Welcome to Nerds on Ice!*
Spotlight On! February 27th, 2008
As any bartender or cocktail afficionado will tell you, it’s death. And it finally happened to me-
I ran out of ice.
Run out of a spirit or liqueur? Fine, if you know your way around a bar you can get by with substitutions and adjustments most of the time to at least approximate a drink and please your guests. All your cocktail glasses are dirty? Hey, go the Julia Child route, act like nothing’s wrong, take advantage of everyone having developed a habit of defering to your mixological knowledge and simply claim, ‘Why, of course the martini was originally served in a rocks glass. What, you think they had the technology to mass produce cocktail glasses back then? Pshaw!,’ with a look of incredulous bemusement on your face. But, out of ice? Sorry Charlie, time to hang it up.
Such it was that one Sunday afternoon entertaining a few guests in a very Victorian Parlour1 -esque fashion that, after a brief and warm welcome and many “How do you dooooooo’s” that I politely asked everyone’s drink preference and went to my ice dispenser in my refrigerator and heard the sad, slow, grinding roar of…nothing. No satisfying clang against the shaking tin nor brightly anticipatory clink of the glass. Nothing.
I was reduced to scraping remnants from that back shelf thingy behind the ice tray where stray ice cubes fall and sit slowly evaporating in the cold dry for months on end, pulling out the tray and detaching old off-tasting ice cubes from the sides of the bin, reducing the ice used in the shakers to pitiable levels chilling very little except my mood, and generally cursing my fate and my refrigerator as I was unable to do something in which I take great pride and number as one of the few things I do very well: mix a good drink for my guests.
I was pissed. Glaring sternly upon the waste that was my guests’ drinks and downtrodden and embarrassed glances I vowed, “Never Again.”
So, my wife, being her well-tuned, thoughtful, and well-adjusted self decided I should have a portable ice maker as a gift on my birthday, and allow me tell you how that’s gone.
Haier HPIM35W Portable Ice Maker $199:
Now, unless some company woud like to send me a demo model of a competing ice maker, this is the only portable unit I’m able to honestly give my impressions of and share my experiences regarding. There are several models in this price range (Haier, New Air, and Sunpentown) that all seem comparable in volume of ice, features, and function.
They all essentially use a 1 gal. resevoir to hold water (preferably filtered) under a basket and a pump sumps the water up into a tray area where the cooling elements are. Once the ice is formed, a mechanical shelf lowers and drops the ice into the basket and then the process starts all over again. Here are the general features:
- 30-33 lbs. ice per day
- 3 different-sized ice cubes
- First set of ice within 11-15 minutes (for large cube size, shorter for smaller cubes)
- No drain line or water line required
- Push button controls (and some provided a timer function)
So, what type and quality of ice do you get out of these? Fair to middlin’. Here are some details to consider from a cocktailian perspective:
Shape:
All in all I prefer a nearly perfect 3/4″x3/4″ cube when working with ice (or as close to 1″x1″ as you can get) but that’s hard to find in non-commercial equipment and nearly impossible in portable units. So, the shape of ice made in these table-top units, shown on right, is far from ideal. First of all, the ‘thimble’-shaped ice (see right) creates little resevoirs of whatever you’re pouring. So, for example, in making a gin and tonic, if I build it using the gin first, little pockets of gin form in the ice cube that are facing upwards. This is fine and dandy if you’re measuring but if you’re eyeballing it, then the fluid rising in the glass is not going to be an accurate measure. Not to mention it’s a bit of a shock to hit one of those pockets through a sip-n-stir straw. Not tasty.
I do like that it creates more cooling surface area as more liquid comes into contact with more ice, but it also means quicker thawing of the ice in the drink. One other, but perhaps minor, point on the shape from these makers is that it’s not very traditional and doesn’t come off very well in the glass. There’s a lot of air in these cubes which clouds them up, and while I’m not a zealot for crystal clear ice, that along with its shape doesn’t make it the most aesthetically pleasing. See below about using this ice when shaking.
