A cheap means of producing an abundance of artificial cold

January 22, 2021 1:22 PM

From Dr John Gorrie, "a crank down in Apalachicola, Florida, that thinks he can make ice by his machine as good as God Almighty" to the Super Cube, "an absolute unit, at least three times larger than a conventional cube" — the history of packaged ice.
posted by Vesihiisi (26 comments total)

My sister in law bought me an Opal Nugget Ice Maker for a birthday one year.

That machine makes this man redundant.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 1:47 PM on January 22, 2021

I actually attended John Gorrie Junior High in Jacksonville, Florida back in the 1990's (gorgeous old building that was later converted to condos). Given that perhaps 80-90% of Floridians wouldn't think of living in this swamp without AC, that man deserved nothing less than an 10 story obelisk dedicated to him in every major Florida city.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 1:50 PM on January 22, 2021 [5 favorites]

Super cubes: "You won't find bigger ice cubes on freezer shelves in the UK and Europe!"

Ok, that's a lot of caveats. I've had bigger pieces of ice just hanging off the side of my house in Canada.

But yes, it's weird to think that a mere hundred years ago packaged ice simply didn't exist. (well except for preserved ice)
posted by GuyZero at 2:01 PM on January 22, 2021 [3 favorites]

When I was living in Manitoba I made a trip up to Gimli. They had a fishing(?) museum there and in the basement was an ice-storage room. They would harvest the natural ice in the winter and spring and then keep it down there packed in straw where it would last for months. It had never occurred to me before then that you could store ice for that long, even though every parking lot has a mountain of dirty snow that lasts for weeks after temperatures go above freezing.

We only recently got a fridge with a built-in ice maker and my son loves it. Before we would only put ice in drinks once in a while or if it was really hot. Now he pretty much only drinks ice water, even at breakfast.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:24 PM on January 22, 2021 [4 favorites]

"The very best you can get, they melt extremely slowly therefore chilling your drink quickly, but without diluting"

This is kinda bullshit. Yes, unmediated contact with your drink is going to help cool it, but the reason ice is so good for chilling drinks quickly is that thawing is an endothermic process. So watering the drink down is a fundamental part of rapid chilling (which is one of the reasons for cocktail shakers). The real advantage of a big ice cube is that it will keep your drink cold without diluting it too rapidly. If you really need a cold drink without dilution, keep it in the fridge (or freezer for spirits).
posted by howfar at 2:29 PM on January 22, 2021 [5 favorites]

This is kinda bullshit. Yes, unmediated contact with your drink is going to help cool it, but the reason ice is so good for chilling drinks quickly is that thawing is an endothermic process.

Yes but in a normal ice cube you're going to have dissolved gases coming out of solution being frozen inside the crystal. That air is going to be a thermal insulator, stopping heat from getting to the center of the ice cube and causing more heat to go to breaking the bonds of the ice. Compared to pure ice which has over 200 times the thermal conductivity of air.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:46 PM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

The very best you can get, they melt extremely slowly therefore chilling your drink quickly, but without diluting.

False advertising, surely, since the laws of thermodynamics would make ice spheres the very best, in terms of surface area and heat exchange, as compared with any cube.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:55 PM on January 22, 2021

ice spheres

I believe they're called round ice cubes.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:12 PM on January 22, 2021 [12 favorites]

If that Guardian article isn’t sponsored content, it sure reads like it.
posted by zamboni at 3:13 PM on January 22, 2021

In my experience clear ice cubes do melt much more slowly, and I’ve always attributed that to the fact that the air bubble-pocked surface exposed as ice that isn’t clear melts has much greater surface area.
posted by jamjam at 3:28 PM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

As a Floridian, this is a subject near and dear to my heart. When I moved to FL in the 60s, the old Melbourne ice plant still stood off US1 behind a McDonalds. The original plant was a hulking multi-story building adjacent to a single story modern ice plant on the FEC tracks. The machinery was intact - a diabolical appearing mass of tubes and columns. The room still smelled faintly of ammonia even though the plant had been decommissioned years before. I don’t know if any of the plants of this era still stand but they are/were a fascinating historical artifact.

Gorrie’s problem - and Perkin’s as well - was the lack of a suitable working fluid. Initially, ether was used but was flammable and explosive. By the 1880s plants used ammonia and, a bit later, sulfur dioxide (link). Ammonia plants are still manufactured and widely used (for example). Here in the US, more environmentally toxic fluorocarbons are used in this application. SO2 is no better for the atmosphere.

Anyway, Appalachicola is worth the visit, especially for the fishing.
posted by sudogeek at 4:34 PM on January 22, 2021 [3 favorites]

absolute unit at least three times larger than a conventional cube

Or a "chonk"
posted by Sockdown at 4:40 PM on January 22, 2021 [5 favorites]

May I digress? Like you can stop me. Some years ago, the New Yorker did a lengthy story about how commercial ice is made, in which it was noted that consumers prefer crescent-shaped ice 'cubes.' In my home, the print version of The New Yorker is in the basket in the bathroom.

My son was @ 12 or 13. We got a new fridge with an ice maker. My son exclaimed that it makes the desired crescent-shaped ice cubes.

