Royal Tiki. A series this month of the places I’ve bought from, or want to buy from. Twitter: @RoyalTiki

Blender drink aficionados should book a flight to Europe, bring extra luggage space. The “Silent Blender” is here, er, there.

The Polar Ice Tray is quite possibly the most essential bar accessory a home cocktail bar enthusiast should own. Really. It’s that cool.

The more you grow to love cocktails, and especially making your own cocktails, Ice Obsession Syndrome seems less and less like a mental disorder and more like a reasonable state of mind. The size, temperature, and water quality of your ice all affect the cocktails you make and serve. Further, once you start paying attention to the application of your ice, you naturally start to pay attention to the aesthetics of your ice.
The connoisseur has two desires for his or her ice, especially the ice served in a rocks drink like an Old Fashioned, Big and Clear. Big isn’t so hard, especially these days. But ice tray ice and even some ice maker ice is full of tiny bubbles that cloud the stuff and make it look dirty. And the bigger the chunk of ice floating in a drink, the more obvious that cloudiness is. The Holy Grail of cocktail ice is big chunks that look like melty glass.

Over at Alcademics, Camper English has spent the last year in the quest for clear ice. After a host of mostly failed experiments, he came up with a cool working method of producing clear ice at home. It involves putting a whole igloo cooler in your freezer, however, so it doesn’t really fit under the heading of “Convenient”.

Enter the Polar Ice Tray from Lumiaire. This sleek, small loaf of bread-sized ice tray will make you a slab of nearly crystal clear ice about 6 by 5 by 1.5 inches in around twelve hours, using the same principals that Camper worked out. As you can see from my picture up top, and this one here, it is a lovely little device, too.

I cannot recommend enough how well this little guy works. Once you get the hang of it, it produces a nice supply of serving ice to have fun with and enjoy, without taking up an inordinate amount of your freezer’s limited space.

The one criticism I have of the Polar Ice Tray is the documentation, which less than adequately explains the use of the device. So I’ll give you The Missing Manual here, if you will. This part of the review is fairly in depth, so if you want to skip it for now, just jump down to the results.
Here’s an exploded diagram of each part of the Polar Ice Tray.

Only the three bottom pieces will matter most of the time. The bottom is an insulated holder. Always make sure it is dry inside and out when you get ready to make ice. The two white trays are where the ice will form. Fill the bottom tray with water almost to the top and then nestle the top tray (which has a number of small holes on the bottom) down into it. Press down and it will fit snugly. Then add more water until the level in the top tray comes about a half to a quarter inch from the top. Lift the white trays and nestle them tightly in the bottom cooler.

Place the combined pieces into your freezer. Make sure it is resting flat. The manual spends a lot of time on the temperature you should set your freezer to for optimum results. (0° C is best.) Unless you are in the terminal phases of Ice Geekery, you are unlikely to go changing the temp you like your freezer to be for this gadget, so be assured it will produce nice results at any functional level. The worst that can happen is tiny needles of air along the bottom.

What is important is where in the freezer you place the tray. Do not put it near the freezer element! If you do, you will get a giant, knobbly, frosty, permanent wave climbing out of one side of the tray. It looks weird and makes getting the ice out harder.

The closer to the chilling element you place the Polar Ice Tray, the larger this unsightly wave will get.

One more thing that is never mentioned in the manual: do not use the lid when making ice! If you do, you will not make ice at all.

A word here on how the science of the Polar Ice Tray works. When water freezes, it pushes out any dissolved air into the remaining unfrozen water. In most ice trays, the ice freezes all around the outside first. As the crystallization moves inward, the air is forced inward as well. Soon the air over-saturates the remaining water and begins to form bubbles, which freeze in place. The result is cloudy ice. In the Polar Ice Tray, the insulated container prevents the ice from forming on the sides and bottom. Instead the ice slab forms smoothly from the top down, like pond ice. The air is forced downward instead of inward.
This is where the double-boiler like construction comes in. Bubbles will not really start to form until the ice has frozen down to the bottom of the top tray. The air is forced down through the holes and forms lots of bubbles in the thin lower chamber, but few if any will be present in the big slab formed in the top tray!

When your twelve hours is up, remove the Polar Ice Tray from your freezer and lift out the white inserts. Set them aside on a counter where they can safely drip a bit and walk away for about five minutes. It’s not hard to find something to do in your bar while you wait. Clean up the bitters stains or something. The wait lets the trays come apart easily and will let the ice warm up a bit. Almost none will actually melt however. Carefully remove the lower tray. The upper tray will be filled with clear ice, and there will be a slab of gnarly white ice stuck to the bottom.

