Q&A for How to Make Clear Ice

Cloudy ice is full of minerals and impurities. That's not a big deal, but it can slightly change the flavor of a drink. If you're making a fancy cocktail, you want it to be as good as possible! That's really where clear ice shines from a taste perspective.

Well, it's usually translucent, which means light can partially travel through it. If you look at a typical ice cube, it's not 100% clear. The clear ice we teach you to make in this article will be absolutely transparent.

It shouldn't take more than an hour to boil your water twice, and most of that time will be spent waiting for the water to cool.

You can buy ice ball makers that are specially designed to produce crystal clear balls, or you can use a basic silicone ice ball mold and try this hack: make a loop in some stiff wire that the mold can rest in, then place the wire over the top of a pot. Fill both the pot and the mold with water. Position the mold on the wire support with the hole facing down into the pot of water, then put the pot and mold in the freezer. The ice ball should come out clear!

Line a large metal ice block maker bin with clear plastic to make the ice block easier to remove, then fill the bin with water. Place a small pump in each bin to help keep the water circulating. This will drive bubbles and impurities to the top of the water so that they are all concentrated in one place rather than distributed throughout the ice. Turn on the ice block maker and allow the ice to freeze completely. You should end up with a clear block that has a fairly thin layer of cloudy ice on top, which you can slice off with a saw before carving the block.

Cloudy ice contains more air, which can cause it to break apart and melt more quickly. Some people claim that clear ice tastes better than cloudy as well, since it doesn’t contain as many gasses and impurities.

Yes, it will.

You put the salt water in the freezer to cool it down. The temperature must be below 0° C since you want the ice cubes to freeze when you put the ice cube tray in the salt water. However, the salt water still has to be liquid when you put the ice cube tray in it. That's why you use salt: Salt keeps the water from freezing at temperatures below 0° C.

You can't. To make clear ice cubes, you need ultra pure water water that has dissolved gasses removed by heating, and the water needs to freeze from either the top down or the bottom up to further eliminate cloudiness. There are ways to make clear ice cubes at home, but an automatic ice maker can't do it.

You wouldn't want to do that. The air bubbles that form need to escape either up or down.

Though distilled water is relatively free of mineral impurities, it still has air dissolved in it - boiling the water reduces the amount of gas dissolved in the water.

You will need a chest freezer or a freezer large enough to fit the ice for your sculpture. I generally use a large cooler, fill it with purified water and place it in my garage chest freezer. It's also a plus if you live up north and can leave it outside on a cold day/night.

You can find round ice molds on sites like Amazon.

Yes, that should work fine.

At the beginning, it is at the same temperature; however, it does warm up slowly. The upsides to using it are the ice freezing from just the contact with the water, and not from every direction, like in a freezer. Also the fact that it stays liquid maximizes the contact area.

Stainless steel is significantly less porous and harder to corrode than aluminum. The benefits to that are that it is next to impossible for microorganisms to grow in the metal (hence why most, if not all medical grade equipment uses stainless steel). It's anti-corrosive properties prevent it from releasing other compounds into the water and/or food that is being heated in it. Basically, it makes the water more pure because it is a better metal for cooking foods in general.

Yes. The ice cube tray you use should be able to float on top of the cold salt water completely, so the salt water bowl should be larger.

That is something you will have to experiment with because the ratio changes with barometric pressure, elevation, and even how many other compounds are dissolved into the water as well.

No, it is fine. Distilled water has most of the ions removed from it. You generally should not drink distilled/purified water as it can leach minerals out of your body. However, if you are adding distilled water (in liquid or ice form) to a drink (and by 'drink', I presume you don't mean distilled water), then as soon as the distilled water is added to it, it merely dilutes the drink, and so consuming it will not leach minerals.

Not by freezing boiling water, the point is to get the air out, hence why you should boil it twice.

They should taste the same. Air bubbles should not affect the taste of the ice.

Boil all water to be used twice (boil, cool, boil again). Fill smaller mold with your food color dye & water. Let that freeze overnight (you want this cube to get as cold as you possibly can). Freeze the lower level of your larger mold. (Fll this up to where you want the bottom of the smaller colored cube to start. Bring remaining water as close as you possible can to freezing. You want it to be slushy. Place the colored cube on top of clear ice in the partially filled larger mold. Surround remaining space with as much clear ice shards as you can, then fill remainder with almost freezing water. Quickly freeze again so as to not melt the colored cube.