Best crushed ice makers and Lewis bags

How we judged these

• What texture does it actually produce?

  Dry crushed ice from a bag, chips from a crank crusher, snow from a shaver. These are three different drinks, and no amount of marketing merges them.

• Are the specs published at all?

  This category is full of unbranded gear with no published detail. Every pick here publishes dimensions and materials on the maker's own site, and where a figure is missing we say which one.

• Effort per batch

  A bag is fine for two drinks and tiring for eight. A crank is steady. An electric shaver is a switch. Match it to how many people you pour for.

• What it costs in counter and drawer space

  A bag folds flat. A crusher and a shaver both want a permanent home, which in most kitchens is the real price.

Why the canvas matters more than the mallet

Hitting ice does two things: it breaks it, and it melts a little of it. The melting is unavoidable — the energy has to go somewhere — and it is the reason improvised methods disappoint.

A tea towel holds the water against the ice. A plastic bag does the same and splits. A blender keeps every drop in the jug. Canvas is porous, so the meltwater passes through the weave and out, leaving ice that pours into a glass in pieces rather than sliding out as a wet lump. That is the whole trick, and it is why a twenty-dollar bag outperforms a two-hundred-dollar appliance at this one job.

It also gives you control that no machine offers. A few taps make coarse pebbles for a swizzle; a sustained beating makes the fine snow a julep wants. The same bag does both, and the difference is how long you keep going.

The three routes, compared

The texture row is the one that decides the purchase, and it is worth saying plainly: these are not three versions of the same product. Pebble ice in an Old Fashioned is a pleasure; snow in an Old Fashioned is a watery mess in four minutes.

Which one to buy

Buy the glacio bag and mallet for a home bar that makes a couple of drinks at a time. glacio publishes the bag at 12 x 7.5 inches and the mallet at 11.5 x 4.6 x 1.9 inches in beechwood, with double-reinforced stitching — more detail than almost anyone else selling the same thing. Dry the bag over the upright mallet afterward, which is the maker’s own advice and the difference between a bag that lasts and a bag that smells.

Buy the Winco crank crusher if you are pouring for a group. It is faster past the second batch and it needs no outlet. Be clear-eyed about what it does not publish: blade material and hopper capacity are both absent, and the body is plastic rather than the metal a commercial unit uses.

Buy the Barfly bag alone if there is already something heavy in the kitchen. At 17 3/4 by 8 1/4 inches it is nearly six inches longer than the glacio bag, so a bigger batch spreads out instead of bunching, and Mercer publishes the wash instruction — mild soap, warm water, no bleach.

Buy the Barillio Big-Shot if mojitos are as common as juleps in your house. A 13.75-inch hard maple muddler-mallet with a 14 oz cotton canvas bag covers both jobs, at the cost of a narrower face that takes more strikes to crush the same ice. The muddlers page covers what separates a good muddler from a bad one if that is the main job.

Buy the Hawaiian Shaved Ice S900A only for snow. It is 55 watts with an adjustable stainless blade and two reusable molds, and the listing is honest that cubes give a crunchier slushy texture while the molds give fluffy ice. For tiki it is the right machine; for a julep a canvas bag beats it.

The ice you start with matters

Crushing takes whatever cube you feed it and makes it smaller, so wet or hollow ice from a fridge dispenser gives poor results. Solid cubes from a tray crush cleanly. A big-cube tray is the usual companion purchase, because one 2-inch cube crushes down into a glass of pebbles neatly.

And keep the crushed ice cold until it is used. An insulated bucket holds a crushed batch for a round of drinks; a bowl on a counter turns it into a puddle while you are still measuring. Why ice matters has the dilution arithmetic behind all of this.

The technique, in four steps

1. 1

   Fill the bag no more than half

   A half-full bag lets the ice spread into a single layer. A packed bag protects the cubes in the middle, which is why the first attempt usually produces big lumps and slush in equal measure.

2. 2

   Fold the open end under

   Fold rather than twist, and lay the bag flat on a hard surface with the fold underneath. A chopping board on a counter works; a bare stone counter works better and complains less.

3. 3

   Strike along the length of the bag

   Work from one end to the other rather than hammering one spot. A few passes give coarse pebbles for a swizzle; keep going and it becomes the fine snow a julep wants.

4. 4

   Tip it out and use it immediately

   Crushed ice has enormous surface area, so it melts far faster than cubes. Crush it when the glass is built and the drink is ready to be poured, not before.

The mistakes are equally short. Do not crush ice straight from a fridge dispenser — hollow, wet ice turns to slush. Do not use a rolling pin on a counter without a bag, because the shards go everywhere and take the meltwater with them. And do not crush more than you need: what is left over fuses into a single block in the freezer within the hour.