I’m excited to review another product from Arctic Chill. This is their ice ball maker. There are three ways to make ice balls; cut them by hand, press them from a bigger block or freeze them with a mold. Arctic Chill is the mold method. While it produces the least clear ball, it is the easiest and cheapest.

As an experiment, I froze up four balls with four types/temperatures of water.

The result was four nicely frozen ice balls. There was an issue with some water seeping out of the top. This snapped off fairly easy. It is hard to judge how much water to fill in the ball. I went all the way up but trial and error for a bit less (water expands when frozen) would be in order.

Since there was too much water, the tops popped up a bit. This created a ridge on the balls. You can see the clarity of each ball based on the type of water. Not much.

Here are the balls in water. Starting on the left with Sample A and moving across to the right with Sample D on the end.

There isn’t a lot of different between my samples. What I did notice is tap water was clearer with bigger blocks of white while distilled has evenly distributed white and was nearly all opaque.

Here is a product show of the ice ball. You get four in a pack which makes the price of $15.95 much more manageable.

I finished up the shoot with a little whiskey and it does make for a nice presentation.

Pros: 4 Pack, easy to clean, light in weight, and freezes quickly

Cons: Tricky to fill, ridges on balls, and standard downfalls of ice ball molds.

Overall: I would give this a maybe buy. It’s great that you can make 4 with only one purchase but $15.95 is a bit high for me.

Budmo!

The post Product Review: Arctic Chill Ice Ball Maker appeared first on Nick Drinks.

Vineyard Fresh is a wine preservative. There are a number of products on the market and this one happens to be my client at my grown-up job. I bought a few bottles off their website and discussed my experiment with them. They were geeked and shared some swag with me too.

The experiment was preformed with the help of the wine guys at Holiday Market. After sharing my experiment with them, they mentioned that Saint Cosme’s 2011 Cotes-Du-Rhone. Would show a pronounced effect by the air reacting with the wine over a period of time.

Experiment Details:

Hypothesis: Bottles treated with Vineyard Fresh would have a noticeable difference when taste tested against bottles not treated with Vineyard Fresh when left exposed to air for a number of days.

Experiment: Gather 4 bottles of the same wine and designate them with the following titles: Control, Full Open, Just Gas and Gas + Cork.

• Control: This bottle will remain sealed for the length of the exposure time and opened when the taste testing is executed
• Full Open: This bottle will have 150 ml (approx 5 oz or 1 glass of wine) of wine removed from the bottle and will remain uncorked for the duration of the exposure time.
• Just Gas: This bottle will have 150 ml of wine removed from the bottle, will have 2 short bursts of Vineyard Fresh applied to the inside of the bottle and will remain uncorked for the duration of the exposure time.
• Gas + Cork: This bottle will have 150 ml of wine removed from the bottle, will have 2 short bursts of Vineyard Fresh applied to the inside of the bottle and will be corked with a sterilized synthetic cork* for the duration of the exposure time.

Control
– Noise: Raspberry, Melon, Citrus, Earth
– Taste: Super dry, acidic, muted fruit, herbs, chalk

Barrel Charm
– Nose: Rich Blueberry, Orange, Brown Sugar, less earth
– Taste: Not as dry, muted fruit but different flavors, chalk, less herbs, less acidic
– Hypothesis: gas only
– Actual: gas w/ cork

Wine Glass Charm
– Nose: banana, cherry, Earth, Mint
– Taste: Not as dry, mellowness, more prominent chalk, acid, slightly off
– Hypothesis: full open
– Actual: full open

Grapes Charm
– Nose: Brown sugar, cherries, cloves, rich earth, spectrum of rich/full fruit, more spice
– Taste: super dry, chalky, acidic, herbs,
– Hypothesis: Gas w/ cork
– Actual: gas only

Conclusion:

This was both an experiment in Vineyard Fresh as well as how well I know my taste buds. My conclusion is that Vineyard Fresh made a noticeable difference in the preservation of the wine. My palate isn’t refined enough to tell if the cork vs. uncorked was a big difference but I could identify the full open bottle. I would recommend the product and would like to do this test in a year or so to see if my palate has improved.

I would like to thank the wine guys at Holiday Market (Brian and Antonio) for their recommendations on how to run the experiment and suggestion on wine.

Sweepstakes:

While I did purchase the argon product myself, Vineyard Fresh was nice enough to donate a prize pack of goodies. This includes a corkscrew, hat, t-shirt, wine bags and more. I’ll select one lucky commenter to win the prize pack and my 2nd bottle of Vineyard Fresh. Please post you New Years & booze related resolution for 2013. The contest will close Tuesday (1/8/13) at 11:59p.

Budmo!

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