More Fun with Ice: The Time Bomb

The fun with ice continues! In ongoing experiments freezing things in ice, I decided to try freezing food coloring in the middle of an ice cube. Then when the ice melts, the coloring will release and change the drink. 

Click on the link below to see how I did it and what happened. 

The first step was to make perfectly clear ice.  Then I heated the stubby end of a bar spoon in a pot of boiling water and kept plunging it into the ice until I made a tunnel. 

 

Then I added several drops of food coloring. After I let that freeze for a few hours, I added a couple drops of water and let that freeze. I then added more water to top it up and seal the cube.

  Then it was time to add the time bomb to a beverage. I just used water for this first demonstration. 

The ice melted a bit then turned sideways.

After a few minutes, the dramatic leak began.

And finally, all was black. 

So, this little trick works fairly well. Drink fast or your cocktail turns black!

The ice I use to fill the hole after adding the food coloring is very cloudy, but I don't think it's so terrible. 

This method could be used to add other things to drink beyond color: perhaps it could be filled with bitters, or citrus oil, or absinthe to change the flavor of a drink mid-way through it.