Thursday, June 12, 2008

Post #2: Ice

I'm not sure exactly when it started. I believe it was last summer. Anyway, one day we bought a 12 pack and didn't have room in the refrigerator for it, so we bought a bag of ice and put it in the cooler.

Surprise, the beer was far colder than it had ever been in the fridge. Hence, the beer tasted far better than it had ever done out of the fridge. We were hooked.

Of course, this means that when we buy beer daily we also are required to buy a bag of ice. This gets expensive. I believe the ice at the Exxon up the street is $1.79 a bag. Add that to the $9.99 12 pack and you can see where this starts to add up. If we get an 18 pack at the grocery store and buy the large bag of ice it's $2.89. Yep, so that's about $15 for an evening or two's worth of entertainment.

Here's where the real point of this post arrives. Ice is different. I was not aware that the cubes that are bagged by different companies can be so much different from each other. You have your squares, your rather large tubes, and your little attached stacks. I have to say, the little attached stacks suck balls. We get those at the Exxon.

They not only stick together and don't break up easily when you bang the bag on the ground, but the also melt too fast. I'm serious, even when it isn't 101 degrees outside, if we use the little stacked ice cubes they're melted by the end of the evening. that's usually 5 hours.

On the other hand, the grocery store ice is the tubular shaped kind. they're fat and happy and they don't in fact stick together. If we buy a bag of grocery store ice at 4pm it's still ice (granted, far less of it, but ice) by the next morning. 

The Citgo ice (last source for us) is like little balls with holes in them. They tend to last a decent amount of time as well, usually there's a great deal of water the next morning but enough ice left to make sure my Coke Zeros will still be cold by 10am. I like the Citgo ice, and have repeatedly asked Rich to go to Citgo for the beer and ice but A) it's farther away, and B) the beer is a dollar more expensive.

All of this might be moot, as I'm down to 2 beers a night now, possibly 1 soon, and we might not end up needing 12 packs much longer. And yes, Rich and I could put a 12 pack away together in one evening prior to this.

So there you have it. A completely nonsensical post because Livvie is napping and I'm bored. 

Stay cool.

5 comments:

Nina said...

I have never considered the shape of the ice as a possible indicator of ice quality until now. Thank you for the education. I now know what to buy.

Em said...

I very rarely buy ice.

But I have a question: do you drink beer every night? Do you ever do wine or mixed drinks instead?

Em said...

Oh.. I just re-read that and see that I missed the last paragraph in which you answered my question. You were drinking six beers a night until you decided to cut back to two and then one? Wow you will lose weight easily with that change!

Woodrow said...

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Kelly said...

I love the ice with holes in it. Best ice, imo.