Wednesday 17 July 2013

On ice (and ice cream)

It's hot in England. By English standards anyway. Has been for weeks. A heat wave. And with a wave of heat comes a tsunami of ignorance about ice. If I have a purpose in life it is to educate people about ice. We have touched previously on reasons why ice preferences should not be linked to the temperature outside.(see Ranting about work (part one)) Now it's time to examine the dual properties of ice.

Ice can serve two purposes: it can cool and it can dilute. The more ice you have the longer your drink stays cool, the less ice you have the faster it dilutes. (Got that? Good. I was worried you were going to ask me to draw a graph or something and I've never learnt to use Excel.) These are the two factors that should be considered when your hot, overworked, underpaid bartender asks if you want ice. How cold do I want my drink and how much do I want my drink diluted? HINT: It's pretty much only neat spirits that need diluting, your cider doesn't. So when your hot, tired, overworked, underpaid bartender, who would rather not be in the darkest pub in Norwich on the hottest day of the year, asks if you would like ice in your cider and you say 'a little bit', he may not be in the mood for giving you a quick lecture on basic physics, he might just give you what you ask for and smirk while you drink your watery cider.

Now, What is the weather like outside? It's hot in England. The sort of weather where you might fancy a White Chocolate Magnum. Well if you do, don't go to my local shop because they have sold out. And if you do go to my local shop and see that they have sold out and think, 'Well, I don't want a Double Caramel Magnum because I don't like caramel ruining my ice-cream and filling up the cavities in my teeth and I don't want a Caramel Magnum because that's the same price as a Double Caramel Magnum and I don't want to feel I'm being ripped off even though I don't like caramel in my ice cream for the aforementioned reasons and I don't want a Magnum Infinity because that's a flavour that's not a flavour (like 'blue' or 'tropical') and I have an aversion to flavours that aren't flavours, I'd better go for mint.' If you do go for mint you'll probably regret it and wish you'd just got a Feast instead.

Apologies to my international readers for the rant about local ice-cream brands. It's hot in England. We're not used to it.