Prove me wrong: There’s categorically no better way to improve the presentation of a cocktail than by serving it with a spherical ice ball. The trouble is making them. Spherical ice molds are a massive pain in the butt, and hand-carving spheres is something best left to highly trained Japanese cocktailing masters.

For the rest of us there’s the ice ball press. I reviewed one of these years ago for someone, and I still have it — but I never use it. Why? Because the molds you have to use to make the ice are huge and hard to get out, and the press takes forever to turn a fat cylinder into a sphere. Pressice Barware solves a lot of these problems. The molds are a bit smaller — you can make four at a time in the roughly cubicle silicone tray, which is included — and they’re easier to release and get into the press.

Once there, the press goes to work, its hefty slab of aluminum pushing down on the ice (thanks, gravity!) to create a reasonably perfect sphere, 60mm across, in less than a minute. (Mine still tend to have a flat edge on one side, but they’re pretty close.) The smaller balls aren’t quite as impressive as the ones made by the larger press I have, but they still look great in the glass and, more importantly, they work well. I’ve had one sitting in an old fashioned for 90 minutes and half of it is still solid ice.

So get one. $250 gets you the press, a wooden box to keep it in, a rubber bar mat, the silicone mold, a nice old fashioned glass, and a set of tongs. Expensive, yes, but if you want to make a real statement with your home cocktail game, worth it. Also, Pressice (get it?) says a larger unit is on the way, if big balls are ultimately your thing. We don’t judge.

A / $250 / pressicebarware.com [BUY IT NOW FROM AMAZON]

Pressice Barware Ice Ball Press

$250

9.5

Rating

9.5/10

BUY IT NOW

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