Ice buckets

First work out how much ice you need. For a table at home, a bucket of one to two litres is enough, good for a bottle of wine or a handful of drinks. For a party in warm weather, reckon on roughly half a kilo of ice per guest per hour, which quickly adds up to five to ten litres.

Then choose on construction. A double-walled bucket has a layer of air between the walls that acts as insulation; a single-walled one conducts the warmth of your bar straight into your ice. More important still is a removable inner bucket, which lifts the ice out of the meltwater. Look at the opening too: a wide opening works faster with an ice scoop, a narrow one holds the cold better. Behind the bar, one large bucket beats several small ones.

Water conducts heat about twenty-five times faster than air. Ice sitting in a pool of meltwater therefore melts visibly faster than ice standing dry. So pour the water off regularly, even if the bucket still looks full, or use a model with a strainer base.

Fill the bucket generously as well. A large mass of ice keeps itself cold, while a half-empty bucket is gone within the hour. Always take ice with a scoop or ice tongs and never with a glass: glass that breaks in the ice is never found again, and that is exactly the scenario you want to rule out behind the bar. If you work with large clear blocks, you need ice tools to break them to size.

Ice is a foodstuff, so an ice bucket is tableware and not a storage tub. Clean it daily, even when it looks clean, and let it dry completely before fresh ice goes in. Leftover moisture with traces of sugar is an excellent breeding ground for bacteria.

Stainless steel is virtually indestructible and looks crisp, but feels cold to the touch and condenses on a wooden table. Plastic is lighter, does not break when it falls off the bar and insulates better than metal by nature. With large sizes, check the handles, because you lift a full ten-litre bucket with two hands.

If your aim is mainly keeping bottles cold rather than serving ice, the wine coolers and the champagne coolers are more to the point. If you want to make clear ice yourself in the size that fits your glass, look at the ice cube moulds. And to see which format of ice is meant for what: an old fashioned calls for one large block, a mojito for crushed ice.