If you’ve been to any fancy cocktail bar you probably have been served a drink with an oversized single ice cube or spherical oversized ice cube. This is a new trend and one I thought was simply for the cool factor…because it does look pretty damn cool. My wife bought me a set of trays to make these at home and I quickly realized this is my favorite new thing in mixology today.
This is far more than just cool looking. Initially the idea was to use these when drinking straight liquor like tequila or bourbon that you wanted chilled, but not watered down. Due to the large size it takes much longer for the ice to melt thus avoiding the watering down of your favorite and pricey sipping liqueurs. So I have used this primarily for straight liquors and it works great.
However I started using this for most of my cocktails and the results have been brilliant. Now many of the cocktails I make I typically serve straight up with as opposed to “on the rocks”. This allows you to get the full flavor of the cocktail without the dilution. But if you want to take your time with the cocktail, after a while it starts to warm up. If I serve the cocktail on the rocks its tastes great at first but soon starts to dilute and loses a lot of the flavor fast. Instead when I use the oversized ice cube, the result is absolute perfection. You can take your time with the cocktail and it won’t dilute much and will stay cool. The best of both worlds!!
Oh and it looks cool, especially if you go the extra mile and make the ice cubes crystal clear. In order to do that you need to boil the water before freezing but thats probably not worth the effort for most people. You can also use very hot water and you’ll come close to crystal. Good enough for me!