Handle with care:
ICE, ICE BABY

JENS LUNDQVIST
Bartender

When working in a bar, people often ask about throwing parties – what’s the most important thing to set up a bar? The answer Jens Lundqvist usually gives is: you can never have too much good ice. This is how you make and handle it perfect.

What is good ice?

In a perfect world, the perfect host would have fresh, dry, solid, crystal-clear ice. Making such ice is not easy. Start by boiling pure, preferably filtered, water (you can use a Brita filter or something similar) and slowly freeze it in bigger blocks. I myself have a silicon form that makes one big cube. To keep it cold in the glass, the cube should be well frozen all the way through without any cavities. You keep it dry simply by keeping it cold.

At the party.

Use a plastic bucket fitted with a perforated interior, through which water can drip into the bottom of the container thus keeping the ice dry.

In the shaker.

Always fill the shaker with as much ice as you can and whatever you want to shake.
Shake it fast and furiously 6-7 times to chill and to combine the ingredients quickly, when there’s a little dew on the metal part of the shaker your ready.

In the mixing glass or martini pitcher.

Always use as much ice as possible. Gently stir and fine-strain it so no parts of the ice fall in the drink.

In the glass.

You shall always have new fresh ice in the glass. The ice in the shaker is used and melted, therefore no good. The ice is there to keep the drink cold and not effect the drink with other tastes or water down the drink. Use cold glasses and fill up with as much ice as you can.

DID YOU KNOW
Ice is used in 85% of all drink recipes.

Crushing it.

Ice can be crushed in a lint-free towel using a saucepan or a mallet, or you can crush the ice in the metal part of a shaker with a muddler.

Handling it.

Never use your hands. Metal or plastic ice scoops make it easy to fill glasses quickly, in a small homely bar you can move one ice cube at a time with tongs.
Good luck!