The Canadian Ginic spherical ice ball maker -- because you need one.

Once upon a time, I blogged about spherical ice ball makers here, and now it's time to give you lucky Ottawa folks the chance to get your very own ice ball maker. From the creative designer-type minds of the gin-sipping intellectuals here at CC HQ, we have solid aluminum ice ball makers that, through the modern miracle of basic thermodynamics, churn out 50mm ice balls for your favourite cocktails.

Behold:

The process is not hard -- if you can make ice and lift stuff, it works like this. In the pic above, you're looking at the two available finishes -- anodized aluminum and a wicked cool matte black. (There was a copper finish but ... yuck, no, that didn't work out, sadly.)

If you're not quite sure what the fuss is about, there's something magically sciency about spherical ice in a cocktail, as explained here. At the moment, making 50mm spheres is fairly easy since you can easily buy silicone ice cube trays that make 2-inch cubes, which is just the size you want for these makers. But we're about to get more ambitious. A couple bartenders have already said they want larger spheres -- 60mm, or possibly 65mm -- which means we'll have to figure out how to conveniently produce chunks of ice that are appropriate. Even more of a challenge is how to produce perfectly clear ice and, trust me, that's not as easy as it sounds, but we'll figure something out. Eventually.

Questions?