I bear in mind the primary time I noticed them: dozens of excellent, tiny squares, their sharp strains pressed towards the within of a glass they generously stuffed to the brim. The squares have been manufactured from chestnut-colored frozen espresso and topped with oat milk, a TikTok iced-coffee “hack” that, on nearer inspection, isn’t a hack in any respect. However by no means thoughts that. It was majestic, a type of boba for Bauhaus heads—orderly, structured.
I have no idea what number of “tiny ice dice” movies exist on TikTok at the moment, however it’s not sufficient. The platform appears to have found the silicone molds used to make the right half-inch-by-half-inch squares (and their round brethren) round 2020. Since then, I’ve watched them kind the bottom of cocktails, add aptitude to juices, sodas, teas. I’ve seen the molds full of matcha, espresso, milk and all method of unidentified Technicolor liquids. I’ve watched folks eat them with a spoon, or dice by dice like popcorn. I delight of their uniformity, but additionally of their impracticality.
Every mildew makes 160 ice cubes. If I have been higher at math, I may let you know what number of of those 160-cube trays would equal, by quantity, a single 15-cube Tovolo ice dice tray. Alas, I can not. What I can let you know, with confidence, is that for me, nothing concerning the attract of the diminutive dice is about perform. Camper English, one of many world’s foremost specialists on cocktail ice, whose forthcoming guide is appropriately titled The Ice Ebook, is blunt on this level: “They’re principally ineffective as ice cubes and arduous to get out of the trays.” (Watching folks battle to get the cubes out of the trays can also be an amusing subgenre of tiny-ice TikTok, I’d add.)
@cafejenn dropped ice in every single place however the present should go on✨ #miniicecubes #icedlatte #homecafe #coffeetime #아이스라떼 ♬ Chopin Nocturne No. 2 Piano Mono – moshimo sound design
English remembers first seeing tiny ice in The Aviary Cocktail Ebook, which was launched in 2018. The guide encompasses a memorable drink referred to as the Zombie Panda, which is crowded with tiny spherical ice manufactured from raspberry liqueur, citric acid, easy syrup and water. It seems like a ghostly lava lamp. “I’d by no means seen them earlier than that,” English says. I ought to point out that The Aviary’s former bar director, Micah Melton, does argue for the utility of tiny ice as a taste distributor: It melts sooner than your typical 1-inch dice, and should you’re freezing something apart from water, it may possibly have the supposed impact of fixing the drink as you drink it.
However I discover enthusiastic about the cubes’ high-concept functions to be, frankly, a buzzkill. Their attraction is extra ethereal. I really feel a cosmic urge to cup them in each palms, show them to nobody particularly and dump them out onto a desk like a bunch of unfastened diamonds. Have a look at my treasure, I’d say. However I’ll by no means do that; tiny ice belongs on TikTok, and in my thoughts’s eye, like a reminiscence. English appears to know what I’m speaking about. “There’s one thing about them that makes you wish to scoop them and throw them and take heed to them,” he says. “I really feel like they set off an analogous satisfaction to rolling a handful of cube or the sound of cereal hitting the bowl or tipping over a bucket stuffed with unfastened change.” In the event you ask me, imagining that satisfaction is the place the true satisfaction lies.
