When I was in Kindergarten, I remember our Halloween party so clearly. One of the room moms brought apple juice and dry ice for a witch’s brew and it has stayed with me to this day (I say that like I’m not 30…and if you think 30 is old, then I am sad and hope no one calls you old when you’re 30. Or maybe I do…) Even though it was just apple juice and a black plastic cauldron, we were all blown away.
Fast forward 17 years to my senior year of college when I was doing a presentation on Frankenstein and I brought the same magic potion to a room full of college kids. And they had the exact same reaction as we did when we were in Kindergarten. After that, it kind of became my “thing”; I am voluntold every year that I will be bringing the drink to the classroom Halloween parties and that it will be Witch’s Brew and that everyone is very excited. And by “everyone,” I mean the teachers.
This year, I decided the witch’s brew is fun and cute, but we should up the ante. Mad scientist style. Now…I’m going to show you guys some tricky techniques here and I need you to stay with me and not be scared or intimidated about what we’re going to do. Note: the sarcasm button is broken on my keyboard right now, so this is my way of telling you that there is nothing tricky and going on here. I also really want you to not send me hate mail and leave mean comments that I’m pretty much giving you a step-by-step photo tutorial on how to make Kool Aid. We are in the throes of full-fledged holiday/sick kid/book-writing/dog-ate-husband’s-dinner-then-got-sick chaos/laundry-is-reproducing-in-the-living-room-at-an-alarming-rate crisis at our house right now and I imagine I’m not the only one, so this is a super-easy way to knock the socks off your kids (and make their friends think your kid has the coolest mom ever).
You’ll need some glass jars (I got these apothecary jars at Walmart for under $10 apiece–2 1-gallon jars and 1 2-gallon jar), drinks of your choice (I used Kool-Aid because it’s cheap and the kids who will be drinking it care WAY more about the “potion” than the fact that it is not even remotely gourmet, but you could use Sprite flavored with Jello, Hawaiian Punch, or anything else you can think of, even if it involves food coloring), and dry ice. 
There are lots of misconceptions about dry ice (who knows, some of them may be true in some places), but these are my experiences:
-Dry ice is not outrageously expensive. It’s about $1 a pound and you’ll need about 1 pound per gallon of potion.
-It’s not sold everywhere, but it’s not terribly hard to find, either. I used this Dry Ice Directory to find a place close to me that sold it. I live in a fairly small town in the middle of Louisiana and I found two grocery stores within 10 minutes of my house that sold it.
-It doesn’t keep for very long. Storing it in your freezer for a few days is not the best idea–you’re likely to open up the bag and find nothing there. I try to buy it at the very last minute and then keep it wrapped up in towels, paper bags, and an insulated cooler until I’m ready to use it.
-It will hurt you if you’re not careful. You need heavy-duty gloves or even an oven mitt and some tongs. Don’t let your kids play with the brew unsupervised (although it’s pretty funny to watch your dog bark at and then hide from the dry ice clouds).
Place the Kool-Aid and sugar (or whatever drink you’re using) in the jars.
Fill the jars with water and mix well. See, I told you this was tricky.
Carefully (if I were REALLY smart and safe, I’d wear goggles, but my version of living dangerously involves breaking dry ice with a meat mallet and no safety goggles) break the ice into chunks that are roughly 4-6 inches long/wide somewhere. Basically, just try to not get them too small or leave them too big. Place one piece at a time into each jar, saving the rest to refresh the bubbling potion effect later.
I’m serious, kids and adults alike will freak out. It’s pretty fun.
Serve immediately.
If you’re patient, you can even offer to play the mad scientist and mix flavors together for the adventurous kidlets. Not super appetizing, but they’re kids and you’re (probably) mixing fruity flavors and not Sprite, Coke, Root Beer, and Mountain Dew or some other ghastly double-dog-dare combination. 
Mad Scientist Potion
By Our Best Bites
Large glass jars or beverage containers
Brightly colored drink of your choice
Dry Ice (1 pound per gallon of potion)
Heavy-duty gloves and/or an oven mitt and tongs
Prepare drinks if necessary in the beverage jars. Otherwise, pour the drinks into the jars.
Carefully break up the dry ice with a mallet or a hammer. Add one piece (about 4-6 inches somewhere on the piece) per gallon at a time to the drink containers and replenish the dry ice as necessary. Serve immediately, ladling the juice into cups and leaving the dry ice in the large containers.