Getting this waste ice off the bottom is easy, but does require a little patience.

Run a thin stream of cold water from the tap and let it flow over the seam between the junk ice and the bottom of the upper tray. Rotate it around until a seam opens. When the seam is deep enough to reach the first holes, turn the tray upside down and gently press on the junk ice. In a few moments, the inner good ice should slip free. Discard the crap ice and you are left with a lovely slab of clear ice.

Did I say lovely? Actually, the bottom will likely have a layer of bubbles and imperfections about a millimeter deep, and the top will be fairly frosty. Don’t worry, as soon as you use the ice, this will all disappear.

All this cloudiness will vanish as soon as the ice gets immersed.

I told you to let the ice warm up a bit because if you don’t, the thermal shock of even cold tap water will shatter the slab. It doesn’t fall apart, it just has big fissures everywhere. You can still use the ice, but it won’t look as cool. And in that case, what the heck was the point?

Before you reload the Polar Ice Tray, fill the insulated bottom with warm water and let it rest of a bit. If you don’t, the cold container will let the water in the bottom chamber freeze early, and the air will end up making its last stand in the upper tray, forming bubbles there and ruining the slab.

The blue tray and its inner lid are a special mold which makes a little ice man statue. I haven’t tried it, but if you want a chunk of ice shaped like a little dude, it should be awesome. The top lid combines with the insulated bottom to make a lovely ice bucket, should you wish.

As for using the ice, you’ll probably want to knock the slab down to four or six chunks, each of which should do awesomely for a low or high ball, depending on the shape you make. My aforementioned ice guy, Camper, has a nice post on using an ice pick, and notes that the alternative ice saw is a lot of effort.
He looks like he’s using an Anvil Ice Pick, or similar Sharon Stone approved model. Single prong ice picks like this look awesome and scary, and give you tremendous control while carving ice.

Pictured: NOT Camper English.

But at fifty bucks, the Anvil is a trifle cher…. Since the only carving I’m doing right now is simply snapping the slab in straight lines, I prefer one of these. $3.25 on Amazon.

If you store your ice in the freezer before serving, be sure to let it warm up again first, or it will shock when you put it in the drink. And as to that frost of surface bubbles that may have been evident as I mentioned above? Once you put your chunk into the drink and give it a good stir (or better, pre-chill the drink in a mixing tin and pour it over the ice) the surface imperfections will disappear, and you will be left with a glorious, clear, giant chunk of diamond keeping the finished libation chilled.

Oh and the cool little ice dude whose mold I mentioned before? Apparently, he is an action hero…

Here are a few more links about U-Cube Creative, the Taiwanese firm which created the Polar Ice Tray. Founder Chu Yulong is apparently quite the cocktail lounge connoisseur. The company’s Taiwanese website (in english) shows some other products they make, including a number of other shaped Polar Ice Trays. The site is worth looking at for some creative ideas they have for using the product. I’m looking in to whether or not the other ice trays are available on this side of the Pacific. I’ve talked to someone at Lumiere, and he tells me that the Bamboo version of the Polar Ice Tray will be available in the US around the end of March!

Among the cooler things I got for Christmas this year was a Tiki vessel set, part of which you can see above. It’s a pitcher, a mug, and (under the blue umbrella and hidden by the magic Tiki volcano eruption) a shot glass. They were made and given to me by my niece Beth, who among other things is a very creative ceramic artist. She’s also a Tiki Month fan and indulges her interest by making custom, one of a kind Tiki mugs.

I like mine. They look cool. And while they don’t have smooth texture and more graphic geometry of most Tiki mugs, they definitely have the right vibe.

If you are interested in one of Beth’s creations, she has an Etsy.com shop called ElizabethJeanCreations. She seldom takes too long to sell her stuff, so there are only a few items there as I write this. If you don’t see something you like, drop her a line through the shop, or through her FaceBook page, Capricious Creations in Clay. Custom orders are no problem.

In case you think you’ve seen something like this before, I used the other mug in my set for the Nui Nui post and this one.

I was reminded by some comments today of something I’d planned to do at the start of Tiki Month, but forgot about. It’s about drinking vessels of all types, not just Tiki mugs. I try (sometimes not very hard) to produce cool illustrations to go with many of my posts (sometimes not very successfully). Other bloggers do a hugely better job than I.
Further, as I surf other bloggers’ sites and look at their drink photos, I often find myself as much interested in the container as I am in the drink. And there are few things more frustrating than looking at a gorgeous cocktail glass and having no idea of what it is, who makes it, and where I could get for my own.

