How To Make Clear Ice - [New Info] Blueberry farm

1) Clear Ice in a Cooler – Fill a small cooler with 5-6 inches of water and place it in a freezer with the lid off. After 20-24 hours, there will be a 3-4 inch ice block with water under the ice. All the air and impurities will be in the unfrozen water leaving crystal-clear ice cubes. Remove the ice and use a serrated knife and cutting board to cut the ice block into your desired ice shape.

Pros: Low cost (most people already have a cooler) Cons: Can require a lot of freezer space, Requires ice carving, Doesn’t produce perfect shapes

Does boiling water make clear ice?

1. Boil water to make clear ice cubes – Boiling water to obtain clear ice cubes may seem counterproductive, but this trick is highly effective. It is the impurities present in the water that give the ice cubes their opacity and whitish color. Invisible in the liquid state, these small impurities appear when the water solidifies.

Bring the water to a boil and then let it cool Once the water has cooled, bring it back to a boil and let it cool down again Place the water in your ice cube tray Cover your tray with plastic wrap to prevent air from getting into the water Let your ice cubes harden for at least two hours

Once the ice cubes have solidified, run a stream of water over them to defrost their face. This will give you crystal clear ice cubes. Note that results may vary depending on the composition of the water you use, the size of the molds used and your freezer. Are you a cocktail lover and want to get started in mixology? Read our article to know how to assemble your mixology kit with tools like an expert at home,

What makes ice completely clear?

Cloudy vs Clear Ice – What’s the Difference? Which is Better? Ever wonder why some ice is cloudy, and some ice is clear? Well today you’re going to find out! Ice that comes out of a kitchen ice machine or ice cube tray is usually white or cloudy in the middle. The reason this happens is because when water is put into a tray and left to freeze, it freezes from the outside in.

The first thing to freeze is the cleanest, purest water—which means air bubbles, minerals and impurities get pushed towards the middle of the cube.
That’s what causes the cloudiness.
Commercial ice machines usually circulate water over a plate/grid that is freezing cold.
This causes ice to freeze from the inside out, or one layer at a time.

The cleanest, purest water freezes, and the minerals, impurities and air bubbles continue moving along. So the clear ice cubes made by commercial ice makers are simply made of the purest water. That’s why they’re clear! Other than just looking nice —clear ice has some other benefits over cloudy ice:

Because it’s only water, it’s denser so it melts more slowly and lasts longer. (Air and impurities make it melt away more quickly.) Pure water makes ice taste better. Therefore, whatever you put it in tastes better! A cloudy cube will shrink because the air pockets will cause some evaporation, so you end up with less ice than you actually made.

Now next time you notice a beautiful piece of clear ice in your drink or cooler, you’ll be in-the-know. Commercial grade ice machines make clear ice cubes—and if you’re looking for the right ice machine that suits your needs—let us help. At Memphis Ice Machine Co., we clearly love ice machines, and want to make ice-making easy for you! : Cloudy vs Clear Ice – What’s the Difference? Which is Better?

Do you need distilled water to make clear ice?

The Trick to Making Nearly 100% Clear Ice at Home A great summer cocktail needs three things: fresh ingredients, quality liquor, and to be as bracingly cold as possible the entire time it takes to drink it. It’s this last step where most home mixologists are likely to falter.

If you want to raise your game, you can’t just go about sticking trays in the freezer. Even with purified water and cocktail-style trays the ice will freeze from all sides, trapping air in the center, which means cracks, faster melting, or worse: ice that smells like a freezer. The pros, however, make sure their ice freezes clear and hard, and the only way to do this is to get out the air that naturally inhabits (and makes cloudy) even purified water.

Matt Piacentini, owner of, in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, struggled with this around 2008, when he was developing the bar service at the since-closed ‘inoteca e Liquori Bar in New York. Back then, he said, “the only way to get really pure ice was to purchase this machine, which was huge and expensive.” A block ice machine from the company costs upwards of $6000.00 “Nobody had the space or money for a machine like that just for ice,” he said, “so we kept trying to figure out ways to get the gas out on our own.” But nothing really worked—the ice was always cloudy—until one day, while looking at an ice cube, he had a brainstorm: “I’m looking at it, and I realize it’s cloudy right in the middle because it’s freezing from the outside in, which means that as the water freezes, it pushes the impurities away.

I realized if you could get it to freeze in just one direction, you’d get all the bubbles off to one side and could just scrape them off.” In a moment of synchronicity, a friend had shown Piacentini : an insulated box with a metal screen near the bottom for cutting off cloudy ice. It was, essentially, a small plastic cooler.

Inspired, Piacentini said he “started buying Igloo coolers and filling them with water. It worked like a charm—the water freezes cold and hard until it gets to the bottom. You can then just cut or scrape the cloudy ice off, or if you time it right, you can get the ice out before the cloudy part freezes.” After the ice has been removed from the cooler, part of it will be cloudy—you can just chip that away.

