As a cocktail lover, ice balls are a godsend. Sure, you can fill up water balloons, as those of old would do, but ice ball molds make it much easier.

I have been using plastic ones for about two years, and they work fine. Sometimes, they’re hard to remove, though, and you lose a quarter of the ice ball running it under enough water to get the ice to break loose from the mold.

But now Rizzi from Arctic Chill has sent me a set of their Arctic Chill silicone ice ball molds to review, and I’ve got to tell you: these are the way to go. They’re non-toxic, made out of BPA free silicone, and they make perfect sized ice balls.

You see, the problem with most ice ball molds is that they’re two small. What you really need is one that barely fits into a highball glass, and these are perfect. I use them whenever I have a glass of scotch or bourbon, but also with Negronis and sometimes even with Manhattans when I want to have one over ice.

I took one and timed how long it took to melt on its own, and it lasts about three hours. With liquid, it’s under two hours, but still, that’s a long time. And that’s what you want, after all: ice that has as little surface area as possible so that the beverage stays cold with as little melting as possible.

I highly recommend them.

At first, however, I was skeptical. The first few I made, I had trouble getting them to release. Now, however, they come out every time. Just remove the top of the mold, grab one side of the ice and pull down on the bottom mold. Voila! A perfect sphere.

Now don’t go crazy and think that you will be able to get perfectly clear ice with these. Hell, maybe you can. Me, I use tap water and don’t bother to shake it as it freezes. If what you want is perfectly clear ice, I guess you can use distilled water and shake it a few times to release air bubbles as it’s freezing, but we here at Stay at Home Cocktails don’t care about such nonsense. A good cocktail is a good cocktail, and a good glass of bourbon is a good glass of bourbon.

Even with white ice, the Arctic Chill Ice Ball Molds are the key to a good dram. If you want perfectly clear ice, I suppose you can go buy a Kold Draft ice machine. For those of us at home who want to chill our Negronis and bourbons without watering them down too much, go for a silicone ice ball mold, like the one from Arctic Chill.