Over the past decades, many attempts have been made to cure the quandary of cooling spirits and craft cocktails adequately. From various shapes and sizes of ice, to rocks and stones, everything has been attempted. In the end everyone can pretty much agree on three things, it needs to be ice, it needs to be round, and it needs to be as big as possible. Shape and size have to do with two things, volume and density. To put it simply, the bigger the sphere, the slower it melts, and the more volume it takes up in your glass, the more liquid is actively cooling via energy transfer instead of water transfer. The problem with huge balls however, is that anything over 2.5” does not easily fit into commonly available whiskey or cocktail glasses. This makes the 2.5” size Ice Ball ideal.
The most common solution to the spherical Ice ball quandary is the plastic or silicone freezer mold. These are widely available on the internet and in big box retailers. These products have sold in great numbers, with many users initially very happy with their purchase, but over time these molds find themselves relegated to the trash can, or at best the junk drawer. What is it about Ice ball molds that leave people underwhelmed? Well, it all comes down to the science of how ice freezes. When you freeze ice directly into a shape like a sphere, the ice forms in a very inefficient manner. This creates a porous, ugly and often poorly flavored Ice ball that melts and cracks just as rapidly as your standard fractionated ice or cube. Another unfortunate side effect of using plastics or silicone for a process like this is these molds are very porous. This means that when the molds are new, the silicone or plastic will just contain the flavors associated with plastics, which aren’t that great to begin with, but once these molds sit in your freezer for a while, they begin to taste like everything else in your freezer. These flavors are then passed on to your Ice Balls, resulting in scotch and craft cocktails that taste like freezer burn and frozen green beans.
This is obviously a very big problem. Short answer if you want optimal Ice for your whiskey, scotch or craft cocktail, pick up an ICEBIRG Ice Ball Press. The cost over time will be much less, and the quality of your Ice Balls will be beyond perfect.