Get a hard-sided, insulated cooler (the bigger the better, but it’ll need to fit in your freezer). Open or remove the lid. Fill it with water about 3/4 full. Any fuller and you risk swelling the cooler. Distilled water will give you slightly more clear ice, but any clean water should work. Put it in the freezer, leaving the lid off or removed. Check it after about 12–14 hours. If you’ve timed it right, you can get the ice out just before the cloud of bubbles starts forming at the bottom. If you leave it too long, you can just scrape the cloudy part off. Remove the cooler, and let it sit long enough that the ice melts a little, about 5 to 30 minutes. Then flip it over and let the ice slide out. Put the ice on a cookie sheet, and either use an ice pick to break it apart or tap it lightly with a cleaver crack it into cubes.

: The Trick to Making Nearly 100% Clear Ice at Home

How do I make crystal clear ice cubes?

How to Make Clear Ice at Home By Layla Khoury-Hanold for Food Network Kitchen Layla Khoury-Hanold is a contributor at Food Network. Maybe you’ve heard mixologists geeking out over ice behind the bar. Or maybe you’ve noticed that bars sometimes list the type of ice in a drink.

Ice, and more specifically, clear ice, is an essential ingredient in a high-quality craft cocktail. To help explain why clear ice matters and offer tips on making clear ice cubes at home, we consulted Becky Hammond, Director of Beverage at, a popular cocktail bar in Raleigh, North Carolinla. Using a proprietary machine, STIR produces two 300-pound blocks of ice every two to three days, which an “ice chef” then cuts to create seven different styles of ice.

ahirao_photo/Getty Images Hammond explains that different types of ice melt at different rates. In cocktail-making, this means the variety of ice affects the cocktail’s rate of dilution as well as its consistency, which allows the other ingredients to be tasted at their fullest.

Here’s where clear ice comes into play. Yes, it’s visually striking. Yes, it signals time, craftmanship and value because it’s difficult to create. But it also melts more slowly than cloudy ice because it’s denser – it contains fewer air bubbles. The bartenders at STIR match the style of cocktail or spirit with the type of ice cube that will offer the correct rate of dilution.

Take note. Large clear rocks are king for chilling but not over diluting cocktails like old fashioned’s, which are sipped slowly. Smaller clear rocks are ideal for quick sippers like palomas. And sphere-shaped clear ice is perfect for keeping every sip of whiskey the same temperature and flavor.

There are many, many tips and tricks for achieving clear ice.
Most of them involve starting with the right type of water.
We tested all the methods to find the ones that work – so you don’t have to.
We froze tap water, hot boiled distilled water, warm boiled distilled water and room temperature distilled water in regular ice cube trays over the course of 24 hours.

We found that making ice with hot boiled distilled water provided the clearest results, but the ice cubes were still not crystal-clear. Going through all that work only to achieve not-quite clear ice cubes did not seem worth it. We changed tactics and – bingo – finally succeeded.

We were able to achieve crystal clear ice cubes using a specialized ice cube tray that allows for directional freezing.
Directional freezing is the process of forcing water to freeze in a singular direction.
As Hammond explains, in a regular ice cube tray, water can freeze in any direction and the impurities will be scattered through the ice.

If the water is frozen in a singular direction, the impurities and air will all be forced out in the same direction, leaving the ice clear except for a small section. Many bartenders and at-home enthusiasts employ directional freezing in a technique that involves making ice inside of a cooler inside of a freezer, then sawing the large block into smaller pieces with a serrated knife or chiseling it with an ice pick.

While the method works, you need to have a lot of freezer space and patience.
We prefer investing in an inexpensive special clear ice cube tray and then following the steps below.
Cavan Images/Getty Images Most clear ice molds come in two pieces: a bottom tray and the ice cube molds.
Fill the bottom tray with a couple inches of water.

Fit the ice cube molds on top of the bottom tray, fill them with water (regular old tap water is fine!) and place the lid on top. Place the mold in the freezer Remove the ice cube mold from the bottom tray before the whole bottom tray freezes. The sweet spot is typically 16 to 18 hours.

Here’s why. The unit will freeze from top to bottom (much like the way a lake freezes). As this happens, impurities and air are forced out of the cubes and into the bottom chamber (hello, clear ice). If you let the whole bottom chamber freeze, the air can be forced back into your ice cubes, making cloudy results.

Store it in an airtight container in the freezer. To make clear ice at home, Hammond recommends using water that is either distilled or ultra-filtered (carbon and sediment filtration, at a minimum). Bring water to a boil. Does Boiling Water Make Clear Ice Cubes? Hammond says that water must be boiled for de-aeration: “Boiling will remove dissolved oxygen and other gases, as the solubility of gases in a liquid decrease as temperature increases.” Still, it should be noted that although boiled water will create clearer ice cubes than if you used tap water, if you’re using a regular ice cube tray the water will freeze in multiple directions, which allows impurities to be scattered throughout the ice cube.

Carefully pour hot water into your clear ice cube trays or molds.
Use trays or molds that are made from materials that are naturally insulating, such as silicone.
Carefully transfer the ice cube tray or mold to the freezer, ensuring that it lays flat directly on the freezer shelf or rack.
Freeze your ice cubes for about 24 hours.

