Most people keep bikes, cars or emergency supplies in their garage. Charles Hartz keeps ice.

Roughly 10,000 pounds of it, he estimates, give or take a ton.

From the outside, Hartz's garage looks like any other in his Beaverton neighborhood. But inside, you'll find carving tools, chainsaws and a cavernous freezer packed with 300-pound ice blocks, pre-cut cubes and Hartz's elaborate ice carvings, all waiting for delivery. In the corner, two

can crank out 1,200 pounds of ice every three days.

Much of the ice sitting around in Hartz's surprisingly temperate garage will find its way into local bars across Portland, including

,

,

,

and

, which all order Hartz's custom-cut ice in various shapes and sizes.

Once, custom ice seemed like a luxury, with bartenders forming a tray or two of experimental cubes in the back of the restaurant. Now, thanks to more sophisticated clientele and the work of men and women like Hartz, it's hard to imagine an ambitious bar opening in America without giving serious thought to its coolest product. One Chicago bar even employs its own full-time ice chef. In Portland, a hotbed of cocktail culture, bars now have the ability to focus more and more on the one cocktail ingredient that never got its due: ice.

Sculpting a career

When Hartz started his company,

, in 2012, cocktails were the furthest thing from his mind. At the time, his focus was on carving ice sculptures for weddings and events, an unusual skill he had honed for more than a decade.

But after an especially slow winter in 2013 -- typically a tough season for ice carvers -- Hartz decided to visit hotels in the Portland area handing out flyers advertising his services. Garrett Peck, General Manager at downtown Portland's Imperial, was one of the first to call.

"He called up and asked for a block of ice," Hartz said. "Here I am trying to sell ice sculptures and they just wanted a block of ice.

"At first I thought, 'this isn’t helping my cause,' I want to sell an ice sculpture. But he wanted ice for his bar. I started working with him and (Imperial bar manager) Brandon Wise trying to figure out exactly what size block of ice they'd need."

Peck's call, which turned into a new avenue for PDX Ice sales, shouldn't have been a complete surprise. As American tipplers become more educated, bartenders began to improve the quality of every ingredient that goes into the glass.

"As the craft cocktail movement was born, the transition to using fresh juice rather than sour mix was the first major paradigm shift," said Imperial's Wise. "Then came a rebirth in classic cocktails, infusing spirits, making home made syrups, bitters and tinctures."

The next obvious step was ice.

"The better the ingredients we start with, the better the end product will be," Wise said. "Ice just happens to be the one ingredient that gets overlooked more than all the others."

The art and science of ice

Ice.jpg

It takes more than a freezer and water to make a solid cube, Hartz explains.

Normal freezers freeze ice quickly, trapping air bubbles and impurities in the water, leaving cubes looking white and cloudy. They melt quickly and water down the drink faster.

With machines devoted to ice making, such as the

or a

, constantly circulating water and slower freezing creates ice that's clearer, harder, has fewer impurities and melts slower in the glass. Slower-melting ice dilutes drinks less over time, and, larger cubes, such as the 2-inch cubes Hartz carves for Raven & Rose, Levant and other bars, have less surface area and melt even slower.

"Bartenders always want to be compared to cooks," said David Shenaut, bar manager at Raven & Rose. "The main difference is cooks heat things up and bartenders cool things down."

But the use of ice in cocktails goes beyond merely chilling the drink to a preferred temperature.

"The key with drinks is trying to figure out the ratio of dilution versus time," Shenaut said. "There’s a point when it gets perfect and you want to enjoy the beverage at that point."

"What’s interesting is when you start getting into crushed, shaved and pellet ice," Shenaut said. "You’re using ice as the tool to create air, chill and dilution at the same time, so using good ice makes a huge difference."

Wise predicts that as more bars start using large block ice, we’ll see a new focus on hand-chiseling different shapes.

“Learning how to work with ice is a lot like learning knife skills as a chef,” he said. “Maybe someday I’ll be able to carve something cool like a bald eagle, but I’m still working on rectangles and spheres.”



How clear ice is made

To make a 2-inch cube of ice, Hartz starts with a 20-by-10-by-40 inch block of solid, clear ice that weighs about 300 pounds. He uses his two Clinebell machines that mold a total of four blocks over a three-day period.

The machines freeze from the bottom up, while a water circulator at the top of the tank constantly keeps the water in motion, prohibiting any impurities or air bubbles from getting trapped in the cube. Once the block is completely frozen, Hartz uses an engine lift to pull the block out of the machine and puts it into the freezer. Once the block tempers, or warms up, Hartz uses various Japanese tools to cut it into more manageable slabs, with thicknesses varying for each bar's preference. One 300 pound block can make about two hundred 2-inch cubes, Hartz said.

As artisanal ice becomes more prominent in bar programs across the city, new trends are already beginning to emerge. Flavored ices and hand-chiseled cubes, in particular, are starting to appear on more menus across the city. At St. Jack, bar manager John Salas is freezing lemon verbena ice spheres to use in a drink on their menu.

Hartz has to constantly make ice in order to keep up with the demand from his clients. Raven & Rose orders roughly 300 cubes a week and Imperial and Portland Penny Diner, Imperial's sister cafe-bar, has been going through two-to-three, 30-50 pound blocks a day. Five other bars currently get their ice from Hartz, who has continued his ice sculpting work.

Though Hartz didn't set out to make ice for drinks, he's embraced that part of his business, which now makes up about 50 percent of his sales.

"Once I got the taste of it, I really enjoyed it," Hartz said. "I never thought I could make a living off it."

-- Samantha Bakall