Don’t Use Bad Ice in Your Cocktails – Mai Tai Recipe

In my (this) website I emphasize the importance of quality, cold, ice.

One thing I must stress is that when learning recipes AS WRITTEN by the original drink creators, “ice” isn’t just frozen cubes of water in any size, shape, or form. Some recipes call for one large cube, some for cubed ice, some for cracked ice, some for crushed ice, and some for frappe’d ice.

Ice is to us what stoves, ovens, microwaves, grills, and deep fryers are to chefs. There are many ways to work properly with ice.

Dave Arnold in his book “Liquid Intelligence” (and the same teaching with less granular emphasis is taught in the BarSmarts course certification) go into some detail regarding ice and proper dilution levels during chilling.

So too, to some degree, does Robert Hess of the Small Screen Network (he worked a lot with Jamie Boudreau) video shown above… even though the huge elephant in the room with Robert Hess’ video is that HE’S NOT USING SHAVED ICE as specified by Vic Bergeron (Trader Vic)! (Ugh!) the documented and legally accredited (having won a lawsuit supporting his claim) creator of the Mai Tai.

Dilution rates differ with each type. MOST drinks (shaken or stirred) are counting on 20-25% of the recipe to be water which is from melted ice to dilute the hot taste of strong liquor and cloying over-sweetness of liqueurs. Mouthfeel and texture change.

And to make a drink as intended, AND to be taken seriously as professional tradespersons, bartenders must insist their drinks are being properly made using the appropriate forms of ice. If they don’t, then the bars they’re employed in will remain at a lower level and will never be elevated to a higher quality standard.

Crushed and frappe’d ice are easy to implement anywhere. Whole cube not so easy; large cube, sphere, and clear ice often the trickiest to maneuver for in a lot of bars. Pay attention to your recipes’ descriptions of specific ice being called for.

If all of the recipes from your reading source simply say “ice” (particularly where classic old cocktails are listed) find a few better recipe sources, and add those to your reading. Jerry Thomas’ “How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon-vivant’s Companion” is a great start. Tiki Drinks often call for specific ice. There you’d do well to read anything written by Don Beach or Trader Vic.

Don’t discount the value of the readings you have on drinks where all ice is just called “ice”. Those books are often quite good otherwise, and were often typed in, formatted, and edited by non tradespeople who completely discarded the type of ice in the recipe as unimportant, and wanted to save 2 seconds of typing. Also don’t entirely discount accredited experts because you discover they have made past mistakes, as in the case of Robert Hess, in the above video. If you read three books written by accredited renowned experts and compare what they write about the same exact topic you will see that they often disagree with each other. That doesn’t mean they are no good — it means you must dig deeper and in the end, make up your own mind.


It does not mean you should throw away everything anyone else has to offer, add grenadine, and make your Mai Tais pink — or start spelling them Mai Thai. 🙂


That’s all I can tell you.