Pellet Ice Maker Recommendations???

UTfball68

UTfball68

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Joined
Jul 18, 2008
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Granite Quarry
@RQ's thread about last minute Christmas shopping got me thinking. The wife and I usually don't do anything for eachother...maybe a card...give the kids $20/ea and let them go nuts in the store for each parent. Our freezer has an ice maker, but multiple times a week, my wife goes to either Sonic or Zaxby's to buy a bag or three of their pellet ice. In the name of saving money, but under the guise of being a sweet and thoughtful husband, anyone have a countertop pellet ice maker (while sales are still going on) and have any feedback. I see them from $60-600...no idea what differentiates them, but the important thing will be replicating the texture and density to Sonic/Zaxby's...otherwise I'll just be buying a new paperweight.
 
UTfball68 said:
but the important thing will be replicating the texture and density to Sonic/Zaxby's...otherwise I'll just be buying a new paperweight.
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What is special about this ice? Is it the little tiny balls that are about 6mm?

Icemaker in our fridge doesn't work... its something w/ the line pump, never bothered to fix it bc moving the fridge is a massive PITA.
Bought one like this many years ago, it makes the round bullets that have holes in the middle
Amazon product ASIN B0C5H7FDXM
While it works great and makes ice fast, one downside is the ice is very "wet" bc the chamber isn't really insulated and it isn't hard frozen. So if you make a bunch and then dump into the freezer, they will all be stuck together later.
 
TIL that is called "nugget ice".

FYI for those that care, and I'm guessing that's not Ben's Wife, tiny nuggets of ice are the fastest to make and fastest to cool down your drink bc they have some much more surface area in contact w/ the fluid. But they are also the fastest to melt for the same reason and hence get your drink watery.
 
We’ve had this conversation a couple times but I never did enough research to find out if there were any machines that weren’t super expensive that made the same quality ice. My wife’s dream would be an industrial nugget ice maker and a Coke Freestyle machine.

If she’s eating ice like a fiend, it might be easier to get her a jumbo bottle of iron supplements cause hers is probably low lol.
 
RatLabGuy said:
I mean you could be a real man and buy her some of these
Amazon product ASIN B09YQ2K5DH
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What part of 'guise of sweet and thoughtful' don't you understand...that looks like it would require work.

ncsutj said:
My sister just bought this one. She is happy with it so far.

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Attaboy...that's the kind of thing I was looking for. Any chance she's referenced how close it is to Sonic/Zaxby's/CFA???

jcramsey said:
If she’s eating ice like a fiend, it might be easier to get her a jumbo bottle of iron supplements cause hers is probably low lol.
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She definitely has an iron deficiency...but the way I see it, iron supplements are expensive, $9-12/wk in bagged ice is expensive, and an ice machine pays for itself inside of 6 months.
 
shawn said:
No, it's called "Chick Fil-A ice". Get with the program.
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My kids called it "Chicken ice" because chick-fil-a had the best version of it.

20+ years later my wife and I still base our opinions on what places have the best drinks on whether they have "chicken ice" or regular ice

Best of luck Weezy. if you find a good maker of said "chicken ice" I may be interested :smokin:
 
UTfball68 said:
What part of 'guise of sweet and thoughtful' don't you understand...that looks like it would require work.



Attaboy...that's the kind of thing I was looking for. Any chance she's referenced how close it is to Sonic/Zaxby's/CFA???



She definitely has an iron deficiency...but the way I see it, iron supplements are expensive, $9-12/wk in bagged ice is expensive, and an ice machine pays for itself inside of 6 months.
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She said it was close to "chicken ice"
 

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