Note: The 1 pound per gallon rule will give you about an hour’s worth of potion. If you need 2 hours, you’ll need 2 pounds per gallon, and on and on. :)
Appetizers
Beef
Sandwiches and Burgers
Beverages
Breads
Breakfast and Brunch
Condiments
Desserts
Pizza and Pasta
Pork
Poultry
Salads and Dressings
Seafood
Side Dishes and Vegetables
Soups and Stews
Candy Penguin Cupcakes
Cinnamon Bun Caramel Corn
Single Serving Pie in a Jar
We just did the “regular” brew (apple juice and dry ice) at my grandson’s party last Saturday but he was SO excited when he first saw the magic. Think how much more excited he would have been if it had been a Mad Scientist Potion instead! But, it was in our pretty green bottles, so there was that going on!
Silly question, but do you just ladle the potions out of the jars into cups for the eager children? So fun, I love this idea!
By the way, this is the first time I have commented, but I L-O-V-E your blog!
Yay for your first comment! Yep, just ladel it up! :)
How perfect!! I can’t wait to do this for Halloween!
This looks like so much fun! I’d love to try this when I have my own classroom. And I can’t believe people send you mean e-mails :(
I love this easy idea. Also, our Walmart even has a dry ice box next to the regular ice box….just in case others are looking for a place to check. =)
I may just use this idea at our Halloween parties this weekend!
This is freaking genius! Love this!
I absolutely love this idea. Thank you so much for sharing it!
“Voluntold” may just be my new favorite word. :)
I agree! I love “voluntold”, never heard it before. It cracked me up!
My dad always used this technique with homemade root beer for ALL (and I mean ALL) our holiday ward parties. A big hit every time. But, like you said, you can use ANY type of drink. I’ll have to dig deeper into finding dry ice. I’ve always been hesitant to “play with it” but really…I should get over it.
Ok so this is the pre-coffee, up way too late last night and then up too early in the morning brain asking…. so you can actually drink the beverage that has the dry ice in it? Because I so need to regain the cool points that I apparently lost on becoming mom to a teenager (a senior in high school no less the younger two teens still think I’m cool! especially if I make finger cookies and gourmet treats like lasagna with homemade noodles.)
Thanks for the clarification!!
Hooray! I’m not the only one who looked at this and thought, “Wait – you can drink dry ice?”
Yeah, don’t go ingesting dry ice! That would be bad. :) That’s why it’s important that you don’t break the pieces too small. When you’re ladeling it up, if you see a little white spot that’s bubbling and “smoking,” dump it out and try again. They’ll be easy to spot–it’s not like regular ice where you could miss it.
I think this is really a cute thing for a party. BUT, for some reason, I don’t feel safe with dry ice going into something, even Kool Aid, I think this could actually make a child sick.
Katie says in her reply, yeah, don’t go and ingest it. Tell that to a child and the will, thinking it will do its foaming thing in my belly.
I heard of putting it as a display for Halloween but never in a drink. I have to think long and hard about this one.
It says on the dry ice not to ingest, It must refer to the ice itself, not a drink made with it. Assumption, though, will google it to be sure, this is totally cool. Thanks for sharing.
That looks awesome! I will have to try this sometime.
Thanks for making me smile on this snowy-christmasy (even though it’s not halloween yet) morning. =)
I think I may need to try this…even if I have no kiddos around! :) I’ve never seen this before, and it’s about time to relive my deprived childhood!
I love using dry ice for things. Having worked in a grocery store that sells dry ice it doesn’t scare me to work with it. But funny story for your Wednesday (we all need funny stories on Wednesdays, right?) — when I was a teenager my family and I took a family trip across the states (from Idaho to Illinois – eight kids, 15 passenger van, non-stop driving). My dad wanted to drive without stopping as much as possible (as if there is such a thing with so many children in one vehicle together – isn’t there some unspoken rule about every child needing to go to the bathroom the moment one child mentions it?). My mom had a cooler next to her seat filled with sandwich meat, jams and peanut butter and she got pretty good at fixing food from the seat. To keep everything cool and fresh (and mostly dry) while we were driving, my dad would stop periodically in little towns and buy some dry ice to put in the cooler. This plan worked pretty well until we got to Iowa. We stopped in so many little towns all through Iowa and not a single store had dry ice. In one store, the grocery clerk we asked even laughed at us, thinking we must have been trying to trick her by asking if they had dry ice ( you know, cuz ice isn’t dry). Anyway, crazy story and doesn’t have much to do with anything but thought I’d share anyway. Thanks for the fun idea!
“Voluntold” is frickin funny! At first I was like, what the heck did she put, then the light bulb clicked and I chuckled out loud! Too funny! I love doing all this fun stuff for my son and my co-workers….now you make me wish I would have planned a Halloween party! Catered by Our Best Bites recipes of course! ;)
Cooooooooool. Still cool, and i’m 38. LOL Thanks for sharing how to properly do it, I had no idea!
