Three Ways to Elevate Your Bourbon Ice – Garden & Gun

“When it comes to bourbon presentation, simplicity is everything,” says Tyler Kuchenbrod, bartender at Revival Vintage Bottle Shop and Bar in Covington, Kentucky. “A great whiskey deserves a clean glass and a beautiful pour.” While Kuchenbrod recommends enjoying the first sip neat to really taste the whiskey, the addition of ice can take a bourbon or a bourbon cocktail to the next level—especially if you use the three tricks below.

Go for maximum clarity.

Mixology pros like Gary Crunkleton of the Crunkleton in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, rely on a tactic called directional freezing, which forces water to freeze from one direction so that trapped air bubbles and impurities are pushed out. (In a normal ice tray, the water freezes from all directions, causing that inconsistent, cloudy appearance.) Crunkleton uses a Clinebell machine to create a large block, and then cuts and carves the cubes himself. But you can also achieve clear cubes at home by ordering a tray like this one, with foam insulation that creates directional freezing. There are also plenty of ice companies around the South that will do it for you, including Clear Cut in Charleston, Ice Mill in Asheville, and King Cube in Atlanta.

Try an ice stamp—and a drizzle of syrup.

To kick up the look of an old-fashioned, the bar at the Cloister on Sea Island, Georgia, stamps a clear king cube with a custom design—in their case the Sea Island logo—and then pours a drizzle of syrup into the design. “It adds an extra wow factor,” says Nic Wallace, the resort’s bars and spirits manager. The syrup drizzle comes courtesy of a jar of Luxardo maraschino cherries, while the ice is imported from the Ice Doctor in Gainesville, Florida.

Infuse the cube with a little flavor.

At Edmund’s Oast in Charleston, South Carolina, the Red Wedding—a riff on an old-fashioned—lets the ice cube itself create the cocktail. Bar director Vinnie Cellini steeps black tea with ginger beer, thyme, demerara sugar, and dried hibiscus overnight, then strains out the solids and freezes the mixture into cubes. Then he pours bourbon over the cube to serve. The hibiscus mixture isn’t the only way you could approach it, of course—you could also steep tea and sugar with orange peels, he says, or add caramel or vanilla. Whatever cube you make, be patient once it’s in the glass. “It’s meant to be enjoyed slowly,” Cellini says. “You want the flavor to subtly change as you drink.”