
The Rise of the $8 Ice Cube - ryan_j_naughton
http://priceonomics.com/the-rise-of-the-s8-ice-cube/
======
_Adam
As stupid as this sounds, there is actually a difference between these ice
cubes and the standard variety. And that's the appearance.

Just look:

[http://www.glaceice.net/uploads/3/9/6/9/3969825/3969289_orig...](http://www.glaceice.net/uploads/3/9/6/9/3969825/3969289_orig.jpg)

Because there's no air bubbles, the ice is perfectly clear. That's not a
trivial fact. Humans innately like clear stuff! Just think how unappealing
cloudy water is in comparison to clear water. The only exceptions arise from
cases where we've learnt from experience that cloudiness is good (e.g. cloudy
looking cider has more flavour)

What this means, is that without considering price, almost any person would
rather use one of these ice cubes over a normal ice cube. So the potential
market is measured in billions of people. Even if (for example) only 0.01% of
the population would ever consider spending $325 for 50 ice cubes, that 0.01%
is guaranteed to want these ice cubes.

It seems stupid, but it's actually brilliant. The weakness with this sort of
model is that it's very easy for competitors to dominate the market. Gläce has
established the demand and made ice sexy, but they have no hold on their
customers. Someone could come in and sell a perfect ice maker for $200 and
crush the pre-made high end ice market completely.

~~~
tptacek
Can't you get the same thing out of a Kold-Draft machine? Isn't that what
high-end bars already do? What reputable high-end cocktail bar --- Pegu,
Booker & Dax, PDT, Aviary, &c --- uses this stuff?

~~~
morley
The article indicates that this is an end-consumer product. If I were an
amateur craft cocktail maker, I might consider buying a small amount versus a
commercial machine.

~~~
Dn_Ab
-> tptacek This has all the hallmarks of a Veblen Good. Cutting the price of the ices could well backfire if the key attraction is in signalling to all how much you're willing to spend for quality pre-melted water.

------
habosa
The joke is that for very nice liquor (whiskey especially) you should
definitely not be adding ice, no matter how "deserving" the ice is. If you
want the drink cold, chill the liquor itself or even the glass.

In hindsight, fuck it. There is no point in dissecting this, it is what it is.
It's ice for people who want to spend money just to spend it.

~~~
dbrian
Adding a bit of water brings out flavors you don't experience neat. It's a
personal preference.

[http://youtu.be/ajqd62fE73E?t=6m23s](http://youtu.be/ajqd62fE73E?t=6m23s)

~~~
jrockway
I've heard this, but I don't really buy it. The whisky is already diluted at
bottling time, unless it's "cask strength".

~~~
taternuts
Try it! The first whiskey I've tried it with was Glenfiddich 12, and I was
amazed at how it sweetened/changed the flavor profile with just a tiny splash.

------
nathan_long
Looks like I'm branding and pricing my services wrong.

"For just $50k per hour, you get painstakingly crafted, premium server code.
Every character is hand-typed on a perfectly resonant keyboard, entering the
world with a pleasing 'plink'..."

~~~
akurilin
Need a technical co-founder?

~~~
lavamantis
Sounds like he needs an MBA-type.

------
coldcode
So now we have aisles full of water in bottles, you can buy air in cans in
China, and gourmet ice. I'm waiting for bottles of vacuum, but I am sure they
will suck.

~~~
Groxx
Here ya go: [http://www.thermos.com/products/vacuum-insulated-14-oz-
stain...](http://www.thermos.com/products/vacuum-insulated-14-oz-stainless-
travel-mug.aspx)

The price per ounce of vacuum makes cocaine look like water.

~~~
qwerta
Kind of funny. It is impossible to make perfect vacuum (a few particles per
cubic inch) down on earth. One has to lunch stuff into space.

------
danohuiginn
This is, of course, ridiculous. Still, there's logic to it: find some mass-
market component that is used in a luxury service, and provide a high-end
alternative. The kind of idio^H^H^H^Hcustomers who want luxury certainly don't
want it contaminiated by something from Walmart, regardless of the actual
quality. It's the same reason as for those gold-plated cables for audiophiles.

~~~
tmuir
Gold plated cables actually serve a purpose, although the average consumer
does not have a need for them. In a studio environment, where cables are
frequently plugged and unplugged, the gold plating protects the contacting
surfaces, extending their lives.

