Boston was the centre of the international ice trade, with Wenham Lake Ice Company, trading on the name of a Massachusetts lake particularly renowned for the purity of its water. Source

As those articles say, one of the first ice-making machines in the world was invited in Geelong, Australia by Scottish-born James Harrison in 1851. Or rather, he improved upon an 1834 British design for vapour-compression refrigeration.

Incredible it would still be frozen(60% I cant math, 40%melted) thats gotta be a long ship ride(4+ months)

This was also the case for a large amount of Europe, and good amount of it would melt before reaching its destination.

Actually because of this, putting ice in drinks never took off in Europe the same way it did in America. This is why most parts of Europe prefer their drinks served at room temperature, whereas North America prefers cold drinks.

Ha. ---Eskimos

The ice industry in the Poconos in Pennsylvania was huge and then gone in just over a year once ice production no longer relied on saved winter ice.

Presumably FRESH water Ice right?!

Jokes on you Boston! Perth is now the ice capital of the world!

my boston uncle : gone are the days when we had good quality of timber and sawdusts /s

How much of it though? I would imagine if they start off with 1 ton of ice they might maybe reach their destination with half that?

It's pretty wild how little ice we get around here now.

How is any ice NOT desalinated by nature

I always heard the Brits drank their beer at room temperature because they had Lucas refrigerators.

Uhhh ... wouldn't it have been faster to get it from Antarctica? I'm assuming there's something that prevented them from doing that, but darned if I can figure out what it is. Unless it's the strong currents that circle Antarctica?

Salt water will freeze albeit at a colder temperature.

What I was thinking as well.

Same with Australia during war years. Personally, I've had beer warm and cold. Warm hits you like a ton of bricks. Cold takes longer.

40% melted but they brought a metric fuck-ton(400 tons, 240 made it there)

Well, for a start, humans had only made fleeting visits to Antarctic waters by 1851. The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration was 1897–1922.

There were no structures, buildings, or any sort of a human settlement in Antarctica that they could use as the basis of an ice trade industry. And by the time of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, people were able to make their own ice in Australia (and elsewhere) using mechanical refrigeration.

I have a feeling I might go down a rabbit hole to learn more about this

Labor? You’d have to build a port and be able to staff it year round.

Setting up infrastructure in Antarctica is pretty next to impossible. Boston had industry, ships and ports ready to go.

I wonder how many crop and forest pests hitchhiked along?

As a brit I have no idea where this idea that we drink beer at room temperature comes from. Pretty much any beer you buy in a pub will be colder than room temp.

Maybe it just took longer to catch on here?

This

Never in my life have i heard about a person wanting their drink room temperature lol

Interesting. Ice must have been a total luxury commodity back then.

There are also glaciers 2000 km away in New Zealand.

Seems silly, should have just grabbed some from New Zealand. We've got heaps and are way closer than Boston!

But the distance to Boston is unimaginably big as well, there was no Panama canal either. Both this and sailing for Antarctica seem like terrible ideas. What's really odd is they didn't use domestic sources of ice/snow or sail to New Zealand and source it from there. There are or were many glaciers less than a mile from the west coast of NZ.

I get australia...but why did Europe have issued with ice?

Well, first a guy had to convince people that drinks tasted better with ice in them. That same guy also tried to transport ice across the ocean. So he had a limited amount of time to try and sell a limited amount of ice and hope it would catch on. It wasnt that Europe didnt like ice, it was just an inconvenience to get it there

The Simpsons were right

Walden too

It wasn't on the map.

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Also the Antarctic is considered a desert. You have to have fresh water for most uses of ice.

You dispute that Australia needed to import ice from overseas before 1851?

I saw somthing about this in asterisk the Gaul once that we like warm beer?

I more mean climate wise Europe should have been capable of their own ice production if they wanted it. No?

They might have been common in Australia, but the ice itself had to come from somewhere. That's what the article is about. It's not saying refrigeration in other forms did not exist before 1851.