Hammond says that slow freezing is vital because it allows enough time for impurities to be forced out of the ice. She likens it to how lake water freezes slowly, so that by the time the lake is frozen solid, the top appears glass-like. To prevent your ice from picking up odors or ice crystals, transfer the ice cubes from the tray to a freezer-safe, air-tight container for storage.

You might be interested: What Are Rabbit Eye Blueberry Bushes In Ohio?

Why is homemade ice not clear?

The Science Behind Clear Ice – Without turning this into a physics lesson, here’s what to know about clear versus cloudy ice. Cloudiness is caused by light being dispersed. Ice made at home or in most commercial freezers has lots of mineral impurities and air bubbles frozen in relatively small ice crystals.

These impurities and small crystals create many surfaces within the ice that scatter light; since the light cannot travel in a straight line, the ice appears cloudy. This is where directional freezing comes into play.The directional freezing method—made popular by alcohol writer and educator Camper English, founder of Alcademics and Cocktailsafe.org —replicates the way water freezes in a lake: from the top down, and typically at a slow rate.

In a lake, the water freezes this way because it is insulated by land on all sides; as a result, 99% of the water’s impurities are pushed to the bottom, leaving the purest ice at the top. Sounds simple enough, but most ice molds freeze from all sides, creating cloudiness in the end result.It doesn’t matter what kind of water you use, whether boiled, distilled, or filtered: None of these variations affect the clarity of the ice.

Does salt water clear ice?

How to clear snow and ice – When you clear snow and ice:

do it early in the day – it’s easier to move fresh, loose snow don’t use water – it might refreeze and turn to black ice use salt if possible – it will melt the ice or snow and stop it from refreezing overnight (but don’t use the salt from salting bins as this is used to keep roads clear) you can use ash and sand if you don’t have enough salt – it will provide grip underfoot pay extra attention when clearing steps and steep pathways – using more salt may help

Can you make clear ice with tap water?

Tips and Tricks for Clear Ice Clear ice forms when water is pure and doesn’t contain dissolved gases. The easiest way to make clear ice is to use boiled water. photo by dasar/Getty Images While you are making glow in the dark ice, why not make some clear ice? There is a “trick” to making clear ice cubes, but it isn’t complicated and doesn’t require an expensive restaurant ice machine.

You need pure water and you need to control how it cools.
The ice maker in a typical home freezer has a water filter, but usually produces opaque ice.
This is because the water doesn’t cool at the right rate to produce clear ice or else there is a lot of air in the water.
Clear ice is easily made using bottled water that had been purified using reverse osmosis or distillation, but you can make clear ice from tap water.

To do this, boil the water to remove most of the dissolved air. Ideally you want to boil the water, let it cool, then reboil again, But, you should be able to get good results just boiling the water once. Let the water cool slightly to minimize the risk of getting burned and then pour it into an ice cube tray and put it in the freezer.

So, you can make clear ice by boiling and freezing filtered water, but the cooling rate is also important. If the ice freezes too slowly the result is milky on the bottom and clear on top. Unfortunately, you don’t have a lot of control over the freezer’s cooling rate. You can play with the starting temperature of the water until you get the results you desire.

What can you do with clear ice? One thing you can do is to use it as a magnifying glass. In a pinch, you can use an ice lens to start a fire. Also, unless you like the taste of quinine, clear ice tastes a lot better in drinks than glowing ice,

Does boiling water twice make clear ice?

The Trick to Making Perfectly Clear Ice Cubes With the rise of fancy-cocktail bars has come an increased attention to all aspects of the drinking experience—the liquors and the recipes, sure, but also the ice cubes. Or ice balls, or cylinders, or chips, or shards, depending on your tipple.

You’ll notice one commonality among the different shapes, though: this stuff tends to be crystal-clear. Like, you could read the New Yorker through it. Your ice cubes at home? Not so much. Regular tap water, frozen in an ice-cube tray, usually looks a little cloudy, the result of impurities and air bubbles that get pushed to the center of the cube as it freezes.

Fancy-cocktail places spend piles of money on technology that avoids this problem—, which freezes ice from the bottom so the air bubbles are pushed to the top, where the water is circulated, so they dissipate. This machine costs, well, a ton, and, uh, probably won’t fit in your kitchen. The most elaborate way to do this is to use a cooler. Pour some water in it and, presuming you’ve got an empty freezer handy, stick it in there. As Bon Appétit, the ice will freeze from the top, pushing all the air bubbles to the bottom; the trick is to take the ice out of the cooler before the cloudy part freezes, or to chip it off afterward.

(For an added artisanal touch, the ice is then broken apart with a sharp or heavy instrument, but you could also stick an ice cube tray in the bottom of the cooler for easier handling.) Say you’re not blessed with all the freezer space in the world, though. What then? You can push some of the air out of that water ahead of time if you, once or twice, before freezing.

You can also get a head start if you use distilled, rather than tap, water. I tried this and other techniques at home recently, taking my advice from various corners of the internet and working at escalating levels of fussiness. Boiling tap water once.

