Clear ice in cocktails is not a sign of special water or expensive equipment but the result of a properly organized freezing process. As physicists and chemists have explained, the secret lies not in the quality of the water but in the way it turns into ice. Conversation Gateway reports this.
Regular ice from your home freezer may appear cloudy due to air bubbles and dissolved impurities. During standard freezing, water is captured from all sides at once, and everything it contains—gases, salts, microparticles—is pushed into the center of the cube and “locked” there. Light passing through such ice is scattered, which is why it appears white.
In contrast, transparent tape has almost no air bubbles. It is thicker, dissolves more slowly, dilutes the drink less and does not distort its taste. That is why it is used in bars and restaurants.
On the Internet it is often advised to boil water, use distilled water or carefully filtered water. However, research shows these methods have little effect on results. Even perfectly clean water becomes cloudy during the normal freezing process – the problem is not in the composition but in the direction of crystallization.
There is only one working method – the so-called directional freezing. Its nature is that ice does not form on all sides at once, but moves in one direction. Then, air bubbles and impurities are forced out into the last unfrozen water and most of the ice remains clear.
In practice, this is achieved through insulation. If you close the sides and bottom of the barrel, leaving only the top exposed, the water will freeze from top to bottom. This is exactly how to make ice in a bar – and you can do the same thing at home.
The simplest way is to use a small thermos box, thermos cup or special mold to make clear ice. Fill the container with water, place it in the freezer and check periodically. When a cloudy area forms below, the water can be drained until it freezes completely, or you can let the entire block freeze and then simply cut off the opaque part with a knife.
Previously, the “air” of the 1.4 billion year old Earth was found in salt crystals.