But it’s only 1 degree Celsius.. that’s practically nothing! /s

I’m thinking some enterprising Yankee had some room in the hold, or maybe something else he wanted to keep cold, in a ship already headed for Australia. We already had the infrastructure for domestic ice production and transport. He took a risk, the Aussies said okay we’ll take that and he made a pile of money until they figured out something better. It happened they figured out how to make their own quicker than someone else figured out how to get it from NZ at a profit.

They were already shipping both food and timber all over the world.

If it was 240 tons over a period of decades, it could probably have been used for minor industrial and artisanal purposes that weren't strictly high class luxury. That's a lot of ice and it's not like Perth had a huge population overall.

Tons of straw, peat and sawdust with every shipload (all going to waste) are kinda a guarantee of pest importation :-)

I think so. I had British friends growing up (in California in the 90s/early 00s) and drinking room temperature beer was something they were familiar with (though not a fan of). But by the time I visited Britain myself (2010) their pubs were as refrigerated as I would expect in America. I'm guessing that it was already well out of the norm by the 90s at the latest.

They did, but the guy trying to convince people to put ice in their drinks could only harvest it from North America.

I'd have thought that sending some ships with machinery and just living out of them for the duration it took to fill up the transports would have been more efficient than literally sailing to the other side of the world.

I.e. send a bunch of ships with basic "infrastructure" (machinery, tools, quarters) when spring started, then send a lot of large transports which could carry fuel and supplies down, and ice back up, until the season was over. No permanent bases required.

As a cold beverage lover I salute the efforts of that one dude, apparently a revolutionary!

It's an out of date stereotype, that said in North America they would never advertise a beer tap as "extra cold", whereas that is a thing I've seen in the UK. Also cask ales are traditionally served at room temperature.

That's a pretty US-centric view. Ice has been used in drinks on a larger scale since the 16th century but mostly for the rich feudal class. The Alps were a big trade center for that but of course nothing like what we got in the 19th century. It only really took off with early industrialization but it was a known commodity before.

Iran had cone shaped pyramids with ice at the bottom for 3000 years.

It’s much much much easier to harvest seasonal ice from a lake with dedicated infrastructure for that than it is to do so from a Glacier in most cases.

Easier to absorb for faster party time!

Yep. I could do 4 Steel Reserve cold. Three warm... whammo!

Isn't it at cellar Temps? Beer was and some still is pumped from an underground cellar that is naturally cooler.

My own personal conspiracy theory believes the decline of the ice trade and pirateering in general is the catalyst for today's global warming crisis.

A lot of people died during 1800s Antarctic exploration. We didn’t have it down to a science yet. It was a perilous journey and many ships got stuck in the ice. Many diseases also flourished during these expeditions so it’s not like they had modern day conveniences or equipment. It was dangerous and arduous.

Yea it was fresh water. What they did was harvest it from the lakes and ponds all over New England, not just Boston. I believe it all started in Wenham, Massachusetts just north of Boston. They would basically use big hand saws and cut large solid blocks, float them to shore, and haul them away. It wasn’t just shipped to Australia. It was big business and was shipped all over the world as well as used locally the following summer.

I realise your comment is probably a joke but The treaty of Waitangi (our founding document) was signed in 1840

One time I was shoveling through a big pile of mulch that had been sitting there for awhile. It was in the middle of July, but by the time I got to the middle, I hit snow/ice.

And be transported over lengths of time that include entire months? Haha what a dumb question

Well, that wasn't on Sesame Street, so I've never heard of it.

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No, mea culpa, I’m tired, I read it as being imported here from Australia

You mean that place that had only just been discovered and was a frozen abyss and killed almost everyone who went there?

Absolutely just thought it might have been worth the labor to avoid a 100 trip.

I guess OP stumcm already gave you an answer to this, but I just wanted to say this seems like an eminently reasonable question. Antarctica is really close by.

Well, snow for one can be a poor choice as it takes a very long time for it to laminate and will never reach the density of “plain” frozen water in a season. Which while that may save you in transit time results in water that is still melted by mid “summer”.

