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Stephen Tashiro
08-25-2014, 12:09 AM
In the days when people used ice harvested from lakes, did they put it in drinks? I'd think that natural ice would have some debris in it.

Jim Matthews
08-25-2014, 7:13 AM
Lake Erie ice was used to keep perishables cold in the major cities nearby.
Search "icebox" or "cold closet" to view the appliance.

Refrigeration made this enterprise irrelevant.
http://oldtimeerie.blogspot.com/2013/06/ice-harvest-on-lake-erie.html

Mark Bolton
08-25-2014, 7:38 AM
My grandparents and great grandparents had a general store in ME and would cut ice and haul it in with teams of horses. Stack it in a barn and cover it with hay to keep it all summer. Sold by the pound. I still have the stillyard scales they used to weight it.

It was sold to put in ice boxes before refrigerators of course. I don't think clear ice in the terms of us sitting around drinking ice tea was ever in their world. Ice was far too valuable to waste in a drink.

I think of it often when people dump half a glass of ice down the sink.

I look lived a fairly remote life for a short time where ice was like this for me. Putting it in a drink was the last think I was thinking of. ;-)

Thinking of how hard those people worked back then makes me feel like a real slug. I look at those very old photos and it always strikes me that you rarely if ever see an overweight person.

Steve Rozmiarek
08-25-2014, 9:17 AM
Like the others said, I don't think ice cubes were wasted in a drink glass until the advent of powered cooling, for most people. I suppose the wealthy had a different level of luxury, but the ones I knew didn't. If fact, nothing that didn't need cooled to keep was cooled. I guess you make some different priority calls if you have to plan 6 months ahead for an ice cube.

Kent A Bathurst
08-25-2014, 9:58 AM
At the very northermost tip of Newfoundland is a small town called L'Anse aux Meadows. There is a truly excellent seasonal restaurant there.

Single malt on the rocks - the ice is from icebergs. The collect it, and store it for the bar to use.

FWIW - L'Anse aux Meadows is site of an ancient Norse settlement, dating to about the year 1000, thought to have been founded by Leif Ericson.

Mel Fulks
08-25-2014, 12:29 PM
Even today most of the world's people don't use much ice in drinks or drink anything right out of the fridge. US and Australia have been cited as exceptions.

David Weaver
08-25-2014, 12:37 PM
i thought, given the title, that this thread was going to be about beer.

(we had an old refrigeration company where I grew up that had a cold house, but it went out of business once I was old enough to know what's what. It said "ice" on the side, and as a kid - born in the 70s - I always wondered why anyone would go somewhere to get ice. That was, of course, revealed over the years - but not by my parents who only said "that's where people used to go to buy blocks of ice")

Mark Bolton
08-25-2014, 2:27 PM
Many places still have ice houses especially at the large ice making companies that supply bagged ice to stores. I havent looked here locally but in my previous location you could still by any size block of ice you wished though some larger blocks would have to be pre-ordered. They sold massive blocks of crystal clear ice for ice sculptors as well as these large nifty blocks of ice with a hole in the center perfectly sized for 1/4 and 1/2 barrel kegs for your party. Back your pick up to the dock, slide the block on, slide it down a couple boards into the back yard a plunk your keg in the hole.

Never seemed like a great idea to me compared to a trash can where you could refresh your ice all day long but I guess the novelty was there.

I too thought upon reading the title that this was a beer thread but I cant honestly say that I have ever seen natural ice beer but I am sure it exists.... natural light is brutal enough, natural ice would make for a real doozy.

ray hampton
08-25-2014, 2:34 PM
during the cold weather [under 32 degrees ] your water would freeze if left outside

Mel Fulks
08-25-2014, 3:03 PM
We had a local ice company that delivered blocks to homes and businesses in a horse (or maybe mule) drawn wagon. Had sides painted orange with black lettering including address, quantities available , "crystal clear",probably "good 'n cold". I guess they wanted to provide light reading while it was double parked for each home delivery. Guess I need to add that it was the only non engine powered delivery truck I saw. An anachronism even 60 years ago. For early uses of winter harvested ice, I know they made ice cream in 18th century Virginia.

David Weaver
08-25-2014, 3:31 PM
I too thought upon reading the title that this was a beer thread but I cant honestly say that I have ever seen natural ice beer but I am sure it exists.... natural light is brutal enough, natural ice would make for a real doozy.

Oh...it exists. I've only had the displeasure of drinking milwaukee's best one time when a keg wasn't marked. Never had any natty or pabst products and was satisfied to rely on others' descriptions.

