Grant Achatz Schools Us on Aviary's Ice

So yesterday, we told you about a whole bunch of cool things forthcoming from Next and Aviary, including the latter's ice room.

We assumed it would be a room where they would produce all sorts of ice for their various cocktails, and on that front we were correct. But Grant Achatz emailed us to let us know that, where we thought Aviary's ice program might be like the one at Wicker Park speakeasy Violet Hour, Achatz says no.

There will be 18 different types of ice, he wrote. "Not like VH at all. Way more complex and diverse. Many custom molds from Martin [Kastner] at Crucial Detail....ice room, blast freezers, nitro, polyscience..."

Polyscience? Nirto? Achatz truly is the mad scientist we've always thought him to be. We only got a peek at the 1/4-inch ice pearls shown here and if we get more examples, we'll pop 'em up.