I suppose it’s a similar argument to 100+ years from now, incredulous posters to whatever exists at that time can’t understand why McDonald’s bought billions of tiny plastic toys from China.

Is this a real question lol

This question is the real treat of the whole thread.

There's a saying that the rich man gets his ice in the summer, and the poor man gets his ice in the winter. Ice was very much a luxury in the summer time before the days of refrigeration

That's what I thought too. Which isn't too weird to me as an American either. Especially if it's dark beer, I don't even want that ice cold.

Point taken!

When I was last there most pubs had just a few on tap at cellar temp, local beers. But rest were normally cooled, they even had "Ice Cold Guinness" in many places, which was just colder than normal Guinness as far as I could tell. But yeah were plenty of beers not served cold, but also not room temp.

Mulch can do the opposite and get combustion going depending on the circumstances

Look up cask ales. They were the traditional style of beer in England.

I personally enjoy them, but it is a noticeable change of pace.

also there are a couple of mountains

>Physicians attribute, in a great measure, the healthiness of the New England States of America to the free use of Ice, particularly in water, to which it imparts a liveliness not previously possessed

nothing really changes

i mean there are mountains in aus.

Set up some ice boxes in winter.

Sounds like a whole lot of costs, when the alternative is to buy it from a company in Boston already producing ice and just pay for a few extra weeks of shipping time.

You gotta start selling this for more than a dollar a bag. We lost four more men on this expedition!

Cask ales are 'cellar' temperature, which is below room temperature, but not actively chilled (similar to the ideal red wine temperature).

Oh you kids. Look up the history of "the cold chain" for a fun time.

Months. Of fuel and losses. And the production/gathering itself, which had to happen on some scale in one place or another.

Hahaha this man clearly perth's

I get my water from the wenham lake 🙂

also north woods maine was a huge ice manufacturer

Yeh nah yeh

Yeah but the people and equipment to gather it were already there in Boston. Are you factoring in the time and cost to transport people down to and back from Antarctica, house them, and the higher wages they'd need?

Someone elsewhere in the comments used the analogy of modern supply chains and it's entirely accurate. It's the same reason it's usually cheaper to buy a household item produced on the other side of the planet than one produced locally.

Not so sure. I saw doc invent an ice machine in back to the future 3, so I'm going with that

Wait ... What?

Meth, People from Perth love meth.

Ooooooh that makes so much more sense.

I lived in Perth for 8 months and locked down on the ice part

NZ has glaciers... but no entrepreneurs it seems :/

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Came here for this

We also (arguably) invented the ute in Geelong at the Ford factory. Sadly, with globalisation, that factory closed, and it's probably only a matter of time before we start importing ice as well. In fact, if memory serves, there was a proposal to tow a small iceberg from Antarctica into Sydney Harbour. Possibly cut up and stashed inside boogie boards.

In America they were made in the 1920s as a “roadster utility”.

America was a developing country in the 1850s whereas Melbourne was experiencing a gold rush making it one of the wealthiest cities on the planet.

Having ice to keep your drink cool in summer was a flashy status symbol for the elites of Melbourne. Winter in America coincided summer in Australia making them an ideal source of ice for Australian consumers.

> This is why most parts of Europe prefer their drinks served at room temperature, whereas North America prefers cold drinks.

This is absolute nonsense though.

Ice and ice boxes almost as soon as invented became about as luxurious as a dishwasher is today.

Imported ice cost about as much as cotton. It was relatively cheap, even transported.

A man with a horse drawn cart would deliver blocks of ice to your house weekly, or you got it from the butcher, fishmonger or chemist. The ice blocks would get placed in the top of your fridge and allow the home owner to store leftovers. Before the ice box, fresh food had to be purchased and eaten same day.

Always made me chuckle that Australia thinks they were the first when they were being made in the USA for about 10 years prior.

I like the colour/color changing Coors labels.

Now we make our own ice out of cold and flu medication or import it from SEA

Ice used to be dirty with soil, sawdust, pollution or poor hygiene.

