BourbonBlog.com has noticed the recent trend of designer spherical “ice balls” made for cocktails and mixology. With a perfect sphere giving less surface area, your cocktail or Bourbon stays cold without the ice melting so quickly.
Maker’s Mark recognized the trend and created their own plastic signature ice ball maker mold as the 2010 holiday gift to Maker’s Mark Ambassadors. Perfect timing and for a plastic design, this mold makes some great ice balls and easy to use.
There are Japanese brands that charge several hundred to over a thousand dollars for molds and solutions. Leave it the American ingenuity at Maker’s Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky for quite a gift! Bill Samuel’s Jr. calls it “the ultimate bourbon ball” in this “spirit of unconventionality” in his holiday wishes to Maker’s Mark Ambassadors.
Thanks, Maker’s Mark for delivering Maker’s 46 to us in 2010 and a way to make sure that we have some “Bourbon Balls” this Christmas (Bourbon not included in this gift).
If you have used this Bourbon Ball ice Maker, we’d love to hear how you like it, post in comments below!
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Tammy
This is so cool (pun unintentional!). Thank you so much Maker’s Mark! We always appreciate the gifts that you send every year and put these things to good use, just as you’d like for us to, and this sphere mold arrived in the nick of time for the Christmas get-together. I will be experimenting with the mold to use for punch for the kiddies too in freezing spherical fruit juice. Thank you again, and Happy Holidays to you all!
Matt
When going through mail at my old Kentucky home (visiting for Christmas), my parents mentioned a box! I left the rest of the mail when I saw the box and began to figure out what I was dealing with. I have been using them for 30 hours since I opened it and made lots of bourbon drinks today using the ice balls. Very cool touch. Thank you Makers!
Doug
Mine came with instructions in the box. A couple tips have already been presented here, but they bear repeating.
Find the water level where it just BARELY lets some escape out the relief holes. Make sure you chip off the nub that builds up outta the relief holes before you attempt to separate the mold. Run the mold under warm water before attempting to separate. DON’T try to pull them apart by the tabs. They’ll break. (I know this from experience.) Make a coupla passes around the outside, prying the mold apart at the seams. Chip away any flash that’s in the middle. If any are stuck in the remaining half, carefully run warm water on one at a time until it releases.
I haven’t tried starting with hot or distilled water to reduce the cloudiness yet. Will be doing that today. Regardless, they look much better in the glass than they do fresh out of the mold.
Ryan
Ughhhh mine cracked last night – I’m ruined!
Snakeman
Well mine showed up today, and I have to go back to work tomorrow, so I have to wait another day to try and use them.
Sounds like a good idea with the round ice balls vs. the standard square ice cubes.
Great gift. Thanks Makers.
Greg
Got mine on Christmas Eve. I immediately filled it up and was enjoying a “bourbon ball” in an old fashioned glass with a double shot of MM Sunday evening. Mine turned out perfect. I did have to use cold water to get them to detach from the mold. I used filtered water instead of distilled, so the ice ball was a little cloudy. I intend to try distilled next. What a cool gift! I do recommend caution when getting the balls out, as the mold seems like it could be a bit fragile when so cold.
inaustin
Best Christmas gift I got this year.
Joe Clawson
Rec’d this a day or so before Christmas. Read the one page directions and immediately filled them to start the process. Remocving the frozen balls is a little bit of a challenge. A little warm tap water helps.
You end up with 4 nice sized (almost tennis ball sized) ice balls. They don’t melt as quickly as cubes so not as much watering down of your drink. As a direct result, you don’t get as much chilling affect….but all in all they do a nice job!
Thaks Makers Mark!
Tom Papoutsis
What an AWSOME idea! they are not only a novelty, but are very functional in not melting too fast and watering down the taste of our prescious Makers. I wish I had a mold that would make 8 or 12 at a time. Thanks Bill, Emily and the rest of the staff at Makers Mark………….. without you folks, we’d all still be drinking “Rot Gut” of some sort! Keep up the Great Work, and can’t wait to see what you guys have in store for us in 2011.
Ambassador TP