~~~
louthy
I'm not an expert, and absolutely willing to be proven incorrect here. But I
thought that gold was a better conductor, and that's why they're better for
audio cables (less resistance). Surely the fact that gold is a soft metal
would be a reason to _not_ use it for reasons of 'extending lives'?

~~~
madengr
Gold isn't the best conductor. Silver is better, followed by copper, but they
oxidize, and gold does not. It's the oxide that forms the insulator. There are
both hard and soft gold platings is electronics. Hard gold is for wearing
contact surfaces such as connectors and relays. Soft gold for solderable and
wire bondable surfaces.

~~~
pyre
I assume that 'hard gold' is some sort of alloy, as gold itself is known for
being soft (hence the idea of someone biting down on a gold coin to test if
it's really gold).

~~~
tesseract
I believe "bright hard gold" (as it's referred to) contains about 0.2% cobalt
and/or nickel.

------
paulannesley
This brand is ridiculous, but…

Crystal clear ice cubes look great in a drink, and are far more difficult to
make than “filling a 50-cent plastic tray with tap water and throwing it in
the freezer”. The author of the article seems to avoid pointing this out.

See [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danprovost/neat-ice-
kit](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danprovost/neat-ice-kit) and
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wintersmiths/the-ice-
ba...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wintersmiths/the-ice-baller-makes-
clear-slow-melting-ice-sphere)

~~~
SDGT
I make clear ice cubes two ways.

1\. Boil water twice beforehand

2\. Strap a vibrating "toy" to the tray and put it on a solid flat surface in
the freezer.

Neither of these solutions ended up costing me more than $20 to make as many
ice cubes as I can fit. The hardest part is finding ice cube trays that don't
suck.

~~~
logfromblammo
You can even use a silicone molded ice tray to make crystal clear ice in
interesting shapes. I recall seeing Death Star shaped ice somewhere out there
on the Internet.

------
lightblade
I don't think this is ridiculous. I remember watching this one scene in Star
Trek Into Darkness where Kirk was sitting in a bar enjoying a drink. The drink
that he was enjoying had this perfect spherical ice in it. I remember talking
to myself at that moment that this is a very nice business idea.

Retail price aside, I do believe premium ice is a viable business.

~~~
DanBC
You can buy presses to turn ice into a sphere.

Is this an affiliate link? How do I turn it back into a regular link?

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00A1TMFSU?pc_redir=1401253883...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00A1TMFSU?pc_redir=1401253883&robot_redir=1)

~~~
jra101
Or just buy a $9 mold:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ACTN54](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ACTN54)

------
api
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_age)

------
LeonM
I actually thought about this when a read an article a couple of years ago
about a company that sells "designer" bottles of water for $80 EACH. There are
many wealthy people on the planet who don't have a clue on how to spend their
money. They are a brilliant target audience to sell overpriced everyday
products to.

~~~
xienze
It's not just the ultra-wealthy that fall for this crap. Consider SF's $4
toast. Cheap enough that anyone can buy it but still way overpriced.

~~~
mikeash
I believe it typically won't be the ultra-wealthy, but people who are just
barely wealthy enough to afford it. (Which isn't all that high of a bar. An
$80 bottle of water could be afforded as an occasional purchase by your
average software engineer.)

As Bill Gates fictionally said on The Simpsons, "I didn't get rich by writing
a lot of checks!" Someone who has accumulated that much money probably has
more sense about what they spend it on.

~~~
CocaKoala
Well, yeah; obviously the dude getting rich on this isn't spending that much
on ice. I'd guess he gets a pretty good employee discount on it.

------
tomkinstinch
My guess before reading the article was that the ice cubes were made with
heavy water.

I'd pay $8 an ice cube that sinks[1].

1\. [http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2006-07/ice-
capades](http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2006-07/ice-capades)

~~~
qq66
I'd hesitate to drink heavy water. Probably won't do much to you, but why find
out.

~~~
waps
There's 2 (stable) kinds of heavy water : deuterium and tritium. Deuterium is
perfectly safe, and it's heavier. Nobody's ever drunk it in even tiny
quantities though, so there could be surprises.

Tritium is only arguably stable though, and you definitely should not drink
it. It's perfectly safe to swim in it though, just keep it outside your skin.

Drinking deuterium is going to be very expensive though, given the effort
necessary to separate it. Poisoning someone with tritium is going to be more
expensive than pouring molten platina over them though.

Any preference for the oxygen in the cubes ? O16, O17, or O18 ? O16 would be
the "common man" oxygen. All three are safe. None of the other isotopes are
stable enough to be produced in significant quantities.

Making heavy ice cubes out of H2O with the O17 is probably the cheapest
"nuclear" way to produce heavy ice.

