How To Make Clear Ice at Home to Level-Up Your Whiskey

Your whiskey at home just isn’t Instagrammable. 

You’ve got the expensive bourbon, the fancy crystal tumbler glass, and even an aesthetic wooden table to stage your photo shoot. But it just doesn’t look right. It doesn’t look like the whiskeys you see in the ads, on social media, or in the James Bond films. 

So, what’s the issue? Is it the lighting? Do you need a different whiskey? Perhaps a shiny new glass? Well, I’m going to tell you that it’s probably none of these things. 

Your whiskey doesn’t look as classy because you’re using regular, boring, run-of-the-mill ice. 

Want to add that final touch of sophistication to your bourbon? You need clear ice, and in this handy guide, I’m going to tell you exactly how to make it!

How To Make Clear Ice at Home: The General Process 

If you’re like me before I became a whiskey drinker, you’ll know absolutely nothing about ice. Why does it go all crystalized and impure when frozen in your freezer in those little ice cube trays? Is it to do with my water? 

Actually, it’s got nothing to do with your water being impure, you can make amazing clear ice from regular tap water. It’s actually about how the water freezes.

In a regular freezer, the ice cools and freezes from all sides, trapping air particles in the middle of the cube. This is what gives that frosty, uneven look to your ice cubes. 

Clear ice is frozen from one direction only, pushing the air particles out of the ice, and leaving you with nothing but crystal clear, frozen water. 

Step One: Fill Your Cooler with Warm Water 

Grab a cooler. You’ll only need a small one, like the sort you’d take to a picnic, or use to chill a six-pack of beer. The only real requirement is that it needs to be able to fit in your freezer.

Fill it with a few inches of warm water. Tap water will do just fine, but you can use bottled or distilled water if you want even clearer ice. 

Make sure it’s warm, so it doesn’t freeze too quickly, but not hot. You don’t want to damage your plastic cooler or cause too big of a temperature difference. 

Step Two: Freeze The Cooler 

The easy bit. Pop your cooler in the freezer with the lid off. This will cause the ice to freeze from the top down, pushing all the air and impurities to the bottom section, which will still be unfrozen water. 

You’ll want to leave your cooler in the freezer for about 24 hours if you want to make the best clear ice at home. 

Step Three: Remove The Ice

The next step to make clear ice is actually a lot simpler than it sounds. Place your cooler upside down in the sink for 5 to 10 minutes, and your ice block should fall out.

If it doesn’t, give the cooler a little shake and the block of clear ice will be yours in no time!

The excess water full of impurities will drain off down the sink and you’ll be left with a big block of clear ice. 

Step Four: Sculpt Your Clear Ice Cubes 

Obviously, you can’t put an entire cooler-sized block in your whiskey. So you need to get your clear ice into much smaller chunks.

This is actually surprisingly easy. Just pick up your ice and place it on a clean tea towel, hold the block of ice in one hand with an oven glove, and cut with a serrated knife in the other. 

The key here is not to saw away at your clear ice like a fresh loaf of sourdough, but to gently score the ice with the knife to encourage it to break and snap off. 

If you have an ice pick, and you’re set on making beautifully carved ice cubes of all shapes and sizes, then this step is where you get to really have fun.

Don’t worry though, that’s totally optional, and having clear ice in a simple cube will look awesome enough in your whiskey!

Step Five: Storing Your Clear Ice 

You’re probably not going to want to use all your ice right away, and that’s not a problem. Just store any ice you don’t want to use at the moment in a sealed container in the freezer.

Just make sure you let the ice set at room temperature for a couple of minutes before you use it so that any extra frost it accumulates in the freezer melts away. 

How To Make Clear Ice with Molds 

Directional freezing is without a doubt the best way to make clear ice, so if you’re using a mold like a silicone ice cube tray, you’re going to need to bear that in mind.

Molds are a great way to eliminate the process of cutting and shaping your clear ice, but you’ll still need a cooler to get the best out of them. 

Start by poking some holes in the bottom of your molds, this will allow the water to drain and push all the impurities down and out of your molds as the top of the ice freezes. 

Next, you want to elevate your molds in the cooler to give the water somewhere to go. Something like a cookie cutter will do the job. 

Finally, fill the cooler with warm water as normal, making sure the top of the molds is just about covered.

The ice will freeze downwards and you’ll be left with beautiful, clear ice in the shape you want it!

How To Make Clear Ice Without a Cooler 

No cooler? No problem! You don’t actually need one to make clear ice at home.

Sure, it helps, but you can get mostly clear ice without one, using the double-boiling method. All you’ll need is a kettle. 

Fill the kettle water with about twice as much water as you’ll need for the ice (you’ll lose quite a bit through evaporation). Boil the kettle, then let it settle for half an hour to an hour to return the water to room temperature. 

Then, boil the kettle again (you can see why they call it the double boiling method now!). 

This is just to make sure any impurities that weren’t fully dissolved the first time you boiled the water are dissolved and evaporated now.

You’re going to let the water cool and return to room temperature again before you pour it into your standard, supermarket ice tray.

Here’s the trick to the next part: don’t just throw your tray straight into the freezer.

Let your ice settle for a couple of minutes, allowing the bubbles to escape. This will remove more of that air and those impurities from your ice, making it clearer as it freezes. 

It’s worth noting that while this method does make somewhat clear ice, it’s not quite as effective as the cooler method.

Your ice will still be worlds away if you just threw some tap water in the freezer, but don’t expect it to be perfectly see-through. 

FAQs on Making Clear Ice Cubes 

Does Distilled Water Make Clear Ice?

Just putting distilled water on its own into a tray and freezing it won’t make clear ice.

Yes, it will make ice cubes that aren’t as frosty as tap water, but the lack of directional freezing like you’d find with the cooler method is still going to leave some air trapped in the middle. 

If you have access to distilled water and want to use it with the double boil or cooler method though, it will make clearer ice than if you just used tap water!

How Long to Boil Water for Clear Ice? 

You don’t need to let the water boil and simmer for ages and ages to make clear ice cubes. You’ll be able to get the result you’re after with just a couple of minutes of boiling.

As long as you’re boiling the water so the impurities can be evaporated, your ice is going to be pretty much clear!

How To Get Clear Ice Cubes From an Ice Maker?

Of course, by far the easiest way to get clear ice at home is to buy a professional quality ice maker.

You can get these for $300 or less, so if you’re regularly hosting parties and drinks and you want lots of clear ice, you won’t have to remortgage the house to get your hands on one. 

If you’re only going to be making clear ice occasionally, or you don’t need much of it, then experimenting with directional freezing is going to save you quite a bit of money (and it’s also so much more satisfying).

How To Make Clear Ice Cubes: The Secret to a Perfect Looking Whiskey

So there you have it: the secret of how to clear ice at home.

What was once a mystifying bit of bartending magic is now a straightforward job (but don’t tell your guests that). 

Whether you’re directionally freezing, using molds, double boiling, or even some combination of all three, you’ll never have to worry about whether your homemade cocktails or Saturday evening bourbon look sleek enough to go on Instagram. 

If you’re a whiskey fanatic, and you want to learn more about what ice to use and when then be sure to check out our Ultimate Guide to Whiskey Ice Cubes here.