295525

Tom M King
08-25-2014, 4:35 PM
George Washington had one of the first ice houses in the country. I think maybe the second one. He built his because he liked ice cream.

ray hampton
08-25-2014, 4:58 PM
George Washington had one of the first ice houses in the country. I think maybe the second one. He built his because he liked ice cream.

I doubt that George Washington ice house was the first in this county because the Eskimo build ice houses

Dave Anderson NH
08-25-2014, 5:08 PM
NH had ice houses in the 18th century as did MA, and ME. Cutting lake ice was a huge business in northern New England and ships carried ice around Cape Horn to the California gold rush in the 1840s. New England ice was also sold down in the southern US and throughout the Carribean. Even today there is still one lake ice cutting operation in NH.

Rick Potter
08-26-2014, 2:27 AM
This thread reminded me of a plane ride I took from Israel to Germany on Lufthansa, the German airline. When the flight attendant was passing out soft drinks, she put a couple tiny ice cubes in my glass. When I asked for more ice, she rolled her eyes, and said "Oh, you Americans and your ice".

My wife and I laughed about 'Brunhilda' for years.

Rick Potter

Bert Kemp
08-26-2014, 8:10 AM
A Beer thread?:confused: Who puts ice in beer?:rolleyes:

ray hampton
08-26-2014, 11:18 AM
A Beer thread?:confused: Who puts ice in beer?:rolleyes:

you will IF YOU want to water the beer down

Val Kosmider
08-26-2014, 2:34 PM
As a child we had an "ice box". We bought ice from a guy who harvested it from a local lake.

I don't recall ever having an "ice cold drink"; nor did we have "ice cream" either.

For those of you who are concerned about the "health" of putting natural ice in drinks...it was a different time and the lakes and the streams which fed them were very drinkable.

"Were..."

Stephen Tashiro
08-27-2014, 1:29 PM
.it was a different time and the lakes and the streams which fed them were very drinkable.

"Were..."


People still might have avoided putting ice directly in drinks for sanitary reasons. I foujnd an interesting talk by John C. Sparks in 1914 about planing the ice to remove comtamination from men and horses. http://books.google.com/books?id=BZc7AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq=harvesting+ice+contamination&source=bl&ots=Xm3tHKqQG4&sig=_ERHet9NZjXVRp9Uo82lGr5qAas&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZxP-U6r2NIuUyAS-5IHgBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=harvesting%20ice%20contamination&f=false

John Lohmann
08-27-2014, 9:04 PM
This is how I learned about ice boxes295674

Phil Thien
08-27-2014, 11:21 PM
Never had any natty or pabst products and was satisfied to rely on others' descriptions.


I'd take a Pabst or Schlitz over many of the craft beers I've tried (many of which are just weird).

Milwaukee's Best, not so much.

Steve Rozmiarek
08-27-2014, 11:29 PM
I'd take a Pabst or Schlitz over many of the craft beers I've tried (many of which are just weird).

Milwaukee's Best, not so much.

Thought I was the only one who thought like this, I agree Phil!

Brian Elfert
08-28-2014, 8:45 AM
I'd take a Pabst or Schlitz over many of the craft beers I've tried (many of which are just weird).


The Minnesota State Fair is currently going on. Here is a description from the Star Tribune of the Smores beer:

Two specialty beers are worth checking out. A deep porter, with chocolate and coffee grace notes, is the backbone for the amusing S’more Beer (⋆⋆⋆, $4.75 and $8) at Giggles’ Campfire Grill. Not that anyone needed it, but owner Tim “Giggles” Weiss reaffirms his sense of humor by serving it in a glass rimmed in chocolate and crushed graham crackers. And yes, it’s garnished with mini-marshmallows.

David Weaver
08-28-2014, 8:51 AM
I'd take a Pabst or Schlitz over many of the craft beers I've tried (many of which are just weird).

Milwaukee's Best, not so much.

I'd skip them all...but I agree with your sentiment. Any time a beer has to have a catchy name, a gimmick or a picture of something completely unrelated on the label, I'm out.

Rich Engelhardt
08-28-2014, 9:21 AM
Any time a beer has to have a catchy name, a gimmick or a picture of something completely unrelated on the label, I'm out.I dunnooo......a local bowling alley used to have $.25 Friday nights.
You paid a $5.00 cover charge to get in, then each game cost $.25 - hot dogs were $.25 - and Natty Light was $.25 for a glass or $1.25 for a pitcher.
For $10.00 you could get a belly full of hot dogs, bowl till your arm fell off and get falling down loaded!