I brought water to a boil—regular, sweet, delicious New York —and poured it into an ice cube tray.
These ice cubes came out looking pretty much like regular ice cubes.
Boiling tap water twice.
I boiled water once, left it alone for about a half hour, and then boiled it again.
The ice cubes that resulted still had a little cloud in the center, but they were noticeably clearer elsewhere—you could see all the way through to the other side.

Boiling distilled water once. This, too, didn’t make a whole lot of difference. Boiling distilled water twice. Hark! The clearest ice yet. It wasn’t crystal, but all the air had been consigned to a little cloud toward the bottom of the cube of ice, and the rest of it was beautifully translucent—something you could feel a little bit proud to serve to guests. : The Trick to Making Perfectly Clear Ice Cubes

Why is my ice white and not clear?

Have you noticed that your commercial ice maker has been a little off lately when it comes to ice production? Perhaps it has started producing white and frosty ice rather than the familiar, clear ice your customers love in their cocktails. White ice can be an indicator there is more than meets the eye with your ice maker, so having it inspected by a Dallas restaurant equipment repair team or any of our certified service technicians within our 28 other locations, may be necessary.

Below, the General Parts Group team has collected some insightful information for you about the importance of maintenance when ice makers produce white ice.
What Causes Ice to Turn White? Ice appears white when it contains trapped air bubbles and minerals.
Some of the more common impurities found in water are minerals like calcium and magnesium, as well as sediment.

As these things freeze, gases are released, creating air bubbles and causing ice to shrink on occasion. If you have noticed that your ice maker appears to be producing ice of a smaller size, this is likely the issue. What Happens if Ice is White? Since white ice is created by trapped air, it also causes it to melt faster.

The minerals present in white ice can also give it a bitter or metallic taste, affecting the quality of the beverages you serve.
If your commercial kitchen is known for its beverages or prides itself on producing high-quality frozen products, such as smoothies or other foods, boosting water quality will benefit your business.

How Can I Fix it? You can prevent your commercial ice maker from producing white ice by having a restaurant repair team in Dallas regularly service it. Investing in a water filtration system is another way you can remove any impurities and offer high-quality water to your clients.

Some commercial kitchens also invest in reverse osmosis systems, which are designed to remove nearly all of the solids in your drinking water.
General Parts Group can clear up your white ice problem! One of the easiest ways to return your commercial ice maker to normal is by having a professional take a look at it.

General Parts Group has 29 service locations throughout the United States, equipped to perform maintenance and repairs on nearly any commercial appliance, so contact us today !

Why does warm water make clear ice?

Less Dissolved Air – Hot water has less dissolved air to begin with, so it makes fewer bubbles when it freezes. To convince yourself hot water holds less dissolved air than cold water, think of what happens when you heat water in a saucepan on the stove.

Long before the water gets hot enough to boil, tiny bubbles form on the bottom of the pan.
Those tiny bubbles are air coming out of solution as the water warms up.
The same thing happens in your hot water heater.
Or, think of an aquarium: if the temperature is too warm, fish die, partly because the warm water holds too little oxygen (t).

Getting back to ice cubes: if some dissolved air has already been removed from water by heating, less air will be left to emerge as bubbles when you freeze the water in an ice tray. So, the secret to making clear ice cubes is to start with hot water.

Why is tap water ice not clear?

What Causes Cloudy Ice? – Ice cubes may come out of the freezer with an opaque appearance for many reasons. One of the most common reasons is that a home’s water has not been properly filtered and purified. In this case, cloudy ice may be caused by contaminants like tannins, minerals, and other dissolved solids. At Aquarius Water Conditioning, we always recommend Kinetico water filtration systems and water softeners, as they consistently and efficiently provide the cleanest water at an affordable price. Once you have a proper water filtration and purification system in place, you’ll likely notice a major difference in the taste and texture of your home’s drinking water.

This will translate directly to the quality of ice you make in ice cube trays or from your freezer’s ice maker. If your home is already furnished with a high-quality water filtration and purification system but your ice still looks cloudy, the freezing process may be to blame. In a typical home freezer, water is surrounded by frigid air, causing ice cubes to freeze from the outside in.

This forces air bubbles, and potentially impurities, toward the middle of the ice cube to freeze last, giving ice a cloudy appearance. The presence of air within an ice cube can also give it an “off” flavor.

Why is clear ice better?

There are perfectly good reasons to prefer clear ice. Not only does cloudy ice look bad in otherwise attractive drinks, but air bubbles cause ice to melt more quickly and unevenly, potentially spoiling your expensive spirits. Good ice actually makes drinks taste better.

Does hot water freeze faster?

Yes—a general explanation – Hot water can in fact freeze faster than cold water for a wide range of experimental conditions. This phenomenon is extremely counterintuitive, and surprising even to most scientists, but it is in fact real. It has been seen and studied in numerous experiments,

Although this phenomenon has been known for centuries, and was described by Aristotle, Bacon, and Descartes, it was not introduced to the modern scientific community until 1969, by a Tanzanian high school pupil named Mpemba.
Both the early scientific history of this effect, and the story of Mpemba’s rediscovery of it, are interesting in their own right — Mpemba’s story in particular providing a dramatic parable against making snap judgements about what is impossible.

