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Wed 1 Oct, 2008 11:14 pm
The Cold, Hard Data of Soda Ice
Quote:Depending on whom you ask, either ice-fiends are suckers who pay for frozen water or ice-avoiders are cheapskates with a perverse attachment to warm fountain syrup. To settle this once and for all, we went to a local cineplex and bought three Cokes with varying amounts of cubes at 4 smackaroos each. Then we broke out our thermometers and measuring cups. The cold, hard data says it all.
@Robert Gentel,
I prefer my Armagnac up,
but I have bourbon with ice.
David
Whatever I drink, if it is supposed to be served hot, I want it so hot that Ihave to sip very carefully to avoid burning myself.
If it is supposed to be cold, I want it to be as cold as it can be without freezing solid; i.e. I am a fill the cup with as much ice as it will hold before adding liquid. (I do prefer places that allow free refills though making the volume required by the ice moot.)
@Foxfyre,
If u want ice in your drink,
it might be wise to have it applied at the table,
in front of u, to insure that u r not shorted on the drink.
@Robert Gentel,
Mmmm.... expensive sugar-water!
@Robert Gentel,
I rarely use ice in any drinks and in restaurants I will tell the waiter "no ice please!"
That's what Americans complain a lot about in Europe, they don't get
ice in their drinks.
@Foxfyre,
Quote:I am a fill the cup with as much ice as it will hold before adding liquid.
ditto that for soda.
hate when i get a soda with a few pathetic, gonna-melt-any-second-now cubes in it... what's the point?
i prefer less ice in juice and smoothies...
I like a lot of ice in cold drinks, sometime even just water, and like my hot drinks very hot though not burning, say, coffee.
I remember pleading for a second ice cube in an aperitivo in Italy.. italians, generally speaking, and I suppose europeans, generally speaking, find that not making a drink icy cold means that it has more flavor for the taste buds. (Or maybe the whole world other than in the US, whadda I know.)
I don't buy many sodas; in restaurants I will usually get iced tea and in the restaurants I go to there is usually a cheerful refill, or else I'll get ice water and a slice of lemon. Not so much here in Abq, but in California you could often get bubbly mineral water, and I'd drink that uniced.
I've recently taken to putting some ice in my increasingly cheapo wines, and sometimes fruit juice in them too - giving me a strange "sangria", fine on a hot new mexico day.
I'm in the "No Ice, Please" group. It makes my teeth hurt. Cold from the fridge is fine, but hold the ice.
@OmSigDAVID,
OmSigDAVID wrote:
If u want ice in your drink,
it might be wise to have it applied at the table,
in front of u, to insure that u r not shorted on the drink.
For the most part, the only drinks I have served to my table are water and sometimes iced tea. These generally come with unlimited refills, so I can start out with as much ice as I want.
Ice in soda/pop/coke/soft drinks/lemonade whatever is generally applied at home or at a self serve machine--most of those do allow refills. Again I can have as much ice as I want. And I want a lot.
@Foxfyre,
I love fountain sodas with less ice. Actually I prefer no ice if it is refrigerated. Ice melts and causes it to be watery. Soda taste better to me when it is cool but not ice cold. Isn't there something to being able to taste things better when they aren't so cold? Or hot for that matter.
Tea however - I want it hot or I want it sweet and iced. No middle ground there.
@mismi,
mismi wrote:Isn't there something to being able to taste things better when they aren't so cold? Or hot for that matter.
Yes, and I suspect it's true. (Nevertheless, I persist in my wicked ways..)
I once went visiting and brought the hostess a couple of bottles of wine. When
she poured some for herself, she added ice cubes. The next time I brought wine
to her house, it was from the bargain rack.
@George,
I agree George...I never knew people put ice in their wine...until I came to A2K...I see nothing wrong with it if you like it...but the whole watered down thing to me is a problem.
@mismi,
I've saved some recent articles somewhere in my files re the chilling of wine - some thoughts have changed re wine temp in some places in the know (or notknow). Not so much toward icing it, per se. I'll post a link if I can find one or two in the file thicket.
I hadn't added an ice cube to wine for, what, let's just say never over decades, until recently. I might add anything to dreck chard, and definitely to drecko pinot grigio. I mean, drecco pinot grigio. (Oh, word fun, I'll change that to dread chard...)
Uh, oh, bore blanc...
@ossobuco,
Mendacious Merlot…
I’m another in the lots of ice camp " especially with rye…nice tall glass, plenty of ice and water.
I like about 1/3 ice. I never really cared about it till drinking fast-food sodas in America. Sometimes they give you a cup full of crushed ice, and I take one sip and it's all gone.
Now I don't care about the money, after all buying bottled water from them is more expensive anyway and if I wanted to save money I would be pouring it myself. And Iactually think most sodas taste better watered down (e.g. coke, I can't drink it without ice) but if all the liquid's gone in a sip then I have a problem. Now I have to wait for the ice to melt to keep drinking and that's no fun. Sometimes I would get sodas that were more like snow cones and I'd turn blue in the face trying to extract more than a sip out of them.
So my rule of thumb is if the ice hasn't melted at all by the time all the liquid is gone, there's too much ice and if all the ice melts before I'm finished there's too little.
With that in mind, what I oppose is that crushed ice that some places use. With normal ice that has space for some of the soda it's hard to put in too much for me. But if you fill the cup with shaved ice there's little more than two gulps of liquid in it. That's not cool.
@Joeblow,
Ice to good booze changes the nature of the drink, but if you sip it to start it is near full strength and within minutes the drink becomes dilute with an ice cube float, more appealing to some of us. A timed experience in a glass. Sipping an aliquot of primo bourbon, another story.
next.. airplane wine