Me: You read The New Yorker?
Adolescent Son: Yeah, what did you think I was doing in the bathroom that long?
Me:
Adolescent Son:
Me:
Adolescent Son:
much laughter ensued. We still occasionally joke about crescent-shaped ice.
posted by theora55 at 4:41 PM on January 22, 2021 [23 favorites]

Appalachicola is worth the visit, especially for the fishing.

Used to be good for oysters too; I made many trips from Tallahassee down to the coast to pick up a burlap sack full of those tasty boogers for a pittance. I miss good cheap oysters.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:54 PM on January 22, 2021

Yeah, Greg, we could have an entire megathread on the collapse of the Apalachicola Bay fishery, unsustainable growth of the Atlanta megalopolis, dams, decreased flow of water from the Flint-Chattahoochee river system, water politics in FL, AL, and GA, the glacial progress of the lawsuit (link), and so on. It’s a sad story and, I’m afraid, the bay is doomed. But the redfish are still there - for now.
posted by sudogeek at 5:03 PM on January 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

Theora55, was it “The Emperor of Ice”? I was just thinking of that piece too!
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:11 PM on January 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

computech_apolloniajames, I honestly don't remember. My son was not a mellow kid, and that moment of shared hilarity is kind of precious, tho.
posted by theora55 at 6:28 PM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

I love ice spheres! Efficient and pretty, and well worth the small effort to get out of the molds.

Also, a fascinating example of historical ice production (that happens to be completely untenable in Florida) is the Yakhchal, an evaporative cooling building built in 400 BC Persia. Water that is channeled into the yakhchal can freeze overnight, so they actually made ice!
posted by Behemoth, in no. 302-bis, with the Browning at 6:46 PM on January 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

If you're in the US and jealous of the absolute unit ice, have I got a URL for you. (Disclosure: I have a t-shirt from these guys I got at a liquor industry event. I never wear it). Here in DC one of our neighborhood bars sells its ice (but they're currently closed for Covid).
posted by fedward at 6:46 PM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

Used to be good for oysters too

Unfortunately the oyster harvest is shut down until 2025 due to dwindling population. I have good memories of wandering around town getting a dozen here and a dozen there, and some tasty suds. I do not remember, however, ever getting a cocktail.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:21 PM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

('ammonia plant' triggers Harrison Ford voice:)
Ice! Is Civilization!
posted by bartleby at 11:54 PM on January 22, 2021 [1 favorite]

If you're in the US and jealous of the absolute unit ice, have I got a URL for you.

And only just over twelve dollars per cube/sphere (plus shipping)!
posted by Dysk at 1:11 AM on January 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

No, I can't maths right now. Six! Six bucks and change!

Still seems like a lot, but I guess I'm not the target market for fancy ice.
posted by Dysk at 1:13 AM on January 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

Still seems like a lot, but I guess I'm not the target market for fancy ice.

That is a lot, and if you're going to be needing that many spheres, then just buy a machine to make your own (or diamonds, soccer balls, etc.)
posted by jeremias at 4:59 AM on January 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is kinda bullshit. Yes, unmediated contact with your drink is going to help cool it, but the reason ice is so good for chilling drinks quickly is that thawing is an endothermic process. So watering the drink down is a fundamental part of rapid chilling (which is one of the reasons for cocktail shakers).

Yep, melting is a huge part of how ice works in drinks, specifically due to the heat of fusion. It takes far more thermal energy to raise a mass of water from 0C to 1c than it does to raise it from -2C to -1C or from 1C to 2C. This is because the first example involves a phase change from solid to liquid, and phase change requires a lot more thermal energy. Effectively, all chilling of drinks with water ice, whether rapid or slow, is done by melting. This explains why “whiskey stones” aren’t good for anything but breaking your teeth. It also explains why big pieces of ice aren’t very good at chilling, which is why good cocktail bars will stir or shake a drink with smaller pieces of ice before straining it onto the big ice in the glass. If you just dump your room temperature booze on a big piece of ice in your glass and swish it around until it gets cold, you’re only going to end up with a much smaller piece of ice and a drink that’s not as cold as it would be if you’d chilled/diluted it first. (Use of big ice for shaking is for textural reasons, not efficiency.)
posted by slkinsey at 5:46 AM on January 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

I greatly enjoyed the article, although agree that it felt a little like an advertisement for the ICE Co. I am glad to hear that ice availability is increasing. when I lived in the Netherlands 15 years ago, ice was non-existent on the retail level, and the mini-fridges we had in student housing were useless for making party quantities. we did a lot of room temperature shots.

The article mentioned how ice was important to agriculture in the US, but doesn't go into much detail. This could be its own article, but The Pacific Fruit Express rail service was essential to the development of agriculture in California, and operated the world's large ice plan in 1946. The plant no longer stands, but The California State Railroad museum in Sacramento has a little display.

My last office was near a small (by these standards) l ice factory, which happens to be a mile or two offer that water and has a couple of commercial fish processors nearby. I was always fun to see the commercial fisherman come by and pick up an entire pickup bed full of ice, less fun was the small coming out of the fish processors. I also bought 200lbs of ice in trash cans for my wedding there. I was suppling my own drinks and the cater advised me that I could save more cash by supply my own ice.
posted by CostcoCultist at 6:06 AM on January 23, 2021 [2 favorites]