This is described separately below. The phenomenon that hot water may freeze faster than cold is often called the Mpemba effect. Because, no doubt, most readers are extremely skeptical at this point, we should begin by stating precisely what we mean by the Mpemba effect.

We start with two containers of water, which are identical in shape, and which hold identical amounts of water.
The only difference between the two is that the water in one is at a higher (uniform) temperature than the water in the other.
Now we cool both containers, using the exact same cooling process for each container.

Under some conditions the initially warmer water will freeze first. If this occurs, we have seen the Mpemba effect. Of course, the initially warmer water will not freeze before the initially cooler water for all initial conditions. If the hot water starts at 99.9°C, and the cold water at 0.01°C, then clearly under those circumstances, the initially cooler water will freeze first.

But under some conditions the initially warmer water will freeze first: if that happens, you have seen the Mpemba effect. But you will not see the Mpemba effect for just any initial temperatures, container shapes, or cooling conditions. This seems impossible, right? Many sharp readers may have already come up with a common proof that the Mpemba effect is impossible.

You might be interested: What Is The Difference Between Acai Berry And Blueberry?

The proof usually goes something like this. Say that the initially cooler water starts at 30°C and takes 10 minutes to freeze, while the initially warmer water starts out at 70°C. Now the initially warmer water has to spend some time cooling to get to get down to 30°C, and after that, it’s going to take 10 more minutes to freeze.

So since the initially warmer water has to do everything that the initially cooler water has to do, plus a little more, it will take at least a little longer, right? What can be wrong with this proof? What’s wrong with this proof is that it implicitly assumes that the water is characterized solely by a single number — its average temperature.

But if other factors besides the average temperature are important, then when the initially warmer water has cooled to an average temperature of 30°C, it may look very different than the initially cooler water (at a uniform 30°C) did at the start. Why? Because the water may have changed when it cooled down from a uniform 70°C to an average 30°C.

It could have less mass, less dissolved gas, or convection currents producing a non-uniform temperature distribution.
Or it could have changed the environment around the container in the refrigerator.
All four of these changes are conceivably important, and each will be considered separately below.
So the impossibility proof given above doesn’t work.

And in fact the Mpemba effect has been observed in a number of controlled experiments It is still not known exactly why this happens. A number of possible explanations for the effect have been proposed, but so far the experiments do not show clearly which, if any, of the proposed mechanisms is the most important one.

While you will often hear confident claims that X is the cause of the Mpemba effect, such claims are usually based on guesswork, or on looking at the evidence in only a few papers and ignoring the rest.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with informed theoretical guesswork or being selective in which experimental results you trust; the problem is that different people make different claims as to what X is.

Why hasn’t modern science answered this seemingly simple question about cooling water? The main problem is that the time it takes water to freeze is highly sensitive to a number of details in the experimental setup, such as the shape and size of the container, the shape and size of the refrigeration unit, the gas and impurity content of the water, how the time of freezing is defined, and so on.

Because of this sensitivity, while experiments have generally agreed that the Mpemba effect occurs, they disagree over the conditions under which it occurs, and thus about why it occurs.
As Firth wrote “There is a wealth of experimental variation in the problem so that any laboratory undertaking such investigations is guaranteed different results from all others.” So with the limited number of experiments done, often under very different conditions, none of the proposed mechanisms can be confidently proclaimed as “the” mechanism.

Above we described four ways in which the initially warmer water could have changed upon cooling to the initial temperature of the initially cooler water. What follows below is a short description of the four related mechanisms that have been suggested to explain the Mpemba effect.

Evaporation — As the initially warmer water cools to the initial temperature of the initially cooler water, it may lose significant amounts of water to evaporation. The reduced mass will make it easier for the water to cool and freeze. Then the initially warmer water can freeze before the initially cooler water, but will make less ice. Theoretical calculations have shown that evaporation can explain the Mpemba effect if you assume that the water loses heat solely through evaporation, This explanation is solid, intuitive, and evaporation is undoubtedly important in most situations. But it is not the only mechanism. Evaporation cannot explain experiments that were done in closed containers, where no mass was lost to evaporation, And many scientists have claimed that evaporation alone is insufficient to explain their results,
Dissolved Gasses — Hot water can hold less dissolved gas than cold water, and large amounts of gas escape upon boiling. So the initially warmer water may have less dissolved gas than the initially cooler water. It has been speculated that this changes the properties of the water in some way, perhaps making it easier to develop convection currents (and thus making it easier to cool), or decreasing the amount of heat required to freeze a unit mass of water, or changing the boiling point. There are some experiments that favor this explanation, but no supporting theoretical calculations.
Convection — As the water cools it will eventually develop convection currents and a non-uniform temperature distribution. At most temperatures, density decreases with increasing temperature, and so the surface of the water will be warmer than the bottom: this has been called a “hot top.” Now if the water loses heat primarily through the surface, then water with a “hot top” will lose heat faster than we would expect based on its average temperature. When the initially warmer water has cooled to an average temperature the same as the initial temperature of the initially cooler water, it will have a “hot top”, and thus its rate of cooling will be faster than the rate of cooling of the initially cooler water at the same average temperature. Got all that? You might want to read this paragraph again, paying careful distinction to the difference between initial temperature, average temperature, and temperature. While experiments have seen the “hot top”, and related convection currents, it is unknown whether convection can by itself explain the Mpemba effect.
Surroundings — A final difference between the cooling of the two containers relates not to the water itself, but to the surrounding environment. The initially warmer water may change the environment around it in some complex fashion, and thus affect the cooling process. For example, if the container is sitting on a layer of frost which conducts heat poorly, the hot water may melt that layer of frost, and thus establish a better cooling system in the long run. Obviously explanations like this are not very general, since most experiments are not done with containers sitting on layers of frost.

