Meet the Folks Who are Obsessed with Making the Best Ice for Your Cocktails

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF BAREILLES

Cool Cubes

Down a dead-end road in Soquel, inside a remote warehouse, there’s a harvest every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. But it’s not what you think. No illegal substance is cultivated here. Only crystal clear, diamond-like cubes. Ice cubes, that is, are farmed and harvested to exact specifications for the Monterey Bay area’s most discriminating mixologists, chefs and bartenders. Welcome to the ice farm at Revolution Craft Ice.

Ice farming isn’t new. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, ice was harvested from the frozen surface of lakes, ponds and streams; stored in ice houses; shipped in ice cars and delivered in ice wagons by ice men to be placed in ice boxes. Harvesting ice and cold shipping revolutionized the fruit, vegetable, meat and fishing industries and was the catalyst for developing our current food and beverage industries.

Today ice farming usually refers to one of three (or more. . .think Breaking Bad) activities. Pumping water through a complex system of pipes and showerheads over a frozen gorge, creating icy walls for ice climbing. Second, playing the bestselling game Minecraft where the silk touch enchantment tool comes in handy to harvest virtual “ice blocks” used to fuel jump drives and build starbases. And third, the peculiar labor of making clear-as-glass ice cubes to be added to cocktails and spirits.

RCI’s founder and cocktail aficionado Ethan Nagel explains how it all started. “A few years back, I ordered a cocktail in one of San Francisco’s hipster bars, and it arrived with a perfectly clear ice cube suspended in it. It was beautiful, intriguing and piqued my curiosity. I needed to know exactly how to make and bring them to Santa Cruz!”

Nagel, a software engineer who’s run the gauntlet of Silicon Valley startups, returned to his home in downtown Santa Cruz and started experimenting with DIY methods for making clear ice. His research led him to a system that involved boiling filtered tap water, then pouring it into a small cooler, putting the entire cooler in the freezer, waiting a couple of days for the water to solidify and then cutting the transparent parts of the block into cubes. But, after multiple attempts, he found that his Playmate Cooler wasn’t turning out the enchanted ice that made him swoon.

Nagel had hit a wall, but it didn’t stop him. Instead, his drive to unlock the secret of making crystal clear ice became an obsession.

“I bought a Clinebell Block Ice Maker specifically designed to make large ice blocks for carving ice sculptures,” he explains.

These perfectly shaped cubes shimmer, sparkle, shine, refract light like a prism and melt three times slower than regular ice.

The ice maker produces two 300-pound blocks of crystal clear ice every three to four days through a slow-freezing cycle. A pump mounted inside the machine’s cabinet circulates the water, preventing impurities from freezing into the block or forming oxygen bubbles and striations, which make carving difficult.

“I also purchased a car engine hoist to lift the ice blocks out of the ice maker, a chain saw to break the ice down into manageable blocks, a Hobart meat band saw to cut the blocks into cubes and a large chest freezer to store the ice,” Nagel says.

If you haven’t come across these cubes, they’re nothing like the dull gray crescent-shaped chunks your refrigerator freezer plunks out or the sweaty ice made from tap water that commercial machines dump into bins. Instead, these perfectly shaped cubes shimmer, sparkle, shine, refract light like a prism and melt three times slower than regular ice.

Beyond their bling, cocktail culture’s devotion to these cubes is due to their purity, density and slow melting rate. And like a flame tamed to combine ingredients in cooking, ice is the spark that unifies the components in a cocktail.

Back in Nagel’s garage, he got the ice right, but things were getting crowded, and around this time, friend and fellow cocktail lover Tim Gallagher stopped by for a drink.

Gallagher, a psychologist, was astonished, he says. ”Ethan made me a negroni with one of his clear cubes. I’d never seen anything like it. Then he took me into his garage to show me all the equipment he had bought.”

Gallagher continues, “It was amazing, and I immediately offered to help him with production.”

At the start, RCI was a solo act with Nagel loading up an insulated backpack and getting on his bike to hand out samples to neighborhood bars and restaurants. It wasn’t long before the demand for his clear cubes took off. Not only had Nagel built an ice farm, but he had also cultivated a following. However, it was becoming hard for him to keep up with the rising demand, spend time with family and work as a software engineer. So, he asked Gallagher if he wanted to partner on the fledgling business. Without hesitation, Gallagher agreed, moved the farm to a warehouse, purchased a second Clinebell ice maker and hired a production and delivery assistant.

Today Gallagher, CEO, and Nagel, president, have six employees, three Clinebell ice makers, nine freezers, the original meat saw and two packaging tables. They make six different sized cubes, with the 2-by-2-inch cubes and 1¼-by-5-inch Collins cubes being the most popular. Nagel has designed a proprietary framework that fits into the Clinebell, making the ice easier to handle and cut into cubes. With this addition, what once took over an hour to cut a block into 40 to 60 cubes now takes less than 10 minutes.

After all, the word revolution in their company name references using technology to make things better.

RCI’s client list looks like the Who’s Who of restaurants and bars in the Monterey Bay area. Mentone, Alderwood, Venus Spirits, Copal, Bantam, Avanti, Carmel Valley Ranch, Pearl Hour, Barmel, C bar at InterContinental The Clement and Aubergine all serve RCI cubes and RCI also sells them wholesale and retail online.

If you’re curious to try a spirit or cocktail with an RCI cube without going through the fuss of making it yourself, stop by Mission West Bar, a neighborhood hangout on the westside in Santa Cruz where co-owner Max Turigliatto keeps a stash under the bar. “It’s worth having them for their wow factor alone. People pick them up, take pictures and are generally blown away,” he says.

Turigliatto, a mixologist himself, reasons, “If you’re going to make an effort to barrel age cocktails, squeeze fresh juice, make your own bitters and use top shelf spirits, you want to use the best quality ice possible.”

REVOLUTION CRAFT ICE
2827 S. Rodeo Gulch Road, Ste. 11
Soquel
revolutioncraftice.com