Order here:
[http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/aldrich/151882](http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/aldrich/151882)

Cheaper than I would have thought.

~~~
throwaway7548
Unknown Internet Source: "Despite the fact the light water and heavy water are
chemically identical, heavy water is mildly toxic. How can this be? Since
heavy water is heavier than normal water, the speed of chemical reactions
involving it is altered somewhat, as is the strength of some types of bonds it
forms. This affects certain cellular processes, notably mitosis, or cell
division, due to the difference in binding energy in the hydrogen bonds needed
to make certain proteins. Mouse studies have shown that drinking only heavy
water along with normal feed eventually causes degeneration of tissues that
need to replenish themselves frequently, and leads to cumulative damage from
injuries that don't heal as quickly. One study likens the effects to those
suffered by chemotherapy patients. Heavy water toxicity manifests itself when
about 50% of the water in the body has been replaced by D2O. Prolonged heavy
water consumption can cause death."

------
imkevinxu
Reminded me of the Priceonomics article on diamonds, some business guy
literally created a market for something found in nature

~~~
erbo
"Okay, okay, you figured us out. I'll give you a free bag of diamonds if
you'll go away and keep quiet."

"Great...now I'm a party to this ugly little secret."

[http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1992-07-12/](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1992-07-12/)

------
callahad
Gah, why doesn't Priceonomics have an RSS feed? :(

Edit: Oh, they do! Thanks! I'll amend my comment to "why doesn't Priceonomics
advertise their RSS feed in their site's header for easy discovery?" ;)

~~~
gtirloni
Is this a sarcastic comment on all Priceonomics posts being semi-automatically
posted on HN? :-)

In case this is not a joke:
[http://priceonomics.com/latest.rss](http://priceonomics.com/latest.rss)

------
opendais
I'm just amazed anyone is willing to pay that much for an ice cube.

~~~
_broody
They're not. They're actually paying for the del... illusion it brings.

Just further proof that marketing doesn't actually need a product to succeed.

~~~
opendais
Maybe I should start selling Läce Oxygen, the better breathing experience
certified to be fresh as it was extracted directly from a sealed room filled
with plants.

Don't breathe secondhand air from the mouths of peasants! Get Läce Oxygen!

:/

EDIT: I was kidding, folks. ^^;

~~~
tjr
What kind of plants? I can see that idea working.

~~~
pavel_lishin
He'll use my line of high-end oxygen-producers. I can start him off with some
Bambü, which produces a very nice texture, or we can skip directly to Alø,
which has some very nice medicinal properties as well.

~~~
DanBC
You need to tweak the phrasing to avoid regulatory scrutiny by FDA but
beneficial properties of oxygen of different plants would sell.

I don't know how depressed I am by this.

~~~
tjr
I have a bamboo floor in my home office, and generally like things made out of
bamboo. _Not even knowing_ the actual oxygen-producing properties of bamboo, I
can imagine myself trying some bamboo oxygen. And I usually don't like
seemingly overpriced stunts like this. I seriously think it could sell big.
Oxygen made by your favorite plants! Amazing idea.

~~~
opendais
Why not buy a bamboo plant and put it in the corner?

It is the same effect. :)

~~~
DanBC
There are articles online about the useful effect of certain plants on the
atmosphere of offices.

That's for regular punters. Now we need a bit of price discrimination to get
the high value customers. No mere "place a bamboo plant in the corner". You
need to specify the obscure region of China that the original plant comes from
(leave out the fact that you took a million cutting from that plant in an
industrial unit somewhere) and describe the _quality of the oxygen and other
harmonious gases_ produced by these plants.

[http://www.mnn.com/health/healthy-
spaces/photos/15-houseplan...](http://www.mnn.com/health/healthy-
spaces/photos/15-houseplants-for-improving-indoor-air-quality/a-breath-of-
fresh-air)

------
rayiner
My wife's cousin is a chef and knows his guy:
[http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/youngandhungry/2013...](http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/youngandhungry/2013/02/20/the-
ice-is-right-is-artisan-ice-the-final-frontier-for-craft-cocktails). He
bartends by day, and sells artisan ice to restaurants by night. It looks
pretty and melts slower than regular ice cubes.

BTW: If you're in D.C., check out Range (mentioned in the above article;
serves artisan ice in drinks).

~~~
trhway
after day of hard public service our public servants need their artisan ice.
$400 space toilet seat starts to look like a bargain.

------
sharkweek
While perhaps there is some form of utility here for those more familiar with
high end cocktails (I'm more of a dollar beer kind of guy, sometimes I'll
splurge on a 22oz), this reminds me a lot of that "wealth badge [1]" or
whatever it was -

"Yeah, I've got money, I spend $8 on ice cubes"

[1][http://www.vocativ.com/money/business/size-quarter-made-
meta...](http://www.vocativ.com/money/business/size-quarter-made-metal-
costs-5000/)

~~~
hershel
True ,it could be a wealth badge. But how many such badges does a person needs
? is there any additional value to the new ones?