Finally, supercooling may be important to the effect. Supercooling occurs when the water freezes not at 0°C, but at some lower temperature. One experiment found that its initially hot water supercooled less than its initially cold water. This would mean that the initially warmer water might freeze first because it would freeze at a higher temperature than the initially cooler water.

If true, this would not fully explain the Mpemba effect, because we would still need to explain why initially warmer water supercools less than initially cooler water.
In short, hot water does freeze sooner than cold water under a wide range of circumstances.
It is not impossible, and has been seen to occur in a number of experiments.

But despite claims often made by one source or another, there is no well-agreed explanation for how this phenomenon occurs. Different mechanisms have been proposed, but the experimental evidence is inconclusive. For those wishing to read more on the subject, Jearl Walker’s article in Scientific American is very readable and has suggestions on how to do home experiments on the Mpemba effect, while the articles by Auerbach and Wojciechowski are two of the more modern papers on the effect.

Why is ice not crystal clear?

How long does it take for clear ice to form? – Clear ice is a slow, meaningful process that requires the right approach, equipment, and investment. Rushed ice isn’t clear the way you want it to be. Instead, you’ll deal with cloudy ice time and time again.

Clear ice is clear because it’s built of fewer and larger crystals. Cloudy ice is the result of many smaller crystals, which refract visible light and appear cloudy. That speed, as we’ve mentioned before, traps naturally occurring minerals, organic matter, and gases in the middle of the ice cube. A slow, measured approach to ice-making results in crystal clear ice—every single time.

Generally, it takes between one to two days to freeze and produce large quantities of crystal ice ready to serve to thirsty customers. This is our favorite thing about clear ice: it melts slower than cloudy ice! Since there is no gas trying to get out of clear ice, your ice takes longer to shift back into a liquid.

How do bars make clear ice cubes?

The Science of Clear Ice – Clear ice is obtained through a process commonly referred to as directional freezing. Frequently used in biomimetic material design, the concept behind it is controlling the direction in which the liquid solidifies. If it solidifies from one side only, the process pushes impurities and tiny air bubbles in one direction, resulting in a pure, clear uniform structure of the final product.

In the context of ice, it means insulating five of the six sides of the container that holds water (all four sides and the bottom) to force the water to freeze from top to bottom, allowing the cloudiness from any sediment and trapped oxygen to form at the very end, at the bottom of the cube.
When it’s done properly, the freezing process will be interrupted prior to the cloudy part forming, leaving you with a crystal-clear block.

Clear ice blocks before being cut and shaped. Meg Krench

Why is clear ice such a problem?

TYPES OF ICING – The three main types of ice accretion, in order of their hazard to flying, are as follows: CLEAR ICE Clear ice or glaze ice is a heavy coating of glassy ice which forms when flying in areas with high concentration of large supercooled water droplets, such as cumuliform clouds and freezing rain.

It spreads, often unevenly, over wing and tail surfaces, propeller blades, antennas, etc.
Clear ice forms when only a small part of the supercooled water droplet freezes on impact.
The temperature of the aircraft skin rises to 0°C with the heat released during that initial freezing by impact of the part of the droplet.

A large portion of the droplet is left to spread out, mingle with other droplets before slowly and finally freezing. A solid sheet of clear ice thus forms with no embedded air bubbles to weaken its structure. As more ice accumulates, the ice builds up into a single or double horn shape that projects ahead of the wing, tail surface, antenna, etc.

On which it is collecting.
This unique ice formation severely disrupts the airflow and is responsible for an increase in drag that may be as much as 300 to 500%.
The danger of clear ice is great owing to (1) the loss of lift, because of the altered wing camber and the disruption of the smooth flow of air over the wing and tail surfaces, (2) the increase in drag on account of the enlarged profile area of the wings.

(3) the weight of the large mass of ice which may accumulate in a short time, and finally (4) the vibration caused by the unequal loading on the wings and on the blades of the propeller(s). When large blocks break off, the vibration may become severe enough to seriously impair the structure of the airplane. RIME ICE Rime ice is an opaque, or milky white, deposit of ice that forms when the airplane is flying through filmy/stratiform clouds. It is dependent on a low rate of catch of small supercooled water droplets. It accumulates on the leading edges of wings and on antennas, pilot heads, etc.

For rime to form, the aircraft skin must be at a temperature below 0°C. The drop will then freeze completely and quickly without spreading from the point of impact. Thus, the droplets retain their spherical shape as they freeze, creating air packets between the frozen particles. This process creates an irregular shape of the ice.