Temperature/Cooling:
Here’s one of the biggest knocks against portable ice makers. I’ve read some reviews that complaing about the ice being ’slush’, and while I wouldn’t go near that far I will say that the ice is just hovering a freezing most of the time.
That means, except in dire circumstances like having no ice this shouldn’t be used for shaking. It’s far too ’soft’ and given the shape of it, it tends to break down quickly which further causes it to melt more quickly during shaking which then causes the drink to become too watered-down. This is doubly compounded when you’re such a frenetic shaker as I am. With this ice’s shape and temperature, in a shaken drink you almost come out with a slush version of your cocktail which, in the parlance of our southern friends, is no bueno.
In building a drink or using the ice to fill a glass into which you’re straining a drink the ice fares much better but you will still get more meltage than you will with ice from your refrigerator’s ice maker. Also, please note that the frigidity and hardness of the ice improves after the first couple of batches. By the third or fourth batch the ice is respectable but still has the issues I’ve listed. So, at this point I tend to use this ice for built drinks and the refrigerator ice for shaken.
And, while I can’t confirm this, apparently the next ‘grade’ of portable ice makers up from the $180-$220 range are superior in this area especially. However, you’re looking at $350-$400 (see: Waring or Whynter) and that’s just not worth it to me. At that point I’ll get an under-the-counter unit and run a water and drain line.
Usage/Speed/Misc.:
There are three sizes of ice for these makers and the only useful one for mixing drinks is the largest. This means it takes about 10-12 minutes for the first batch but you really don’t want to use it for that anyways. Once that first batch is out of the gate the hardness of the ice improves (as the ambient temperature within the unit goes down) and it spits it out at a pretty brisk pace (get it, ‘brisk’ – haha!).
Usage of the unit is very simple and the resevoir is a nice size; I’ve rarely, if ever, had to refill it for a night of steady drinking with 4-6 people, but again I’m getting ice for shaking from the fridge still. So,no complaints in this area and I’ve only had an error once when I let it run for about 36 hours which meant the ice would melt and get remade into ice in a Sisyphean cycle of ice machine torture. So, yeah, I managed to freeze up the compressor, but once it thawed it ran perfectly again.
The noise of the ice maker is a bit off-putting but not terrible. We’re generally playing music any time we have guests and it blends into background noise very easily. However, when a load is done and the shelf drops the ice into the basket, it does make a rather sudden plopping-like noise that we affectionately call, ‘the ice maker taking a dump.’ Sue me, I’m crass.
All in all it’s been a good to almost-great investment. It relieves my refrigerator’s ice maker and ensures that I won’t run out of ice in a pinch. The ice is fine for built drinks or as the ice used to fill a highball or collins glass into which you’ll be straining an already chilled drink so it’s not too limiting, and the clean-up, fuss, and installation are a non-issue.
There are some rumors of these units having a short shelf-life and I’ll certainly update this if that turns out to be the case, but I’ve run this for a month on a fairly regular basis and met with no issues. At the end of the day, if you’re looking for a backup ice maker and hate plumbing, need to be able to generate ice in the outdoors or some other off-site event to make cocktails then you can certainly do worse.
ShapeRating: 
Hardness/Frigidity Rating: (3 stars after the second batch)
Usage/Speed/Misc. Rating: (good value and no embarrassing ice-less moments)
For more information on ice and/or first-hand experience with these types of machines see:
Very detailed breakdown of operation and experiences
Darcy O’Neil’s first and second takes on ice, its purpose, and clearing up misconceptions about how it should be used.
Jessie Jane’s snarky look at the use and misuse of ice in bars
* The exact line is “Welcome to Pacific Tech’s ‘Smart People on Ice!’” Obviously I had to modify it since I dropped out of Pacific Tech (too easy). Great movie, btw.