~~~
rwallace
There is value to society in providing additional noncoercive ways to transfer
money from rich people who don't need it to non-rich people who do, which is
what this company is doing.

~~~
lilsunnybee
Except the owners and/or shareholders are likely already wealthy (or will be
from the obscene profit margin on this).

~~~
rwallace
The employees probably aren't, though.

------
bambax
This is the über demonstråtion that marketing is everything and product is...
maybe not nothing, but in any case vastly overrated.

Marketing rules because the only thing that matters is perception. While we
mere mortals find this story ridiculous, if we had all the money in the world
and some guy convinced us that he had made the perfect ice cube, why would we
settle for less?

It's arguably irrationnal to buy an inferior product if you can afford a
better one.

That said, Tovolo trays are great :-)

------
9999
One supposed virtue of this ice is that it's clear, if you want to make
perfectly clear ice yourself, this instructable has instructions on how you
can build an insulated ice maker that will do that for a few bucks (in
addition to the instructions on making a good iceball maker):

[http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-an-ice-ball-
make...](http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-an-ice-ball-maker/)

------
josefresco
Related: [http://thesweethome.com/reviews/the-best-ice-cube-
tray/](http://thesweethome.com/reviews/the-best-ice-cube-tray/)

*I am not the author and am no way affiliated ... just read it a while back and found it relevant/interesting.

------
ianstallings
At what point do we reach maximum decadence? How far can we go I wonder? But
you won't ever see me complaining about this. It's not my place to question
other's choices that don't hurt me. But it sure is funny to sit back and watch
sometimes.

------
ph0rque
I have an even better idea... I'll sell luxury air for $995 a bottle. I'll
call it æïr!

------
vijayr
This is one blog that always comes up with a variety of stories on different
topics, _and_ makes them interesting. Some are serious, some are ridiculous
(like this article), but all of them always interesting.

------
ctdonath
Sometimes dilution & cooling liquor _is_ appropriate. For those learning to
refine their taste buds, a shot approaching 100 proof is too concentrated to
appreciate - but adding a little water and chilling make it much easier to
savor. I have to pipe up about this because a few months back I had the
delightful experience of savoring _1911_ apple vodka poured over rare fresh
Georgia snow (something a tap water ice cube just doesn't replicate properly).

Yeah, an $8 ice cube is rather nuts, but if you _are_ going to chill & thin an
otherwise fine expensive liquor, taking effort to use good water and careful
freezing (avoiding "freezer burn") is worthwhile. Or wait for a good snowfall.

------
jxm262
Just Wow. So I once had an idea that I could sell mineral water by selling
packets of trace minerals. Just add water and voila... mineral water

Thanks for the article, maybe I will pursue this idea after all

------
seventytwo
Great example of creating a market for your product...

------
adamio
I can't wait to buy premium hydrogen when fuel cell cars become more popular

------
thedrbrian
I should start a company selling $9 ice spheres.

------
throwaway5752
If you put ice in Macallan 18, you suck. Sorry for the light epithet, but it
deserves worse.

and as I read more: "Gläce states that the cubes are ideal for high-end
cocktails -- those that employ splashes of $38,000-per-bottle liquors, and
must not be diluted or contaminated by mere tap ice." ... ICE NUMBS YOUR TASTE
BUDS. Fancy water or not.

edit: Downvoted to -1? I'll double down. If you are going to drink a nice
scotch on the rocks, do yourself a favor and buy cheap scotch instead. Go
enjoy a Johnnie Walker Red or Cutty Sark. There are aldehydes and esters from
the peating of the grain and the oak cask aging that you are not appreciating
when it's chilled. If it's cask strength (around 125 proof) then by all means
dilute with spring water so you don't burn out your palate. But if you drink
it on the rocks, try not doing that and see if you enjoy it differently.

~~~
mef
Heaven forbid someone enjoy a product in the manner of their choosing.

~~~
throwaway5752
To each their own. I'll still call them a Philistine as if they'd ordered Kobe
filet well-done. There's a perfectly serviceable Macallan 12 if someone wants
to ice it. I can have a polite discussion about spring water for cask strength
bottles, but the 12 & 18 are both diluted to just over 80 proof already.

Look, you are just not going to fully appreciate a fine whisky that way. This
is chemistry & biology, not only me being an ass.

edit: and as an olive branch, I probably wouldn't have been as strident if we
were talking standard (ie, free) ice instead of some $8 monstrosity.

