"The Best Ice for Stirring and Shaking Cocktails
Lee explains that in a bar setting, the ice that is used to shake and stir drinks often is pulled from insulated metal ice bins, resulting in ice that is slightly wet since it is constantly melting. In contrast, the ice from your home freezer is going to be cold and dry.
“Most home bartenders already have a huge advantage over a bartender at a bar,” he says.
This means that at home, you should shake or stir the drink for a slightly longer period of time. But it also offers an important benefit.
“You have more long-term control over the drink because you’re starting with colder, no-surface-dilution ice,” says Lee.
For the purposes of shaking or stirring a drink, using standard 1x1-inch ice that you can make in a silicone or plastic mold, or using crescent-shaped refrigerator ice, will work just fine. Any larger size of ice is simply going to take longer to chill and dilute the cocktail.
The difference between shaking and stirring with ice comes down, once again, to dilution. Shaking naturally breaks up the ice, creating extra surface area and dilution in a shorter amount of time. To create that boost in dilution when stirring, Lee says you can crack ice into smaller pieces using the end of a bar spoon or any standard spoon. But avoid pebble ice or anything smaller, which has too much surface dilution and will “massively over-dilute” the drink.
Clear vs. Cloudy Ice
There’s a reason the ice in your freezer doesn’t look like the crystal-clear cubes in a high-end cocktail lounge. A standard ice tray isn’t insulated, so cool air hits all sides at the same time, and the center of the ice cubes become cloudy and cracked.
Directional freezing is a method that pushes any trapped air and impurities toward the bottom of an insulated container, rather than the center, creating clear ice. Bars often rely on expensive machines or purchase their ice from dedicated clear-ice makers. At home, making clear ice can be an involved process, but there are also molds that do the job for you, essentially relying on the same principles. “Any product that makes clear ice at home without any moving parts is based on directional freezing,” says English.
Persian Lime
Also known as the Bearss or Tahiti Lime, the Persian Lime is the most common variety found in the United States. Generally larger and less aromatic, the Persian Lime tends to be both less acidic and bitter than some other varieties."
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