For a couple of years now, I have been passionate about making clear ice for my drinks, especially in the form of large “whiskey balls,” which are superior to crushed or cubed ice because they melt slowly.
There are a lot of videos online on how to make clear whiskey balls, and I tried a few methods, but most of them were messy and took a lot of room in the freezer. Finally, for simplicity’s sake, I bought a whiskey ball mold from Corkcicle. Their mold comes in an insulated mug, which causes the ice to freeze from the top down and squeeze out air and impurities. It consistently makes clear, crack-free balls, though they do occasionally have minor imperfections, and I’ve been very happy with it.
Anyway, an orange peel is the normal garnish for an old fashioned, and I recently had the idea of combining the ice and garnish by spiral-cutting a mandarin orange and then placing the orange peel in the ice mold in such a way that it comes out frozen into but attractively enwrapping the ice. These balls have come out looking quite good overall, though they for some reason develop a large imperfection at the top. I’ve made a few of these, and now that I’m over my cold, I decided today to test one.
To get an impression of how well this works, I mixed an old fashioned as simply as possible: I took a cube of sugar, soaked it in Angostura bitters, added a teaspoon of filtered water, and stirred until it dissolved. Then I added two ounces of Woodford Reserve bourbon and poured the whole over the ice ball in a chilled rocks glass.
Appearance-wise, it looks very sharp, and I don’t think the photo does it justice. The drink tastes fine but, as described has no bells and whistles: It is bourbon-forward with just a touch of sweetness and bitters to make it more drinkable. I personally prefer a bit more citrus in my old fashioned, so on my next attempt, I might add one splash of orange bitters for extra flavor. I suspect a lot of the oils in the peel disappeared during the freezing process: The water in the bottom of the insulated mug has a yellowish appearance, suggesting that a lot of flavor got squeezed out.
Still, these peel-wrapped ice balls look cool. They’d make a good complement to drinks at a party.