The deposit has no great weight, but its danger lies in the aerodynamic alteration of the wing camber and in the choking of the orifices of the carburetor and instruments. Rime is usually brittle and can easily be dislodged by de-icing equipment. Occasionally, both rime and clear ice will form concurrently. MIXED ICE Mixed icing, as the name implies, has the properties of both clear and rime icing. Large and small supercooled droplets coexist. Appearance is whitish, irregular and rough. Favorable conditions include liquid and frozen particles found in the colder portion of the cumuliform cloud and wet snow flakes. FROST A white semi-crystalline frost which covers the surface of the airplane forms in clear air by the process of deposition. This has little or no effect on flying but may obscure vision by coating the windshield. It may also interfere with radio by coating the antenna with ice.

It generally forms in clear air when a cold aircraft enters warmer and damper air during a steep descent. Aircraft parked outside on clear cold nights are likely to be coated with frost by morning. The upper surfaces of the aircraft cool by radiation to a temperature below that of the surrounding air.

Frost which forms on wings, tail and control surfaces must be removed before take-off. Frost alters the aerodynamic characteristics of the wing sufficiently to interfere with take-off by increasing stall speed and reducing lift. Frozen dew may also form on aircraft parked outside on a night when temperatures are just below freezing.

Dew first condenses on the aircraft skin and then freezes as the surface of the aircraft cools.
Frozen dew is usually clear and somewhat crystalline, whereas frost is white and feathery.
Frozen dew, like frost, must be removed before take-off.
In fact, any snow or moisture of any kind should be removed since these may freeze to the surface while the airplane is taxiing out for take-off.

You might be interested: How To Can 7 Quarts Of Blueberry Pie Filling?

The heat loss due to the forward speed of the airplane may be sufficient to cause congelation.

Can you make clear ice with tap water?

You need pure water and you need to control how it cools.
The ice maker in a typical home freezer has a water filter, but usually produces opaque ice.
This is because the water doesn’t cool at the right rate to produce clear ice or else there is a lot of air in the water.
Clear ice is easily made using bottled water that had been purified using reverse osmosis or distillation, but you can make clear ice from tap water.

So, you can make clear ice by boiling and freezing filtered water, but the cooling rate is also important.
If the ice freezes too slowly the result is milky on the bottom and clear on top.
Unfortunately, you don’t have a lot of control over the freezer’s cooling rate.
You can play with the starting temperature of the water until you get the results you desire.

How do you make clear ice vs white ice?

How to Get Clear Ice at Home – Countertop Clear Ice Maker | NewAir ClearIce40 The most reliable way to get clearer ice cubes at home is to try directional freezing. With a standard ice cube tray, ice freezes from the outside in. This pushes any air bubbles and impurities toward the center, where it is eventually trapped.

To keep ice clear, you want the ice to freeze in one direction so that impurities are pushed out of the ice.
To do this, you can make a giant block of ice in a lidless cooler inside your freezer.
The trick is to remove the ice before it’s completely frozen, so that air and impurities are in the bottom layer of water and not in your ice.

You’ll have to use a knife to score a cut cubes with this method. Of course, the easiest way to get clear ice cubes without the hassle is to use an ice machine. The automatically makes clear ice just like a commercial ice machine, but in a compact, attractive home appliance that fits right in your kitchen or home bar.

Can you make clear ice without a cooler?

Download Article Proven methods to make clear ice for your cocktails at home Download Article If you’re going to mix up a fantastic cocktail, you don’t want to ruin it with cloudy ice, right? While cloudy ice isn’t unusable per se, clear ice is so much better! Ice turns cloudy because air, minerals, and impurities get trapped in the water as it freezes.

Make ice with a directional freezing ice tray to get crystal clear cubes with minimal effort.
Boil regular tap water twice to remove minerals and freeze it to make semi-clear ice.
Fill a plastic, hard-shelled cooler with water and place it in your freezer to directionally freeze it and cut the ice into cubes.

1 Purchase an ice tray that freezes ice cubes directionally. Directional freezing ice trays are designed specifically for this task. If you plan on taking your cocktail game to the next level, one of these ice trays is mandatory—especially since they only cost around $30.
- Normal ice trays freeze their cubes from every angle at the same time. This locks in air bubbles, impurities, and all the little particles that make ice cloudy.
- Directional freezing only allows ice to freeze from the bottom up, in one direction. This gives all the air bubbles and particles time to escape through the top.
- Ever see a pond that’s partially frozen? The top layer is always super clear because it freezes from one direction (the air above). This is the same thing!
2 Fill the ice tray with tap water. If you use your normal tap water and you discover that the ice is still cloudy, there may be heavy impurities in your water. If that’s the case, use filtered or bottled water. Your ice will be as pure as a fresh snowfall! Advertisement
3 Set the tray in your freezer and wait 4 hours. Place your directional ice cube tray in the freezer the same way you’d put a normal ice cube tray in the freezer. Give it 4 hours and then enjoy your perfectly clear ice cubes!
- Some of the directional ice cube trays empty like normal trays where you shake or “crack” the ice out, while others have a latch you pull or a lid you open to unlock the ice.
- The size of your ice cubes can influence how long it takes to freeze. If you have one of those big ice trays to make spherical ice cubes, it may take 6-8 hours.