You get this sensation too, don’t you? See, I feel your pain.

So I am going to start including a brief description of glasses or Tiki mugs that I photograph. It’ll include a link to wherever I can find that carries it, so you can get your own if you like.
In the event I can find it on Amazon, I’ll always link there. This is because if you follow my link to Amazon and then buy, I get a small commission at no expense to you. Consider it hitting my tip jar. If I can’t find it on Amazon, I’ll give whatever advice I can.

Here’s what it’ll look like:

Booga Booga!
(Hot Lava Java Tiki Mug: available from Amazon.com )

As I get a chance, I’ll go back through old posts and add this info as I can, starting with the post people were asking about.

A clever, easy home bar hack using IKEA stuff. The comments on IKEAHacker posts are often very helpful and insightful too.

The Liquor Fairy brings me many things, not just booze. But his little wings were beating mightily this week as he flew up with a box from Air & Water, Inc. The box contained a new model portable ice making machine called the NewAir Portable Ice Maker.

The current model is more sleekly trimmed than pictured here.

Among my most important rules for a successful Basement Bar setup is the importance of a ready supply of fresh ice. Cocktails and Ice are inseparable items, like chickens and eggs. One of the more popular posts I’ve ever written was my discussion of ice making options for your home bar. Therein, I strongly encouraged people, for a variety of reasons, to consider adding an automatic, stand-alone ice machine to their setup. I got two objections from most readers to this advice: the expense of the machines and the expense or sheer impossibility of plumbing them.

The NewAir holds at least the possibility of an answer to their pleas. I’ll talk about the machine, how it works, the ice it makes, who will want this machine, and who won’t.

The unit itself is fairly large, 17 inches by 17 by 15, and weighs about 45 pounds. It is a bit large to set on a countertop, but it really is fairly portable. It has well-placed handles, large, sturdy feet, and seems pretty durable. While it is actively making ice, you can hear it but it is not obnoxiously loud.

The way it makes ice is actually pretty ingenious. I made a YouTube video so you can watch it work.

The refrigerant is pumped through pipes connected to twelve vertical cylinders. The little bucket revolves up to contain those prongs and fills with water from the machine’s internal reservoir that doubles as a drip catcher below the finished ice bucket (not seen in the video). The NewAir holds enough water to fill its ice bucket several times.
The ice forms around the prongs. There are three ice size settings, and these merely determine how thick the ice is allowed to form. When the ice has reached the desired size (about seven minutes for the smallest setting), the bucket rotates away from the prongs and the remaining water flows back into the reservoir. You can see in the video that the refrigerant goes from cold to warm, and the ice slides right off the prongs.
After a moment, the bucket rotates back into position for the next round of ice, and the attached flipper shoves the new ice over the edge to fall into the ice bucket.
The machine is not designed to be on and running full time like a built in version that costs five times as much. The ice turns into a glob of merged pieces after a day or so, rather than cleanly melting away and being replaced. This isn’t a problem if you are using the ice all the time, but if you make a drink or two a day, take advantage of the automatic timer to ensure you have fresh ice ready for you at cocktail hour. On the other hand, it is very easy to maintain, with a swift and effective self-cleaning mode.

So what is all this ice like? Each piece is a rounded, hollow cone, about an inch and a half long. It is also filled with microbubbles so it’s white rather than clear. Finally, it is pretty warm ice, coming out of the machine right at 32 degrees. As an aside, the little flanges you see in the video on the top of the ice are due to leaving the door open while videoing the mechanism. The actual ice produced is much cleaner in appearance. The ice has a large surface area to mass ratio and is warm. This means it will start melting pretty quickly in a glass or mixing tin.

In short, the ice geeks and cocktail showmen are not going to like this ice.
But then, mostly they don’t like any ice from a machine, preferring to fill a freezer with all manner of fancy ice trays and molds, or hack away like Sharon Stone on a huge block of the crystal clear stuff, so the Camper Englishes of the world really aren’t the issue here.

First off, I think the ice is just fine in the tin for shaking and stirring. I know some mixers swear by “super cold” ice, but the science (and my own experimentation) says that most all of the chilling from ice comes at the moment it melts. Using cold ice may make your drink at most a degree or two colder, but actually takes longer to get there. “Warm ice”, especially with lots of surface area, can chill a drink faster than anything else, with only a very little more dilution.
Additionally, unlike with plumbed-in ice makers like mine, you can be as big a water snob as you like with the NewAir. Use Fiji water or even Perrier I suppose. I use water from my Brita filter and the ice tastes great.
For serving in a glass, the NewAir’s ice is less ideal. It really isn’t a pretty as cubes, and its propensity to melt quickly makes for dilution issues if you are a slower drinker.