European ice harvesters would store the ice in in underground pits for insulation. The melting ice water picked up dirt and covered the blocks. Or the blocks were covered in saw dust for insulation.

Americans stored their ice above ground in huts. When the ice water melted it dropped out the base and benefit was creating an evaporative cooling effect.

Both types of harvested ice were good for refrigerators, or cool rooms, making ice cream, but only the American style ice was good for mixed drinks.

The cost of ice was roughly equivalent to the cost of cotton, even at the furthest destination (east USA -> Australia).

The journey was 110-120 days, the boats carried 400 tons and the goods sold for not really all that much profit.

The chilled apples on the boats sold for more than the ice.

The ice was a convenient partner because it was also used as ballast.

I like to put my water in the microwave for a minute before I drink it.
Nice warm water, nothing is better. /S

It's bizarre. I haven't had a warm beer in any country. Also a bit like how people think Aussies drink Foster's. You can't find Fosters anywhere here.

Or to put it short.

Aussies invented the refrigerator :)

Oh hail mighty Prince of Darkness. Fun fact, Joseph Lucas was the patent holder for the short circuit…

Wrong, cask ales are served at cellar temperature.

I used to live on Wenham Lake and didn't know about this until recently.

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I'm talking about the temperature of the tap being specifically labelled as cold. Not the "ice cold" branding on the bottle or can, which is really just a matter of what temperature your fridge is.

Fine, but not "cold", which I'm pretty sure has a lot to do with the stereotype, going back to when that style of beer was more common in the UK (and non-existent in North America).

Lowell, Massachusetts has entered the chat

Lowell: Can I play too? Cambridge, Medford, Somerville: no Woburn: you can play with us. Lowell: ewww

In my country ski centres keep massive piles of snow under sawdust and fleece-like material for about half a year, from spring to autumn. Depending on how hot the summer is, only 15-30% will melt, and I think ice would melt even slower than snow.

short article in English
longer one, (pretty terribly) autotranslated.

They still use basically the same methods as 150+ years ago!

That sounds absolutely ridiculous and 100% made up.

Look up "Pykrete" because that's exactly what you had lol

Yeah, it does. Thats because we arent too keen these days on teaching social history.

Refrigerators only started to become commonplace 100 years ago. Before that we had to use ice boxes to keep things like meat and dairy cold, and those didnt even exist for 100 years before that point. So, you have to think that we are talking about 200-300 years before household refrigeration methods would even exist. We couldnt just make ice, we had to get it from somewhere it already was. Remember the opening scene from Frozen where they sawed ice blocks out of a lake? Not just done for a cool scene, ice harvesting use to be an actual profession. Then you just need to acknowledge that Canada is the largest landmass that will have year round ice, so thats where they got it from.

Sounds a lot more believable now, doesnt it?

If you're interested in the history of ice, refrigeration and other technologies, I recommend "How We Got To Now" by Steven Johnson
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/03/how-we-got-to-now-by-steven-johnson-six-innovations-made-modern-world

The founder of the Ice Trade in the US made his fortune (after a couple of missteps) because both the ice and the insulation (saw dust, wood shavings and rice husks) were free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Tudor

I think that came from Europe. In college I had a friend from Poland, she was drinking some Polish beer that did it years before the US started advertising it.

Those brown ice cubes… 🤢

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I could see the part with icecubes not being as popular in Europe as they are in NA because of that but yeah, Europe doesn't prefer warm drinks

If you can think of a better way to get ice I'd love to hear it...

Technically a ute is different from a pick-up truck. It’s come to mean the same thing now, but the original utes are actually a “utility coupé.” Notably, it’s the front part that’s different. The front of a ute is a sedan, just with the trunk sawed off and replaced with a tray. This is different from the American roadster utility, which was a soft-top. The modern pick-up I’d say has more of a trunk front, and is still different from the classic Commodore or something.

I found this out when I was curious as to why the ute has its own wiki. Turns out it literally is a different thing, way back when it was first invented.