That was a gimmick I could get into ;).

Sadly - they quit the beer part of it, for obvious reasons. Way to many people took advantage of the ten spot thing and they had too many brawls.

Steve Rozmiarek
08-28-2014, 9:33 AM
Smores beer? Oh boy, everything is wrong with that. One that makes my stomach churn every time I see the ads is Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy.

Val mentioned the water being more pure in times of yore, I suspect not. Ever been around horses? Everything was done by horse power, so I'm guessing that lots of things had a distinct horsey flavor. Bunch of other things like the removal of human umm, byproducts used to use the water ways too, as did some very nasty chemicals that they didn't understand the ramifications of, like mercury.

Dan Hunkele
08-28-2014, 10:14 AM
But back then people didn't live long enough for the chemicals to kill them.

David Weaver
08-28-2014, 10:14 AM
I dunnooo......a local bowling alley used to have $.25 Friday nights.
You paid a $5.00 cover charge to get in, then each game cost $.25 - hot dogs were $.25 - and Natty Light was $.25 for a glass or $1.25 for a pitcher.
For $10.00 you could get a belly full of hot dogs, bowl till your arm fell off and get falling down loaded!

That was a gimmick I could get into ;).

Sadly - they quit the beer part of it, for obvious reasons. Way to many people took advantage of the ten spot thing and they had too many brawls.

Well, I mean gimmick in the beer, not in how an establishment peddles it. Our local bowling alley has a $9 bowl all you want for free cover Karaoke night each friday, but they sell the beer at regular price. They have a different model :) I'd guess they'd say they're breaking even on the bowling, but probably not even doing that as someone has to pay the guy who hauls in the karaoke stuff. It's in a part of town where some of the local residents have mohawks and a lot of unusual piercings, so the karaoke show can be worth the cost of admission.

Anyway, by gimmick, I mean having a beer that has some girl upside down with a dog on her feet and an umbrella and a name that makes no sense to try to make it out to be cool. Or beers with all kinds of fruits or chocolate flavors in them. It's like coffee...I drink beer to drink a good beer, not to win a beer naming contest or look at labels that look like an indie music record cover and pay twice or three times as much for something that's not quite as good as our standard around here (which is yuengling lager).

Phil Thien
08-28-2014, 6:14 PM
Anyway, by gimmick, I mean having a beer that has some girl upside down with a dog on her feet and an umbrella and a name that makes no sense to try to make it out to be cool. Or beers with all kinds of fruits or chocolate flavors in them. It's like coffee...I drink beer to drink a good beer, not to win a beer naming contest or look at labels that look like an indie music record cover and pay twice or three times as much for something that's not quite as good as our standard around here (which is yuengling lager).

The explosion of craft beers (and for that matter the wine isles of your local grocery store) is a symptom of many people insisting they're not alcoholics but rather aficionados.

Charles McKinley
09-08-2014, 7:35 PM
In another life my favorite beer was "free" followed closely by "cold." Glad I lived through that stage.

Kent A Bathurst
09-08-2014, 8:05 PM
I doubt that George Washington ice house was the first in this county because the Eskimo build ice houses
Ummm....Ray -

In GW's time, Alaska was not part of the USA. In fact, the border was the Mississippi. Arkansas and Missouri - your neighbors to the west - were not in the USA.

That does not mean GW had the first ice house in the USA. It only means that the Eskimo nation does not count in discussion.

Justin Ludwig
09-08-2014, 8:49 PM
At the very northermost tip of Newfoundland is a small town called L'Anse aux Meadows. There is a truly excellent seasonal restaurant there.

Single malt on the rocks - the ice is from icebergs. The collect it, and store it for the bar to use.

FWIW - L'Anse aux Meadows is site of an ancient Norse settlement, dating to about the year 1000, thought to have been founded by Leif Ericson. Wait just a minute, mister. Columbus discovered North America. Text books don't lie! :D

Rod Sheridan
09-09-2014, 8:34 AM
Ummm....Ray -

In GW's time, Alaska was not part of the USA. In fact, the border was the Mississippi. Arkansas and Missouri - your neighbors to the west - were not in the USA.

That does not mean GW had the first ice house in the USA. It only means that the Eskimo nation does not count in discussion.

Not only that Kent, there probably weren't Eskimo's in that COUNTY............Rod.