How to know if the ice is right?

Ice in stirred cocktails.

 There's one key ingredient that is in almost every single cocktail you've ever had, yet no one really pays attention to it. That one key ingredient is water, and most of the time that water comes from the ice we use in making our drink. When we shake a cocktail with ice, the ice is responsible for 3 things: aeration, dilution and chilling. When we stir a drink, the ice is responsible for just the dilution and the chilling, as we do not want to aerate stirred cocktails. If you want to make yourself a great Martini, you'll take the time to get a good gin (like our Signature Gin) and take the time to find a good quality dry vermouth as well, but are you using good ice too? How do you know if the ice is right for your stirred cocktail?

Let's look at the data on water in cocktails. When we stir a drink and serve it up, like a Martini, we are introducing dilution, which is usually about 20-25% of the final total volume of the drink. For shaken cocktails like a Daiquiri, this number can be up to 30-35%. Looking at the recommended specs for our Signature Gin Martini, the recipe calls for:

• 75ml Banks & Solander Signature Gin

• 7.5ml Dry Vermouth

Prior to stirring, the volume of our drink is 82.5ml. After stirring, our target volume is approximately 105ml-110ml. This is usually achieved by using the right kind of ice (and the right amount) and stirring consistently for around 30 seconds. 

Working out the dilution percentage looks like: 

105ml-82.5ml=22.5ml

22.5ml/105ml x 100= 21%

or

110ml-82.5ml=27.5ml

27.5ml/110ml x 100=25%

So in stirred cocktails, when almost a quarter of your drink is water, are you making sure you're using the right ice? 

How do you know if the ice is right? Well we can rule out a few types of ice that you should NOT be using if you want to make the best quality Martini. Firstly I beg you to not use the ice from your freezer's generic hard plastic tray that you fill up with tap water, slide back into the freezer, then rotate the tray for all the little bits of ice to fall out. This ice will certainly take on the flavour of that freezer plastic, which you don't want to be introducing into your drinks. This plastic is also going to trap all the smells of the freezer into that white cloudy part you see in the bottom of your ice. That cloudy part is all the imperfections and air bubbles that get trapped into ice and can be the first things to melt and leak into your cocktail.

If you really want to go all out and go the perfectionist route, you want to be using clear ice when making all your cocktails, especially stirred ones, like a Martini, that are usually a lot cleaner and refined in flavour. Now, having clear ice all the time to use in your cocktails is not always realistic, so the next best thing you can do is use large ice cubes from silicone moulds. This ice is better for a few reasons, the silicone mould will not take on as much 'freezer flavour' which means your ice shouldn't take on that flavour. Additionally, the larger your ice cubes, the less the ice will consist mostly of the white part full of air and impurities, which we don't want melting and diluting into the drink. When using larger ice cubes (2.5 cubic inches) it will take a lot longer and lot more stirring to achieve ideal temperature and dilution. However if you use one full cube and break up (by hitting with the back of a spoon) at least 2 other large cubes into the mixing glass, you will achieve the ideal temperature and dilution in that 30 second time period. When stirring cocktails in a mixing glass or tin, always ensure the amount of ice sits well above the amount of liquid in the drink. You should not have the ice floating in the drink; the ice needs to come almost to the top of the mixing glass. A common misconception is that more ice means more dilution more quickly, which is not necessarily correct in this case. More ice keeps ice colder for longer, allowing a slower and more controlled dilution. It is always better to have more ice than you need rather than less ice.

From this we get a better tasting drink, a more controlled dilution, and a lovely temperature in our nicely chilled Martini. And don't forget to chill your Martini glass before serving!

By Lucas Bucton - July 2024