Review of Ice Man Malt Liquor
Posted By Zach Monday, 12 March 2007 12:27
To finish off this already long story, I have been looking for Ice Man ever since we started this site and always used it as an example to Ken of a really cheap malt we needed to try. Well, when I was on a mission to get a case of Sparks at Village Liquors, lo-and-behold I found it! Read on to see if it was worth the wait...
Ah, yes, the Holy Grail of cheap, malt liquors, behold the Ice Man! As most of you probably don't know, I first noticed this stuff when I was in a liquor store and someone bought just a tall boy of this for like a dollar. Unfortunately, I wasn't as willing to put my body through potential misery just to try some crap ass drink like I am now. Lucky you!
To finish off this already long story, I have been looking for Ice Man ever since we started this site and always used it as an example to Ken of a really cheap malt we needed to try. Well, when I was on a mission to get a case of Sparks at Village Liquors, lo-and-behold I found it! Read on to see if it was worth the wait...
Zach's Review
Taste: C+ The first swig of the Ice Man was not the cringe inducing gulp that comes with some drinks. Therefore, it is already a C or higher in my book. It was one of those, that I paused for a minute to decide if this drink sucked or was ok. I have to say that I was a bit surprised as I continued to put away this manly malt, that the taste seemed to get marginally better. Unfortunately, I had to drive myself home that night, so I couldn't see what the bottom of the Ice held, but after about 2/3rds of the way in, it held its own. I certainly wouldn't say the taste was good, but it was drinkable.
Packaging: B I gotta say, I kinda liked the Ice Man packaging. It is certainly very plain, but it has those little, bizarre touches only to be found on the finest of cheap ass malts. The bottle basically has some odd looking blue lines with ICE MAN spelled out in Star Wars intro way, like when the Long ago, in a galaxy... is scrolling up. One of the touches I liked is that the bottle boldy proclaims that it is 40 oz. in writing that is almost as large as the name itself. Plus, it is toward the top, so you could peel your brown paper bag down a bit and let everyone know that you aren't fucking around and really are pounding a true 40! Perhaps the best part of the package is right below the blue graphics and name where the Man tells us that he is "Chill-Aged". I have no idea what the hell this means, but love how malt brewers make up stuff like "High Gravity", "Chill-Aged" and "Premium Malt Beverage" like they are going to fool a Bud drinker into trying this.
Value: C- For some reason (perhaps the chill-aging), the Man thinks that he deserves $1.99 of your hard-earned cash to get the full 40. While certainly not high priced compared to buying regular beer, this is a bit steep for the malt world.
Drunkeness: C+ I couldn't find the alcohol percentage anywhere on the packaging, so I'm assuming this is the normal 5 - 7% of the malt world. While it is good compared to regular beer, it won't do anything special like say, the 10% of Four-O. OTOH, a 40 of any malt is guaranteed to at least get you ready for whatever fist-fights may come at you the rest of the night.
Overall: C+ While nothing spectacular, I felt I needed to give the ICE MAN a higher grade than Steel Reserve just out of nostalgia and for it's attempt to sound like something special for being "Chill Aged". If you happen across this in your friendly, neighborhood liquor store, definitely pick it up because you may never find it again. Like most adult beverages, it is worth trying once.
Ken's Review
Taste: C- Zach really gave the Man a little too much credit here on taste. As I described verbally to those around us while I tried it, this stuff tasted like sucking on a bail of wheat. That was the best way I could describe it. And each gulp (for me any way) was worse than the previous one. All my low expectations on taste came true after finally getting to try this stuff.
Packaging: B- Personally, for me, I see this packaging being about as high of quality as the taste is. It's very plain, which on the one hand is probably good because any more graphics would have cost the poor bastards who end up paying for this stuff even more money. Yet, for a name like Ice Man the packaging could have been more aggressive and stylish to portray the name better. Maybe they should have put more pizzaz into the label, then they would make more money and not have to hide their product in one out of every 294 liquor stores. And "chill-aging"? What the crap is this? How exactly you chill age something is beyond me, but whatever it is, it doesn't help this malt any.
Value: C- Could not agree more on value. I didn't actually pay for this 40oz. but part of me felt some remorse for Zach, who forked $1.99 for this stuff. Personally, if I am at the liquor store with $1.99 to spend on a malt liquor, I am moving away from this stuff because it would be totally Magnum time!
Drunkeness: B This may be a bit of an unfair rating, seeing as how I was only able to sack it up for 3 or 4 swigs of this shit, but I could definitely see getting pretty fucked up downing an entire bottle of this stuff. I did not see alcohol percentage on the label anywhere either, but even if it is at 30%, it's still not worth it.
Overall: B- I gotta give this a B- rating only because while it tastes like a bundle of wheat and is a complete rip-off at $1.99, it definitely gave many jokes about itself leading up to actually getting our hands on a bottle. And it will surely be brough up many times in the future how we tried this dank ass malt.