Written by Sharvan Kumar
If you can afford a small freezer area, making absolutely clear ice is quite easy. Since this will become your tool for directed freezing, you basically need enough room to store a small cooler.
Filling this cooler with water and letting it freeze uncovered for roughly one day or more will result in a solid block of ice on top with a pool of ordinary water bottom that has inherited all the contaminants avoided by your ice.
After removing the ice from your cooler, you will have essentially a large sheet of crystal-clear ice ready for portioning out. And at this point tempering becomes really crucial.
Apart from being elegant and modern, clear ice melts more slowly than your usual ice. And utilizing one large ice cube delays the melting even more in a classic old fashioned or another like beverage.
This is the reason it's advised to cut your sheet into two-to- three inch cubes ideal for a Negroni. To achieve this stress-free, though, you must let the ice adapt to your surroundings before cutting it.
This is tempering, hence letting your ice sit for 20 minutes or so will help to avoid any annoying cracks developing as you try to shape it.
Directional freezing and tempering can appear somewhat difficult in a sense. Actually, you only need some space and some patience to get ideal ice.
From East West Hunt