re: Whiskey/Bourbon/Scotch appreciation thread

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nice if you want something real cold though

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At any rate, the articles promoting big ice cubes always say they’re superior because they have a low surface area per unit mass. Since melting occurs at the surface of the cube, the low surface area is said to reduce melting and prevent your drink from getting as watered-down as it would if you used the same mass of smaller cubes. The writers of these articles seldom invoke the square-cube law explicitly, but that’s what they’re talking about. In some cases, they go beyond just saying that big cubes melt slower and also claim that they do so while cooling your drink just as much. These claims should be looked upon with a gimlet eye, because the cubes’ melting is what does the cooling.

No question, some of the cooling comes from raising the temperature of the ice from below freezing up to the melting point. But that’s small beer. The specific heat of ice (0.50 cal/g-K) is only about half that of water (and about equal to that of ethanol), so raising the temperature of ice does little to lower the temperature of your drink. The significant cooling comes from ice’s heat of fusion, which is a whopping 80 cal/g. This is what pulls heat out of your drink and lowers its temperature.

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