Best ice crusher for cocktails

Crushed ice is ice you broke. It is irregular, angular, dry if you made it in canvas, and it packs - which is why a julep cup domes above the rim and a swizzle frosts on the outside of the glass. The angular faces give enormous surface area, so it chills and dilutes very fast, and that is the point: a julep is supposed to get colder and longer as you drink it.

Nugget ice is ice that was never a cube. A nugget machine shaves a thin layer of ice off a chilled cylinder and compacts the flakes into soft pellets, which is why the texture is chewable and slightly porous. It absorbs the drink it sits in, which is the thing people love about it, and it also means it melts into the drink faster than its size suggests.

So the two solve different problems. If you want a julep, a mint smash, a swizzle or a tiki drink to be correct, you want crushed. If you want a tall soda or a highball that stays cold and pleasant to chew on afterwards, you want nugget. Clear ice vs nugget ice covers the third option, and how to make crushed ice is the method once you own the bag.

Output and texture, from the listings we link. Note that the bag has no daily output figure because it has no cycle - it crushes as much as you feed it, as fast as you can hit it.

The row that surprises people is the first one. A Lewis bag has no capacity limit and no running cost, and the only thing it asks for is cubes - which means it pairs naturally with whatever ice you already make. If you make 2-inch cubes in a directional mold, you have a crushed-ice supply already and just need the bag. Best clear ice molds is where those cubes come from.

Why we do not recommend a blender or a food processor: both produce wet slush rather than crushed ice, because the water has nowhere to go and the blade re-freezes the mass into a block. They also chip blades on hard ice. A canvas bag solves the drainage problem by being made of canvas.

Start with ice that is not fresh out of the freezer. Ice straight from a very cold freezer is brittle and shatters into dust and shards rather than breaking into usable pieces; letting the cubes sit on the counter for two or three minutes until the surface just begins to look wet produces a much more even crush. This is called tempering and it is the single technique that separates good crushed ice from a bag of snow.

Fill the bag no more than half full, fold the open end over twice and lay it flat. Hit it with the flat face of the mallet along the length of the bag rather than hammering one spot, and work from the middle outward. Four or five firm passes gives you cracked ice for a highball; ten to fifteen gives you the fine flaked texture a julep needs. Check by feel through the canvas instead of opening it each time.

Then use it immediately or get it into the freezer. Crushed ice has an enormous amount of surface area and it will start to fuse into a block within minutes in a warm room. A pre-chilled metal bowl or an insulated bucket buys you a working window. How to store clear ice covers the storage side, and best ice buckets is the equipment.

Rinse the canvas and hang it to dry. A damp canvas bag folded into a drawer goes musty, and a musty bag taints every drink it touches afterwards - which is the main reason the Barfly bag being machine washable is worth paying attention to.

Buy a nugget machine if your household drinks a lot of tall drinks and soda, if there are usually several people around, or if somebody in the house just likes chewing ice. Those are real reasons and the machines serve them well. The daily output figures are the thing to match to your actual use: 38 to 60 lb per day is party capacity, and a 3 to 3.5 lb bin means the machine is a continuous producer rather than a store.

Do not buy one because you want better cocktails. Nugget ice is the wrong ice for every drink served over a single large cube, which is most of the spirit-forward canon - old fashioneds, Negronis on the rock, whiskey neat with ice. For those you want slow-melting clear ice, which is a mold or a dedicated clear ice machine, not a nugget maker. Best clear ice makers and best nugget ice makers are the two categories kept deliberately separate for exactly this reason.

And know the running costs before you commit. A countertop nugget machine needs regular cleaning cycles to stay sanitary, it holds standing water in a reservoir, and it is noisy in a quiet room. How to clean an ice maker is the maintenance reality, and why are nugget ice makers expensive explains what the price is actually buying.