New this year to ISD: playlists! Each month our Josh will create a playlist based on the theme for the event. You can listen to this month’s ice themed playlist here.
Josh’s Intro: Welcome to our second Independent Study Day of 2026. We are super excited to see all of you that have come by before, but also, more than a third of the people in this room have never been to an ISD before. So if this is your 3rd or 5th or 20th Independent Study Day, say hi to the new kids. The first day of school is always the worst.
As always, the intention of Independent Study Day is to expand your network of influences. It is very easy to get stuck thinking that whatever you are doing service or drinks-wise at your bar is the best or only way to do things. By talking with everyone else in this room, hopefully you get some fresh insights about how you can make your drinks, your service, your bar or your life better.
If you have been paying attention to what we have communicated about this month’s Independent Study Day you will know that Olivia from Campari Academy Canada is here with Appleton Estate Rum this month. On the way in I made you all daiquiris using Appleton Signature. The Holy Trinity of Tropical drinks is represented there, using rum, lime and sugar, even though we used Jamaican Rum so we kinda made a Planter’s Punch, hold the bitters.
Anyway, Olivia has some cool aged and interesting expressions of Appleton Rums to show off to all of you later. And if you showed up ready to show off what you can do with Appleton Estate rum, great. Or if you want to try your hand at freestyling a cocktail using Appleton, we’re going to have a little cocktail competition after the talk today. There might be a prize. Now hopefully if you prepared a cocktail to show Olivia and I later, you spent some time learning about Appleton Estate Rum and didn’t just spend time making some housemade ingredient that you want to show off for yourself.
What I mean is that, as a guy that has been fortunate and privileged enough to judge many cocktail competitions in the last few years, I have definitely noticed a trend towards emphasis on pre-made ingredients with less and less concern for the construction…the structure of the drink. And also the actual bartending technique that goes into the making of a cocktail. We paid 75 dollars for two slightly colder than room temp drinks the other night. I have seen clarified ingredients get added to cocktails that have pineapple juice or Amaro in them, thereby negating the need to clarify things. I have seen drinks that step all over the base ingredient of the cocktail. Often there is so much effort put into creating an ingredient that the action of making the drink gets left behind. And while we are sponsored by Appleton Estate Rum today, we are going to spend most of the day talking about Ice, dilution and chilling.
Ice is probably the most ubiquitous cocktail ingredient. Even cocktails served in the Scaffa method, those spirits and liqueurs are a large percentage water.
Do we all know about Scaffa cocktails? It translates roughly to “From the cupboard”. These are cocktails that we don’t dilute with ice or soda or anything.
But ice, while inefficient as a cooling and diluting method is truly one of the building blocks…or cubes…. that cocktail making is built on. There are bars in the world that have 12 or 15 types of ice behind their bars. Certain cubes for shaking, certain pebbles for swizzles. Filtered water, boiled water, flavoured ice…there is no end to the ways that ice can be used to shape and change a cocktail.
So today to tell us all about ice is an ISD veteran, Daniel Tavares. Last time Dan was here he talked about the importance of remaining versatile as a bartender. But today Daniel is here representing his Ice company Nice Ice. Dan also works with barware company Alambika based out of Montreal and scored us all these sweet ice picks. Those are for you all to take home. Thanks Dan. Thanks Alambika.
Dan is going to tell us about a bunch of different ways to use ice and also will be doing a bit of an ice carving demo so that you can all look really cool when someone asks for a perfectly shaped cube for their rum and coke.
Olivia will be pouring a really nice Appleton Expression on your very special cube or block or diamond or whatever you have carved later as well.
Dan, take it away.
You can see Dan do his thing HERE.
Thank you to Campari Academy for their support with Independent Study Day for 2026.
