the fat and 2 cups of bourbon into a jar. Let sit for at least 6 hours or as long as 3-4 days, shaking periodically. Place jar in freezer until bacon fat solidifies. Discard fat and pass bourbon through a fine mesh strainer.
Bright Ice
Keep your drink cold and spice up your next get-together with ice cubes that light up. These LiteCubes, plastic cubes lit from within by LEDs, are FDA-approved, so they’re safe and reusable – at least until the batteries run out.
The cubes come in a variety of colors – we picked rainbow – and shapes. You can even get them emblazoned with your company logo.
Prepare this Pineapple Express and light up the cubes for a beverage that’s as much fun to serve as it is to drink.
Starting at $2.30 per cube
Pineapple Express
1 ½ oz. pineapple juice 1 oz. vodka 1 oz. orange liqueur ½ oz. freshly squeezed lime juice
Add pineapple juice, vodka, orange liqueur and lime juice to cocktail shaker along with ice and shake well. Strain the drink into a tall glass with LiteCubes.
Cool Glow
Most of the time, shots don’t sit around long enough to need ice. So are shot glasses made of ice a necessity? Nope. Fun? You bet.
The Cool Shooters ice cube mold from Fred & Friends lets you turn your favorite beverage into a shot glass.
Or, like us, you can use them with a combination of purified water and tonic water to make shot glasses that glow when placed under a black light. To complement the flavor of the tonic, we chose a gin-based shot. Bottoms up!
$7.65
Glowstick
1 ½ oz. gin
1 ½ oz. melon liqueur
1 splash sweet and sour mix
Pure Chills
If you’re looking to go all out with your ice, there’s one option that stands out above the rest: Gläce Luxury Ice.
Tap water, especially when frozen in your freezer at home, can contain impurities that throw off the flavor of your drink, and that’s just not cool. Gläce offers a high-end and high-quality (and beautiful) alternative.
Gläce offers two shape options – “Mariko,” a sphere, or “G3,” a large cube – both of which have less surface area than typical crushed or cubed ice and, therefore, melt more slowly (estimated at 15-30 minutes for Mariko, and 15-40 minutes for G3).
The Raspberry Drop is a drink that goes perfectly with the perfect ice cube.
www.glace-ice.com.
$325 (50 pieces)
Raspberry Drop
2 oz. raspberry vodka
1 oz. red raspberry puree, thawed
½ oz. simple syrup
½ oz. fresh lime juice
Fresh raspberries
1 piece Gläce Luxury Ice G3 (G-cubed)
Lemon twist for garnish
Place G3 ice cube into a martini glass and set aside. Add fresh raspberries, lime juice and simple syrup into mixing glass and muddle. Add all ingredients except garnish into a Boston Shaker. Shake and pour into martini glass over G3 ice cube. Garnish with lemon twist and fresh raspberries. Serve.
Lisa Aurand is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
