One of the highlights from my trip to St. Augustine was having my research payoff, and getting to experience a cocktail bar that I hate to say, rivals my local favorite. This place is called ‘The Ice Plant’ – basically downtown St. Augustine, in the same building as a distillery. Didn’t get into that, but definitely got a prime seating for a quality experience:

The Ice Plant is a restaurant primarily, but is definitely all about their cocktail game as well. The building itself was actually a location that produced Ice blocks for homes in the area back when Iceboxes were Iceboxes. Huge bricks of ice were used to keep food good until modern home refrigeration became a thing. They left the building very rugged, with the actual tools used to move chunks of ice hanging up on the wall. You can see on the right side of the picture above – ice claws. In the picture below of Erica, you can see a large I-beam on the wall – I didn’t get a picture of it, but it still had the large chain-fall hoist frame gantry (whatever you want to call it) that was used to move large blocks of ice around.

So a place called the ICE Plant, specializing in high end craft cocktails would probably have a pretty huge Ice game, right? You got that right..  check out the front of their drink menu:

So you could specify the type of ice you wanted in your beverage, but best leave the best fit ice option to the man making the drink. But what about the ice? As the menu states, they make 300lb blocks of ice that are frozen from the base to the surface – resulting in crystal clear ice that they can bust down into various sizes and shapes. How crystal clear is it?

Not a good picture I know, but the lighting was low, and the guy was trying his best not to get frost bite while holding these huge chunks of ice.

Take a look at this sphere:

Not an imperfection what so ever – This was made using a cirrus aluminum mold, which uses heat transfer to quickly reduce a jagged block of ice into a perfect sphere. Look it up sometime, but don’t look at the price tag! yikes! ($800) They also have pebbled ice perfect for munching and making lethally cold beverages, and an old-fashion, crank operated ice shaver that my sister in-law got to operate (highlight of the evening for her!) The bartender used it to make a Last Word snow cone. Yes Yes Y-E-S.

So what about the cocktails?

They were great! definitely some great flavors happening. But what was also great, was the knowledge and general badassedness of the guy serving us drinks. I wish I could remember his name, because he was killing it. He seemed to have been all over the world, dedicating his life to learning everything he could about alcohol. My brother and sister in-law mentioned wanting to take a trip to Seattle, he was able to write a laundry list of must-visit locations with people’s names to talk to make sure their experience was top notch. We not only got drunk – we got an education. I learned (and actually remembered!) some really interesting tidbits about Fernet Branca, as well as the fact that there’s an actual ‘peat’ scale for scotch – once my wife leaked that I was into peaty scotches, he let me try two of his favorite peatier scotches –

The Octomore makes Laphroig taste like chocolate milk, yet it was so balanced for only being a 5 year old scotch, that I’m calling witch craft. The distiller’s edition Lagavulin was amazing as well. You really have to like a peaty scotch to enjoy any of these – especially with the price tags ($100+/750ml for Lagavulin, $190+/750ml Octomore) The fact that I was able to try a small nibble of these made the experience at the Ice Plant one that I will not forget, not to mention being with my brother and his wife, and my wife – enjoying adult beverages together, learning something new, and having a great time.