1 Fill a pot with water and boil it, Grab a clean pot and fill it up with roughly twice as much water as you’d need to fill your ice tray. Set the pot on the stove, turn the heat on, and wait for the water to reach a rolling boil. This should burn away a lot of the minerals and impurities that would otherwise get trapped in your ice.
- The double-boiling method will not give you perfectly clear ice, but it’s going to be as close as you can possibly get without using a directional freezing method.
- If you really want your ice to be as clear as possible, use distilled water for this.
2 Wait 30 minutes for the water to cool off and then boil it again. Once the water has started boiling, shut the gas or electric off. Let the water get back to room temperature. Then, turn the heat back on and boil the water again.
- Boiling the water twice ensures that you’ll evaporate any impurities that weren’t fully dissolved the first time you boiled the water.
3 Fill your ice tray with the double-boiled water. Once the water boils a second time, shut it off and let it cool. Then, pour the room-temperature water into your ice tray and let it settle for a few minutes so that the air bubbles can escape. Set the ice tray in your freezer and you’ll have super clear ice cubes in 4 hours or so.
- Again, you may still have some cloudiness in your ice, but your cubes will be way clearer than they would be if you just filled up the ice tray with tap water and tossed it in the freezer.

1 Grab a clean 6-pack cooler that will fit in your freezer. Any small cooler will work so long as it’s made of hard plastic and it’s small enough for your freezer. Water inside of a cooler will begin freezing at the surface and slowly freeze downward. This way, you can replicate directional freezing without the fancy ice tray.
- The cooler method is the only consistent way to directionally freeze ice at home without a special ice tray. You do need a lot of space in your freezer though, and your cooler has to be perfectly clean for this to work.
2 Partially fill the cooler with water and pop it in the freezer. Add as much water as you’d like based on how much ice you want to make. You can fill the bottom ¼ of the cooler or so to make about a dozen ice cubes, or fill it up all the way to the brim to make a bunch of ice. So long as you leave at least 1 in (2.5 cm) of space at the top of the cooler, you’re good to go.
- The more water you add, the more ice you can make. However, it’ll take a lot longer for a full cooler to freeze than it would take for a few inches of water to freeze.
3 Check in on the water after 24 hours to see if the top is frozen. The freeze time depends on how much water you added, but check in on the cooler after a day or so. The top of the water will start freezing first, pushing the minerals and air pockets down towards the bottom.
- You can remove the ice at any point once the top layer is frozen. Keep in mind that the more water underneath the top layer, the easier the ice block will be to handle.
4 Remove the ice block and cut it into cubes with a serrated knife. If the water isn’t fully frozen, cut the top layer out with a serrated knife. If it’s frozen through, flip the cooler over on to a cutting board and wait for the edges to melt enough for the ice block to drop.
- Wear a thick glove on your non-cutting hand to hold the ice still and keep your hand warm.
- The ice at the very bottom of the cooler will be very cloudy. It’s perfectly fine to use if you’d like, but the top layers of the ice will be the only clear ice.

Add New Question

Question Why do people want clear ice? This answer was written by one of our trained team of researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow Staff Editor Staff Answer Cloudy ice is full of minerals and impurities. That’s not a big deal, but it can slightly change the flavor of a drink. If you’re making a fancy cocktail, you want it to be as good as possible! That’s really where clear ice shines from a taste perspective.
Question Isn’t ice clear in the first place? This answer was written by one of our trained team of researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow Staff Editor Staff Answer Well, it’s usually translucent, which means light can partially travel through it. If you look at a typical ice cube, it’s not 100% clear. The clear ice we teach you to make in this article will be absolutely transparent.
Question How much time should I set aside to make clear ice by boiling? This answer was written by one of our trained team of researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow Staff Editor Staff Answer It shouldn’t take more than an hour to boil your water twice, and most of that time will be spent waiting for the water to cool.

See more answers Ask a Question 200 characters left Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. Submit Advertisement Article Summary X To make clear ice, pour filtered, bottled water into a pot on the stove and boil it.

Let it cool with the lid still on, then boil again. Once it’s cool, pour the water into an ice tray or mold and cover it with plastic wrap. Set it in the freezer until the water is frozen. To make clear ice with a small cooler, place your full ice tray or mold inside and pour water into the bottom of the cooler, filling in around the tray or mold.

Set your freezer to between 17 and 25 °F, and place the cooler inside for 24 hours to freeze. For a super fast way to make clear ice every time, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 1,090,726 times.

How do bars get clear ice cubes?

In the context of ice, it means insulating five of the six sides of the container that holds water (all four sides and the bottom) to force the water to freeze from top to bottom, allowing the cloudiness from any sediment and trapped oxygen to form at the very end, at the bottom of the cube. When it’s done properly, the freezing process will be interrupted prior to the cloudy part forming, leaving you with a crystal-clear block.

Clear ice blocks before being cut and shaped. Meg Krench