Whether it’s Christmas, Father’s Day or a wedding gift, at men’s magazine offices around the nation, one question proliferates the office: Is that gift guide truly complete without including at least one set of whiskey stones?
On the surface, they seem to be the perfect gift: they let your bourbon-drinking friends and family members chill their drink without diluting it, an apparent sin in the drinking world, and they strike a perfect balance — a touch too ridiculous to buy for yourself, but welcome when disguised with wrapping paper and a bow. And thus spreads the myth of the whiskey stone.
But the simple fact is, no one needs, wants or actually uses whiskey stones. They are almost entirely useless. Whiskey stones are intended to do two things: cool your drink down and prevent dilution. In each of these pursuits, the whiskey stone fails.
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Whiskey stones are worse at cooling than ice
In regards to the claim that whiskey stones cool your drink: In this arena, the stones, typically made of soapstone to help protect your highball because for some reason you decided to put an actual rock in it, are up against a world-class cooler. Ice is — and has — been the predominant way to cool beverages for centuries, so much so that it seems odd to have to explain why.
Water, and ice to a lesser extent, has extremely high specific heat, which can be thought of as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of something. (Or in this case, how much heat that something can absorb from a room-temperature drink.) Ice also benefits from the phase change. Melting ice into water takes a (relatively) incredible amount of heat. In fact, the process of melting ice absorbs the vast majority of heat in your drink. This phase change doesn’t occur with stones. They just warm up.