What a great idea! Will it work to combine with the “glow in the dark” tonic water- just a bit in the kool aid? Think I’ll try it and up the ante a bit! Thanks!
In petty positive you could and that would be AWESOME! Take a pic if you do it! :)
Dry ice can also be great for a rainy day experiment with your kids. But a small piece in a thermos, add in mini marshmellow, chocolate, strawberries, etc. and they will freeze solid in just a couple seconds. Kids are facinated by how quick it happens and the texture difference on the marshmellows is crazy. Just be sure to use tongs, and let the food “warm” a little before letting the kids touch them!
This sounds like lots of fun – though I’ll have to think of another excuse to use it since we don’t “do” Halloween. For those with questions about safety, here is a link that explains it: http://www.physlink.com/education/AskExperts/ae417.cfm
Coolest thing I have ever seen (it does not take much to impress me). I love easy awesomeness. Thanks.
This may be one of your funniest posts ever. It’s a great crowd pleaser and who says every treat has to be gourmet? I love it!
Ooooh so glad I read this! I am room mom’ing this year and was debating some sort of drink. Apple juice and dry ice, so simple and obvious but still I hadn’t thought of it!
Another fun dry ice use, a big tub of water, dish soap and dry ice. It creates crazy bubbles that have “smoke” in them and release it when they pop. It’s pretty fun and impressive.
Dry ice will fog longer the colder your punch is…so get the biggest bang for your buck by using cold punch.
It still boggles my mind that people send you hate mail for stuff like that. Well, hate mail for ANYTHING! I apologize for idiots everywhere.
On another note, I’m so excited to do this soon. Many times I do these kinds of things because I think they are cool, doesn’t matter what the kiddo thinks, haha! And I can’t wait to do it with homemade root beer next Summer!
HAHA – Voluntold – Love it! Now I know what the exact term is for everyone assuming/expecting me to bring my bread pudding to holiday gatherings! It just goes without asking anymore. Huh, voluntold ya so! LOL I have shared this link with a friend who is a room-mother this year for Halloween for some tweens.
Totally LOVE it! Doing it for family dinner Sunday, as that is when my grown kids/grandkids gather. Need to go see if I can find the jars at Walmart. :-) Also, I love it that not all of your reipces and ideas are gourmet, as I don’t always like complicated and tricky.
Loving this! Was totally just searching for what to make for a pre-school party on Friday, and now I know! Thinking I’ll dye the apple juice. Thank you OBB!
Dumb question and somebody else may have already asked … but the cold didn’t crack your jar? I already have a 2-gallon jar, but would hate for it to get broken.
Just make sure the drink is cold and the jar is nice and heavy. Don’t go using a flower vase or something you got at the dollar store. Don’t add too much dry ice and you’ll be fine! :)
Way way fun idea….i have always used dry ice at Halloween to make smoke bubbles. I get a cauldron add water, and several drops of dish soap, stir, and add dry ice. when it starts to react you get smoke bubbles, and if you catch them and clap your hand they pop and smoke come out. Kids, adults, everyone loves it. So will now have to add a fun drink to the list!!!
I love this idea, but sadly there is no dry ice within less an hours drive.
We carried on my husband’s family tradition of making homemade root beer at school every year for years and years, so they, too, expected it.=) Usually on Halloween – the kids loved it!! Very easy to make: 5 lbs. dry ice, 5 gallons water, 5 lbs. sugar, and 1 bottle of root beer extract. This needs to be made in a 10 gallon container otherwise it will overflow all over. Ready to drink in 30 minutes! Yummy!
Great. I’m the kindergarten room mom and I just got back from the store where I bought chocolate milk and thought I was cool. I guess I will be going back from some dry ice and koolaid.
How long does dry ice last outside of the freezer? If I have a party Sunday afternoon and I buy the dry ice Saturday night, where would I store it? Sorry maybe this is a dumb question . . .
That is awesome…my kids are too little to appreciate that YET…but you can bet I will be making it when they are old enough…so much fun and so simple!!!
This idea is so awesome! I’m glad I ran across it, my son’s birthday party is this weekend and I’m super stoked for him to see this! (He just turned 3!) So him and his little buddies will love it! Thanks! :)
How cute is this! My baby girl is only 14 months old so she wouldn’t appreciate it but maybe next year she will!!
Thanks for the reminder about such a fun, “magical” drink/activity!
Who knew it was so easy? Thanks -
That is great! So going to look for dry ice right now!
I’m so excited for my 4th grader! She and her class will love this! Thanks for something so easy and fun!
Do you know what happy little boys these made?? http://www.320sycamoreblog.com/2011/10/tidbits-102611.html Love you best bite girls!
