WTF? Gourmet artisinal ICE?

[TheMightyFavog]

http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2011/01/the-iceman-cometh-the-rise-of-a-gourmet-ice-entrepreneur/69804/

Gourmet ice, often heavily filtered and hand-cut to guarantee the optimal amount of dilution, has officially become part of cocktail culture. Sasha Petraske, who in 2000 reinvigorated the New York bar scene with his speakeasy Milk & Honey, is considered by many to be the father of designer ice in the U.S. Since then, bars around the country, from Bar Agricole in San Francisco to Philadelphia's Franklin Mortgage Investment Company, have followed suit, creating cocktails that feature market-fresh ingredients, small-batch bitters, and large blocks of beautiful ice.

For Dozois, who honed his mixology skills behind some of L.A.'s most respected bars, like Seven Grand, Church and State, and Comme Ça, the ice bug hit while he was doing a guest bartending event in Chicago in 2008. Although he was using recipes he'd made many times before, in this new setting, suddenly none were quite right. "My cocktails sucked. I'm pissed," he recalls. "The ingredients were almost the same. The recipes, I know, I had them. They were great. That's the moment where you're like dude, what am I doing wrong? And you're flipping out."

It wasn't until he took a sip from one of the rejected cocktail glasses, by then just a pool of melted ice, that he realized the source of the foul taste. "l looked down at that and I realized, it's fucking shitty ice. That's what that is. The ice is fucking up all of my cocktails. Every one of them."

If you're concerned about ice diluting your cocktail, why not just buy some Whiskey Stones?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/ba37/

[kentauros]

1. Or put a water filter on the line into the ice machine?

Do they think that freezing unfiltered water makes it taste better later?

[baldguy]

2. Ice rock?

A cube is a poor design to minimize dilution. They should be using a sphere.

[petronius]

4. I just got a spherical ice-ball maker - it's pretty fun!

Years ago I signed up for a Maker's Mark mailing list, and they send out free stuff on occasion. Some of it is useless, but some of it (e.g. a cocktail shaker, wrapping paper, and the aforementioned ice-ball tray) is pretty cool...

[blogslut]

3. How about 5 pieces for $40.00?

http://laughingsquid.com/glace-luxury-ice-a-perfectly-spherical-premium-ice-cube/

[Duer 157099]

5. Yes, but can they sell them to an Eskimo? n/t