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Ice is the only party supply that people consistently underestimate, and it is the only one that quietly destroys itself while you are not looking. Nobody runs out of glasses at nine o clock. Everyone runs out of ice.
The reason is that most of us think of ice as one thing when it is really two, with very different requirements. Working out how much ice for a party you actually need starts with separating those two jobs and doing some genuinely simple sums.
Chilling ice sits in a tub or a bath with bottles and cans in it. Its job is thermal, it will get handled, splashed and rinsed by melting bottles, and nobody should be putting it in a glass. It can be the cheapest ice you can find, and the cubes can be any size or shape.
Serving ice goes in drinks. It should be clean, handled with a scoop rather than fingers, and stored separately from the moment it arrives. Ideally it is also in larger cubes, since a big cube has less surface area for its volume and melts more slowly in a glass.
Keeping them apart is the single most useful decision you will make. Most parties that run out of ice have not actually run out. They have contaminated their serving ice by using one tub for both, and by nine o clock nobody wants a cube that has been sitting under a beer bottle in murky water.
For a straightforward party where people are drinking from cans and bottles, allow 1 kg of ice per guest. That covers a tub for chilling and a modest amount for glasses.
For a cocktail party, or any outdoor party in warm weather, double it to 2 kg per guest. Cocktails are the reason. A shaken drink strained over fresh ice uses 200 to 250 g in total, because the shaking ice is thrown away. A long drink built in a highball uses around 150 g. Twenty guests having four drinks each works out at roughly 16 kg of serving ice on its own, before you have chilled a single bottle.
For chilling specifically, a rough guide is 500 g of ice for every four bottles or six cans you want to bring down to temperature within half an hour. If everything went into the fridge the night before, you can more or less halve that.
Ice does not sit patiently until needed. In a plastic tub in a warm room, expect to lose roughly a quarter of your ice every hour. Outdoors in direct August sun, it can be half. Over a five hour party, that means the ice you bought at midday is largely gone by the time the party properly starts, unless it has been insulated.
Insulation is worth more than volume here. A proper cool box with the lid closed will hold ice several times longer than an open plastic storage box, and a bin bag of ice wrapped in a blanket in a cold room outperforms both. Keep your reserve sealed and shaded, and only decant into the working tub as needed. Every time a lid comes off, warm air replaces cold.
Do not drain the meltwater from a chilling tub. Cold water is doing useful work, and draining it leaves the remaining ice sitting in warm air. The exception is if the tub is genuinely full and you need space for more bottles.
A standard domestic freezer with trays produces somewhere around 1 to 2 kg of ice in twenty four hours, and each tray takes several hours to freeze solid. Making 10 kg would take most of a week of emptying and refilling trays, and it would fill the freezer you also need for food.
Treat home ice as a small reserve for the final hour rather than the main supply. If you do want to make some, fill the trays with cooled boiled water for slightly clearer cubes, and freeze them a couple of days early so they have time to harden fully. Ice that has only been in for three hours is soft and will vanish in a glass.
Silicone moulds that make 5 cm cubes are a worthwhile purchase if you serve spirits regularly. One large cube in a glass of whisky from the spirits range will outlast four small ones and dilute the drink far less.
Buy or arrange ice as late as you sensibly can. Ice bought at nine in the morning for an evening party has been melting for ten hours before anyone arrives. Mid-afternoon is the sweet spot for an evening event.
Store bags of ice flat rather than upright, since a flat bag has less surface area exposed and the cubes are less likely to fuse into a solid block. If they do fuse, drop the bag once on a hard floor before opening it rather than attacking it with a knife.
Have a scoop, a jug or a dedicated container for serving ice, and put it somewhere separate from the drinks tub so that guests naturally use the right one. A pair of tongs beside the glasses is a small thing that keeps the serving ice clean all evening.
Finally, buy more than the calculation suggests. Leftover ice costs almost nothing and goes back in the freezer, while running out at ten o clock means warm drinks for the rest of the night.
If the maths goes wrong anyway, which it does, we deliver across London inside the M25 in 30 to 45 minutes, 24 hours a day, including ice, mixers and everything on the beer and wine shelves. Have a look at the areas we cover so you know a top-up is always an option.
Please drink responsibly. Drinks House 247 operates a Challenge 21 policy - you must be 18 or over to order, and our drivers will ask for photo ID if you look under 21.
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