OK, who would find this machine a great buy, and who won’t?
I see two main categories of buyer who will be happy with the NewAir. The first is a lot of the people for whom I’ve been writing my Basement Bar Design series. If you are putting together a bar for your home, don’t have a massive budget and/or can’t get running water into your chosen space, the machine will get you plentiful ice for everyday use at a great price. Home bar builders who have available plumbing and sufficient budget will be much happier with a built-in system.

This guy needs a NewAir….

An even better buyer for this machine is the mobile mixer. If you like to tailgate, camp out, or own an RV, a continuous supply of fresh ice will save you from the utter barbarity of no Martinis. Of course, if you want to run the NewAir in the woods so you can sip a Pegu while fishing in that remote stream, you’ll need power. The machine takes 400 watts, and most trees don’t have electrical outlets. Ditto for stadium parking lots. If this is your desired application, be sure to purchase a power inverter so you can run it off your car. Be sure to get one that wires into your battery directly, as the NewAir draws too much power for the inverters that just plug into the cigarette lighter.

The NewAir doesn’t make perfect ice. If you enjoy being persnickity about your ice, or view it as a garnish, this machine will likely not meet your needs. If you need a lot of fresh ice for mixing cocktails, or chilling juices, sodas, or basic mixed drinks like Rum and Cokes or Screwdrivers, it will provide plenty of the cool stuff fairly conveniently and for a very reasonable price. I like the machine. It is an ingenious design, the maker has a number of previous models, so they have had the chance to refine and improve what they are doing. I haven’t had it long enough to really vouch for its durability, but as I mentioned before, both the stainless steel case and the mechanism seem pretty sturdy. If you need what a portable ice maker can give you, I can definitely recommend the NewAir. UPDATE: If you decide to get a NewAir directly from the company, you can get an extra 10% off the price by entering the discount code: “PEGU” at checkout!

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, NewAir Portable Ice Maker, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss it.
For a complete disclosure of my policies regarding promotional items and all other financial interests, please click this link, or follow the Liquor Fairy link in the header of this page.

If you want to follow this specific series of posts on the Pegu Blog, you can subscribe to our Basement Bar feed here. Or you can just subscribe to the entire blog, with all its brilliant content, here!
Here’s a list of the other articles in this series that have been posted so far:

• Basement Bar Accessories #10: The NewAir Portable Ice Maker
• Basement Bar Accessories #6: DIY Kegerator
• Basement Bar Accessories: Herbal Assault Part 1
• Basement Bar Design #0: Introduction
• Basement Bar Design #1: Where, What, and Why.
• Basement Bar Design #2: Refrigerators
• Basement Bar Design #3: Ice Supply
• Basement Bar Design #4(a): Essential Glassware
• Basement Bar Design #4(b): Supplemental Glassware
• Basement Bar Design #4(c): Buying Glassware
• Basement Bar Design #5: Water and Washing Up
• Basement Bar Design #6: My Own Basement Bar
• Basement Bar Design #7: Bar Top and Countertop Surfaces
• Basement Bar Design #8(a): Artists
• Basement Bar Design #8(b) More Artists
• Basement Bar Design #8: Artwork
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #1: Lit Backbar Walls
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #2: Holiday Glassware Giveaways
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #3: Beer Dispensing from Heineken and Elsewhere
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #4: Branded Beer Taps
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #5: Pure American Ingenuity
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #7: The Man Wall
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #8: The Arkeg
• Basement Bar Design Accessories #9: Global Domination
• Basement Bar Design Accessories: Hidden Lairs
• Basement Bar Design Elsewhere in the Cocktailosphere
• Basement Bar Design Elsewhere in the Cocktailosphere #2
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #1: Sheds
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #2: Dangerous Party Invitees
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #3: Irish Pub in a (really big) Box
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #4: Mr. Blendtec, activate the defenses!
• Basement Bar Design Factoid #5: 1800 Tequila's Mancave Contest
• Basement Bar Design News: The Wall Street Journal Notices That Home Bars Are "In"
• Basement Bar Design, Things to Consider #1: The Bargain
• Basement Bar Design: A Tour of the Parade of Homes
• Basement Bar Design: Star Trek Doors
• Bulletin, Bulletin, Bulletin!
• Christmas Idea: Martini Shaker
• I Saved at Least $10,000 Because of Cocktail Blogging...
• New Basement Bar Contest From Grant's Whisky
• New Blog Function
• SideBlog: A Really Clever, Easy IKEA Home Bar
• SideBlog: Basement Bars Are Helm's Deep For Men
• SideBlog: Blender Drink Aficionados Booking For Europe With Spare Luggage Space
• SideBlog: Making Tiki Stuff: Royal Tiki
• SideBlog: New York Post Notices February is a Good Time For Tiki Month
• The Bar Accessory The EVERY Cocktail Geek Must Obtain
• The Sixth Day of Christmas
• Tiki Timeout: Bar Building and BlogBarCrawl Update
• Trader Tiki's Basement Bar in the News
• Unique Tiki Mugs
• Wow, They Even Have Black Friday Sales In the Cocktail World....

