This is an index page of the ice experiments here on Alcademics. If you'd like to view all blog posts from most-recent backwards, you can start here. Check out the gallery at the bottom of this page for plenty of pictures.
Most Important Pages
- What is Directional Freezing? (the basic theory behind clear ice).
- Clear Ice Blocks at Home in an Igloo Cooler
- Make clear ice balls (or Death Star ice balls) using an insulated mug
- Freeze things inside ice balls including flowers)
- A Homemade Giant, Crystal Clear Ice Cube Tray
- Clear Ice Cubes Using a Tray in a Cooler
- Branding your ice cubes
Ice Care and Handling
- What to Try When Directional Freezing Doesn't Produce Clear Ice
- Cutting Blocks of Ice with an Icepick
- Ice Advice: The Right Way to Store Ice in the Freezer
- Carving Big (and clear) Ice Cubes
- Specialty Cocktail Ice Providers
Fun Ice Projects
Make the Death Star Ice Mold come out clear
- Fire inside ice
- Pokemon Ice Balls
- Rainbow Mini Ice Balls
- How to freeze a bottle inside a clear ice block
- Easter Ice
- More Fun with Ice: The Time Bomb
- Watching Ice Melt
- Freezing Objects in Ice
- How to freeze a bottle inside a clear ice block and more ways to freeze bottles and make bottle displays in an ice block.
- The Double Rainbow Cocktail
- Another Ice Banner Attempt
- An Icy Weekend in Monterey
- Frozen Juice Makes Nice Ice Balls
- Dinosaur head ice block
Ice Balls
- Make clear ice balls (or Death Star ice balls) using an insulated mug
- Freeze things inside ice balls including flowers)
- Fun with Limes Inside Clear Ice Balls
- How to Freeze a Spiralized Lime Inside a Clear Ice Ball Sphere
- Make crystal clear ice balls using an insulated mug
- Ice Balls Made Easy
- Spiders and Insect Ice Balls for Halloween
- Eyeball Ice Balls for Halloween
- More Ice Ball Shenanigans
Ice Books and Ice History
- Modern Day Pond and Lake Ice Harvests in Americ
- How Machine Ice Is Made
- How Water Freezes
- The History of the Ice Trade
Cool Ice Stuff
A Dramatic Video About Ice from The Aviary
- Tales of the Cocktail Seminar: How to Build a Cutting-Edge Ice Program
- Tales of the Cocktail Preview: The Chainsaw Shift
- Great Garnish (And Ice) With Alex Kratena of the Artesian Bar in London
- Ice Meets Chainsaw
- Inside the Freezer of an Ice Nerd
- Ice As Art
- A New Clear Ice Maker That Seems to Work Okay
- Trying Out the Roca Patron Ice Ball Press
Commercial Ice Products
- Recommended Ice Picks
- A Clear Ice Ball Maker You Can Buy
- The Clear Ice Maker That Already Exists
- Another Commercial Clear Ice Cube Tray
- Testing the Rabbit Clear Ice Tray
- Iceberg Animal Ice Tray
- Clearly Frozen Clear Ice Tray
- Alphabet Ice Molds
Articles About Ice (Many of which I wrote or am quoted in)
- Freezer Harvest, A History of Ice Cubes
- The new business of big ice.
- Directional Freezing as a patent law exam question!
- Nice Ice in the News
- How Directional Freezing is a type of distillation.
- Ice Experimentation in Australia
- Carved Ice Balls: Starter Molds
- Fortune Ice: Like A Fortune Cookie But With Ice
- Nothing Shaken, Nothing Stirred: The Perennial's Strained Relationship with Ice
- The Life and Death of Kold-Draft
- How to Make Better (Clearer) Ice at Home, According to Bartenders
- Does Clear Ice Really Matter?
- Directional Freezing, Freeze Distillation, and an 1890 Story About Ice Purity
- Ice Tips in Southwest Airlines Magazine
The following three sections are material and experiments when I was developing Directional Freezing. They're probably not relevant except for historical interest.
Clear Ice Methods That Only Sort Of Work
- Releasing Air Trapped in Ice
- Cutting Corners to Make Clear Ice
- Another Clue to Ice Clarity: Slow Freezing Like a Japanese Pond
- Another Way to Make Clear Ice at Home
How to Make Clear Ice, The Hard Way
- Perfectly Clear Ice Balls - A Clever Trick
- Making Clear Ice Balls with Tovolo Sphere Ice Molds and a Cooler
- Clear Ice Blocks from a Soft-Sided Cooler
- Percent Cloudiness in Top Frozen Block Ice
- Improve ice clarity slightly in Directional Freezing system by boiling water
Other Methods for Making Clear Ice
Things That Don't Work to Make Clear Ice
- Using Distilled Water
- Melting and refreezing water
- Hot Water vs. Cold Water
- Carbonated Water vs. Still Water
- Horizontal vs. Vertical Container Shapes
- Freezing water in Layers
- Stovetop Ice Balls: A First Attempt
- Does Refreezing Clear Air-Free Ice Result In a Large Clear Block?
- Using Salt Walter as an Insulator to Make Clear Ice
- Making Clear Ice Without a Cooler
- Is Faster Frozen Ice Less Cloudy than Slower Frozen Ice?
- Clear Ice and Container Shape
- Clearly a Failure
- Making Clear Ice Using a Blast Freezer
Gallery - All these images come from my experiments linked above.