My kids go to THE coolest preschool teacher ever. She makes Witches Brew with “crushed skeleton bones” (sugar), “Vampire blood” (root beer flavoring), and “the breath of a ghost” (dry ice). She makes it in front of them in a big cauldron and casts a spell on it. It’s their favorite.
When I was in grade school, there was always one mom (Mrs. Nelson) who brought the dry iceand dressed like a witch, and every kid brought in a can of soda – any flavor. They ALL got poured into a big pot, and the dry ice was added. And we drank that. It was so gross, but we LOVED it!
I’m still boggled that it’s okay to ingest the liquified dry ice… Is there anything in the dry ice, other than it’s super cold? I love this idea, just worried about even small chunks with kids, and have always been taught it’s not safe to drink. Even on Martha S, she says don’t ingest. Who knows.:/
Dry ice is just solid carbon dioxide, which we’re totally surrounded by all the time. :) It’s how homemade root beer has been made forever and ever and I’ve had it sooooo many times at large-scale parties nearly my whole life and not a single person has ever had an adverse reaction. Martha is probably covering her behind. :) As far as the small chunks go, when you ladle the drink up, any tiny chunks will float to the top and “smoke,” so they’re super easy to spot.
Dry ice doesn’t turn to “liquid”. It undergoes sublimation, a process when a solid becomes a gas. It sublimates into gas, the bubbles rise up through the drink, and then they pop and smoke.
This is such a fantastic and EASY idea! I even volunteered to bring the drinks for my 2nd grader’s Halloween party tomorrow. This will totally impress those 8-year-olds! Thank you for the link to the dry ice finder. It saved me many gallons of gas and countless phone calls :).
Just an update on the awesome 2nd grade party. I “voluntold” my husband to dress up as a mad scientist–complete with wig, goofy goggles, and German accent. It was awesome! The kids were mesmerized, and the teachers and other parent helpers were rolling in the aisles. Thanks, OBB!!!
LOVE IT! Especially that you “voluntold” your husband… :)
Can you please post the website where you find the little milk bottles.
Thanks
http://www.bakeitpretty.com
I love you Kate. You’re my gorgeous cooking hero. Now would you please post some food? Enough sweets already, I know it’s halloween, but we can’t eat candy and cookies and coolaid all week! Don’t our good friends to the southwest eat this week? How about some Mexican food? Can’t I tempt you by asking for something with LIME?
Seriously- You think of everything. My son’s first birthday party is Saturday, and I had pretty much given up on the special effects drink cuz of supposed difficulty and expense. Thanks so much for all of your hard work- It makes my mom job a lot easier!!!
Stick a small head of cauliflower in one of the jars and you have brains or “Abby Normal” to quote Young Frankensiten.
THANKS for the idea. The 2nd graders LOVED IT! One told me I was more intellegent than him for figuring this out. hahahaha I just did a plastic cauldron & hawaiian punch & called it “Withches Brew”. I LOVE your blog!
Awesome! I’m off to buy dry ice! Actually I’m going to send my husband…
Great idea!! A couple ?’s……is it ok to use beverages that are sparkling or are carbonated with the dry ice? Also, will the dry ice be affected if ice cubes are added into the jars?
These will be perfect for our Harry Potter birthday party for our son!
wow, i did not know you could drink things with dry ice in them
I saved this post when I saw it last week and used your idea for my 5th grader’s Halloween party today. It was a HUGE hit! Thank you so much! My daughter and her friends kept telling me how awesome I was. lol Whew, cool for one more year! ;)
This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen! I’m so going to do this next year! BTW – I think your laundry multiplied over to my house, even though I live in NY. It’s all over the place! I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank you for the chocolate mummy cookie recipe. I made them for my son’s Halloween party. One girl doesn’t celebrate so I converted hers into a princess! Everything was a hit!
This is awesome! I’m nominating you Mom of the Year! :)
Forgive me. I am confused. If you aren’t supposed to touch it…is it ok to drink?
Yep. It’s super super super super cold, so it will burn your hands if you touch it. When it combines with water, it sublimates and becomes a (safe) gas (although you don’t want to keep it under pressure).
The dry ice will actually carbonate the drink if you put enough in. I have made homemade rootbeer over the years with it. Recipe:
5 pounds sugar, one bottle rootbeer extract (found in the spice aisle), 5 gallons water, 8 lbs dry ice. Mix extract sugar and water well in LARGE container. Add dry ice a few pounds at a time, letting the dry ice ‘evaporate’. Takes about an hour. When dry ice is all gone, the rootbeer is ready! Don’t plan on storing the finished product; it looses the carbonation quickly.
I absolutely love this idea. Thank you so much for sharing it!
FANTASTIC IDEA! going on the list of summer projects!