At some point in all of our lives we’ve either asked, or heard someone ask, why do bartenders use so much ice in cocktails, spirit mixers or just in general. There seems to be a generally accepted myth amongst society that it’s purely so a customer gets less liquid and has to buy more drinks. This myth is up there with the myth that servers only ask you if your food’s ok when you’ve got a full mouth so you can’t say no.

One of the real questions here is: Do bartenders use a lot of ice to rip off their customers?

We’re going to be completely honest with you and tell you: No. No they don’t.

Simply put: Ice makes things cold. In fact, there’s not a lot of things in this world that are better at making things cold than melting ice - even blocks of steel stored in liquid nitrogen cannot chill a drink quicker than ice can. Hurray for ice.

The direct cause and byproduct of chilling is dilution

Technically, chilling is a byproduct of dilution: When ice melts, it transfers its chilling energy to its surroundings as it absorbs heat thus making its surroundings colder

This is where the quality of ice comes into question. If your bartender uses a lot of “wet” ice to chill your drink (ice that has already started melting), the surface area of water on the ice is larger, therefore your drink will dilute a lot faster than if your bartender had used “dry” ice. Science fact: colder ice chills a lot slower than warmer ice does, this is because the energy that the ice is absorbing is used to heat it up to a point where it can start melting; there is no dilution and no transferring of energy to the liquid around it therefore it cannot chill the liquid.

That was very technical so take a minute to enjoy this cute penguin.