- see the ‘u’, that means it was fancy [↩]
Gabriel, you’re going to have to add on to your tagline…
“Neighbors are frightened and intrigued by my glass recycling bin. . . but they haven’t even seen my portable ice machine…”
Great article…given the size of our ice machine at work, I tend to forget about the perils of ice (or, more importantly, running out of ice) for the home bar. Now I know what to ask for for my birthday.
hehe, no doubt… A photographer that recently came over for an article I’m writing about lost his shit when I mentioned Joana and I were looking into getting a four-nozzle bar gun at some point (there’s a closet behind the bar that would be perfect to store it in and run it from).
Good to see you here, Keith. It’s definitely a worthwhile investment. As you may know or can imagine, running out of ice is just a flat-out embarrassment.
Wow Gabriel I’m very jealous, I’d love my own ice machine. I should probably think about investing in one – I dread to think the amount I spend on bags of ice (fridges with ice makers are pretty uncommon where in the UK, and my own freezer doesn’t even have a convenient place for an ice tray).
The “quality” of the ice does concern me though, I don’t think I’d be happy unless I brought some insanely expensive commercial machine. So on second thoughts, maybe I shouldn’t think about ice machines at all!
“This? This is ice. This is what happens to water when it gets too cold. This? This is Kent. This is what happens to people when they get too sexually frustrated.”
And yes, I totally want a portable ice machine. Color me a bright shade of envy.
Oh, the recycling bin commenentary. When will they ever stop? It’s pretty bad when after a big gathering with friends it takes me a month of pick-ups to get rid of all the bottles (they only take one bin a week).
I gotta say, when we decided to put in a basement bar, the one feature (aside from a sink) that was mandatory was an ice maker. I cannot imagine having to haul ice down all the time, or even simply dealing with my fridge ice maker’s ice cubes.
Now, having had one for years, I will say that they can be a bitch to maintain. I’ll be interested to hear (probably in the form of a profanity-laden blog post) how your portable one holds up after some likely heavy use….
[...] on freezers, and the main reason for having access to one: Ice. Now, ice is a much neglected subject in the Cocktailosphere. Hardly anyone writes about it or its importance in mixing cocktails. Ahem. [...]
PORTABLE ICE MAKER BIO HAZARD – HOW TO FIX IT WITH AUTOMATIC CONVERSION
Hello folks, I have one of these (all the brands). They are more work than they are worth! Keeping them clean and free of bio-hazards is not a matter of just changing the water every day or two… If you forget things will start growing in them! Make sure to do a vinegar wash every week and watch for small flakes of black mold/bacteria to come out in the vinegar rinse. If you use yours on occasion, the simple act of draining it and putting it away isn’t enough. The retained water in the lines will contaminate and give you a nice dose of bio-growth in your first few ice batches (or more). YOu must remember to purify this and while there are probably better commercial products, I use a full cup of vinegar and a couple glasses of water and let it run a bunch of ice batches. You will be surprised at the number of black specs of mold that will be floating in the tank.
This isn’t the reason for my reply. I am interested to know if anyone here has modified their unit to be self filling and self draining? I’m planning such a project using a solenoid attached to the water pump voltage and the cutting in of a shunt drain just a 1/4 inch above the minimum water line in the tank (on mine that’s about 1/2″ of water. Upon each ice production session it will fill with new water and let most of the drain water flow out of the shunt drain which will just go into a sink by means of a plastic refrigerator hose. I was hoping someone here has already done this and could talk about it.
I read here about the preference to use Purified water versus city spigot water. While purified water is great, I suggest you skip it in these ice makers. The small amounts of chemicals in the city water are vital to helping reduce bacteria and mold from forming in the tank water. This is one time the city water is healthier for you.
If you have any pointers for my project of conversion, I welcome hearing with you. Please visit http://www.streetglo.net and use the formmail email link there. It goes to my mailbox. I’m reluctant to publish my email address here.
Thanks!