OK folks, I’m going to take the risk of starting a series of posts that will stretch out over a series of weeks before it goes anywhere. I’ve always avoided multi-part posts because, well, I always assume I’ll wake up one day and start forgetting to blog.

I just went through a Winter of not enough herbs in my bar, especially mint. Even though it is Spring now, and my unkillable mint is returning to entirely too many parts of my garden, I’m going to blog the prgress of my new Basement Bar essential. I stole my wife’s AeroGarden and set it up as a now permanent fixture at the end of the Pegu Lounge.
I planted lemongrass, basil, and two kinds of mint. At each stage of it’s progress, I post again until I’m getting lots of delicious fresh herbs for my drinks and you have to start suffering through posts about Basiljitos and endless mint juleps.
Cheers!

I have a cocktail call to arms! It is time for all good culinary and cocktail enthusiasts to flex their consumer muscle to try to bring back a truly essential product.
Via the comments in a thread at A Mountain of Crushed Ice, I learned that OXO has decided to discontinue what is perhaps the most essential bar accessory out there, the OXO 2 oz. mini measuring cup!

This little measuring cup is simply the best jigger out there. If you are making cocktails that require precision, or you are cooking and use small amounts of ingredients, these little cups, with markings as low as 1/4 oz. or 10 ml, are a very valuable tool. Tiara asks in her post what everyone’s favorite jigger is, and the hands down winner is the OXO. But Jim of Vessel alerts us in the comments that OXO has discontinued them!
I immediately called OXO to confirm this. The lady I spoke to had no explanation but did confirm that OXO no longer makes the mini measure. She also said that they had received a surprisingly large number of complaints, especially from bartenders and other cocktailians, about the move.
I think we need to encourage everyone we know to contact OXO and ask that they return the cups to production. They are tracking the response they get.
To contact OXO, you can email them at info@oxo.com, call them at (800) 545-4411, or use their web contact page.
There are still some of the cups out there in the supply chain. Amazon has two links to the plastic version (here and here) and one for the stainless steel. As of this writing, there was still stock left at each. But it would be a shame if this product stays out of production. Contact OXO and save the world’s best jigger!

Welcome Bostonist readers! While you are here, please look around. It is Tiki Month here at the Pegu Blog (thus the weird theme), and I have some more thoughts here about the Cocktail Apocalypse as well.

More: Down in the comments, I am reminded that these mini measures really are useful for cooking, too. And for those with dexterity issues, they may be easier to manipulate than standard measuring spoons. Why then are they being discontinued? One, I think OXO missed the boat on marketing the cocktail angle, and two, I think they are just too darn cute to be taken seriously by a lot of cooks.

You probably get as many emails as I do about Black Friday sales. But this year brings the first I’ve seen for a bar products company.
BarSupplies.com is running a series of specials for your home bar, or for the real bartender in your home. They have lots of gift packs, including ones for guys who are into drinks, girls who are into drinks, and for either sex who is into wine.
They also are touting a lot of specialized bar equipment, some of which I had not seen before. Much of it is “for the trade”, but there is a lot that could interest the obsessed amateur like myself as well.
And as a centerpiece for all their specials, BarSupplies has put together this YouTube video, with your host “Lindsay” (whose name is in quotes for some reason), in which she demonstrates the products on special and allows you to benefit from her vast… experience.

I actually did learn of some things I’d like. For those of you on the building a basement bar odyssey, the video and the site are worth a look. They have good entries in the basic glassware category, as well as fun stuff to augment your decorating choices.
In conclusion, while Barsupplies may not be a blog, I will say that they understand Rule 5 quite well.