I am an ice snob.



I'm very finicky about ice. I should be, I grew up with an ice snob for a father.

Here's the rundown:

1- I hate ice cube trays. I think they're an abomination. The cubes are much too large, they're always cloudy and they usually taste like shit because no one ever uses filtered water. Also, I hate the ice that your refrigerator makes. It's even worse than ice cube trays.

2- I'm not fond of Reddyice brand ice. They use a tube method which produces huge, uncrunchable barrels. While they are crystal clear and frozen very solid, I think they suck in drinks.

3- In certain situations I like nugget ice. Like what they have at Sonic, you know? While it melts very quickly, the crunch is fucking great. I also associate flake ice (ice chips, yeah?) with nugget ice, in that there are some positive applications for it, but it's still a specialty product. Not suitable for everyday drinking.

4- The best solution here is what's known as cube ice from a commercial ice maker. It should be between 1" and 1.5" inch square and no more than .5" thick. I love our ice machine at work. It has it's problems (sometimes the drain line gets kinked and it fills with water, and sometimes you have to unplug it and plug it back in to make it produce), but it kicks out fantastic ice.

5- When my dad lived in San Antonio, there was this great store that a guy ran himself where he reverse osmosised water himself and made ice out of it. Heaven.

6- If there is a Twice the Ice in your area, I highly suggest you use it. It's the greenest way to get ice because it's manufactured right on site, and you can get in bulk with no bag if you want. Sadly, the closest one to us is at skillman and abrams, north of NW Highway. Not worth riding to just to get ice, and I don't think I could get it home before it melted. Sad.

7- I buy ice across the street at the diamond shamrock run by an asian family. It's average cube size, always clear and reasonably priced at one dollar for an eight pound bag.


So when I come over, don't try and give me anything but bagged ice. Don't even bring up tap water, jesus I don't want to get started on that. Filtered, reverse osmosis drinking water only.
- posted by Mason @ 9:11 PM