Not sure why you were downvoted when telling historical truth.

Lawrence is trying to get in on this.

Then why do they drink warm drinks?

Because coffee and tea are better when warm and without a shitload of sugar?

Never been to Asia?

There really aren't.

I live next to Wenham Mass and that lake is our drinking water.

Refrigeration and electricity are the two most important inventions of all to get us to where we are in terms of quality of life and food sustainability.

Im talking about Europe since thats what were discussed

Fredrick Tudor is an ancestor of my landlord, I live in one of his ice houses they used to store the ice over the summer. The walls of my house are like 18" thick. Things must have been pretty different back then though cause now the ice pond water is brown and gross

Memory unlocked

Data on historical GDP

https://www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd001/

Trout! It took 30 tons of ice and a few attempts to ship live trout eggs to Australia. Upon arrival in 1864 they were put on a steam powered naval vessel to Tasmania where the ova where hatched onto plenty River. I heard awhile back something about Tasmanian trout being the most untouched genetically in the world........

It's only considered a desert as it gets so little rainfall per year. It's a permanent (not for long) ice sheet containing 90% of the earth's fresh water

Tldr: the front of our truck looks different so we claim to have made an entire new thing.

The "ice" trade is still pretty big in Australia these days!

If you can think of a better way to get ice I'd like to hear it!

Budweiser isn't really that bad. I for one like the rice flavor in the lager. It's got a unique taste that not everyone loves. And that's ok. It's not even the cheapest on the market.

Aren’t there ice desserts in New Zealand?

Seems like a waste of travel time. New Zealand is right there and from what I can tell, it’s always covered in ice.

My point is in America there are no cold/extra cold taps because ice cold is the default (at least in the days before craft beer became popular). British labelling implies the existence of different serving temperatures, e.g. extra cold for lagers, warmer for ales. At least that's how I remember it from when I lived there like 15 years ago.

I think there's a few story lines getting crossed here. I can't speak to the OP comment about North America creating the trend of iced drinks in Europe, but it seems like Frederick Tudor and the resulting ice industry was pretty influential in promoting ice in cocktails, etc.

From New England Historical Society:

>Frederic Tudor expanded his business to Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans, developing new sales techniques along the way.

>He gave bartenders free ice for a year after teaching them how to keep it frozen in a ‘refrigerating jar’ and how to make cocktails like the Smash. He sold ice to Havana coffee shop owners and the keeper of the Tivoli Gardens after teaching them how to make ice cream.

Also:

>Between 1844 and the early 1850s, the remarkably pure ice from Wenham Lake in Massachusetts became a fashionable luxury among the British aristocracy. The best London hotels put up signs advertising Wenham ice. It was said you could read a newspaper through a block of Wenham Lake ice two feet thick.

>Wenham ice inspired the popularity of cocktails like sherry cobblers and mint juleps in London. No fancy dinner party was complete without it, and Queen Victoria insisted on it.

>A competitor to Frederic Tudor, the Wenham Lake Ice Co., had promoted the stuff.

Not combustion-engines and air-conditioners? Interesting

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Lynn: Hey, boys!

It's not called "Lynn Lynn Land of Sin" for nothing

"Iced Tea???"

He was probably basing his design on the existing one, since he was in 1885.

Reminds me of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAsgN_LPWBc

Bobo?

Or people just weren’t little bitches.

Im just kidding. I grew up in the Midwest and drink frozen pond water sounds like a bad time. Maybe they imported the ice and stored it in the ice house?

Do you really want to put K*wi ice in something you're about to put in your mouth though? Yuck.

Are you under the impression that the literal mile of solid ice sitting on top of the Antarctic landmass is not freshwater?

Because it doesn't have anything to do with the TIL, I'd guess. The impressive part here is the transportation. Iran wasn't importing ice from Boston in 1000 BC, they just kept relatively local ice from melting for a few months.

I have these pictures from about 1910ish, in the bottom picture you can see my neighbor's house. Guess standards were just different?