Why Nugget Ice Is The Absolute Worst Choice For Cocktails

Ice is a crucial part of any cocktail, whether that cocktail is served over it in a glass, aka "on the rocks," or is mixed with it and served without, aka "up." Ice not only provides necessary chilling for drinks, but also dilution. Dilution may sound like a bad thing, but it doesn't necessarily have to mean a watery drink — it's simply a bit of balance for the strong booze of many recipes. Ideally, especially when dealing with drinks served over ice, you want just enough dilution to mellow the alcohol while the melting ice's cold water opens up any fruity, savory, spicy, and botanical flavors present. And the way to get the right level of dilution at the right pace comes down to the size and shape of your ice. From cubes to spheres to pebbles, different drinks call for different forms, but one form of ice is almost never good for desirable dilution: nugget ice.

Nugget ice, also called chewy or chewable ice, is like pebble ice but softer. Fast food chains like Sonic have made nugget ice popular in fruity sodas, often with enough cloying sweetness they could use some water content. Water is sprayed onto a plate, scraped as it's freezing, and pressed into molds — the fact that it's pressed into its shape creates that soft, chewy texture, and that texture plus the nuggets' diminutive size create a very fast-melting ice. That's great for cloying soft drinks, less great for thoughtfully composed, flavor-focused tipples.

It's worth noting nugget ice's fast and easy melting makes it a good contender for blended, frozen cocktails where that water content helps smooth out ingredients like fruit purees. For other beverages, though, while using chewy ice isn't the worst mistake you can make with cocktail ice — that would be using ice that's absorbed food flavors in your freezer — it's pretty sure to disappoint.

To get the right level of dilution, think about what flavors you want played up in your drink and how long you like to take to drink it. The more surface area, the slower ice melts. That's why you'll see singular, giant ice cubes in stirred cocktails: You'll take your time enjoying it, so you don't want too much melting too quickly, and you also just want a little dilution as those boozy flavors are intentional. This also applies to long ice spears for any twist on a Collins cocktail, served in a tall glass and sipped leisurely. Additionally, ice is often considered an aesthetic element of a cocktail, and these boulder-sized ices are visually striking.

Crushed ice works well in tropical drinks because there's so much alcohol and sweetness, you do want more dilution more quickly. The next time you make a mint julep, you might even go as far as shaved ice, for refreshing balance. These ices aren't as soft as nugget ice, though, so that melting promises a slower pace.