Bottomshelf Beer Reviews: Game Day Ice

Game Day Ice

 “Are you ready for some football?!?!?!?!?!”  There’s no need to scream, Mr. Hank Williams Jr.  I am, as always, ready for some football.   My beloved Bears have clinched their division for the first time since 2006.  On a separate note, what the fuck’s with the song?  The song used to draw a line in the sand, to separate those ready for some football and those that decidedly weren’t.  Every year they add more dancers and newer, stupider lyrics.  Next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if the cast of Glee joins Hank Jr. singing a mashup of his 1990 intro and The Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling.”  It’s enough to make ol’ Hank Sr. turnover in his Redman stained grave.

Game Day Ice seems to promise a combination of two things I love: beer and football.  Is there anything that goes together better than beer and football?  Well, bourbon and morphine killed Hank Sr., so failing that I would say beer and football is probably about as good as it gets.  Since I love beer and football so much I should in theory love a beer that purports to combine these two things, right? Well, in theory communism works.

I ended up drinking Game Day Ice after someone left it at my house following our annual Christmas Eve-Eve Party.  One of my wife’s friends heard I reviewed crappy beer, and couldn’t resist bring some Game Day Ice over.  Makes me think I should have started a blog reviewing high-end single malt Scotch.  In any case I just watched the Saints clinch a playoff berth and cracked open an ice-cold Premium Brewed Game Day Ice.  According to the can, this beer is always traditionally brewed with only the freshest ingredients. 

Fancy talk from a can of 7-11 brand beer.  Calling your beer “Premium” doesn’t make it so, anymore than drawing a nipple on your butt cheek makes it a tit.  As was the case with Big Flats 1901, Game Day’s can makes a lot of promises and doesn’t deliver.   A word of advice: we live in the digital age, use technology to your advantage.  When you come across a macro-brew do a quick search on your smart phone.  If the beer doesn’t have an official website avoid it at all costs. Websites are a cheap an easy way to promote a product and sell crappy merch.  If the makers of the beer don’t feel the need to sell t-shirts and Styrofoam antenna balls you shouldn’t feel the need to drink it. 

A rose by any other name...

As for the beer itself: it smells kind of fruity, and not in a gay way.  It smells like you took a bowl of Apple Jacks and poured beer all over it.  It tastes okay at first, bubbley with a hint of appleness.  Almost like you mixed a hard cider like Magners with a domestic beer like Miller Lite.  Then the aftertaste hits.  The aftertaste is pretty similar to Steel Reserve or other high gravity malt beverages.  In other words, it’s disgusting.  If you’ve never had Steel Reserve, take a can of some watery flavorless beer like Keystone Light, and drop in a depth charge of the cheapest vodka you can find.  Your concoction should taste vaguely like beer with a bad chemical aftertaste.  That’s exactly what Game Day Ice tastes like, with maybe a few Johnny Apple Treats thrown in for good measure.  This wouldn’t be so bad, but Game Day’s alcohol content is only 5.5%, woefully short of Steel Reserve’s 8.1%.   That means you have to drink even more of this shit to get drunk.  I’ve been known to exaggerate a bit when reviewing a beer, but make no mistake; this shit is awful.   I think it’s one of the worst beers I’ve ever drank.  The half a can I’ve sucked down so far is not sitting well, at all.  Maybe I'm just hungy, but I feel kind of sick.  I’m actually debating whether or not to pour this shit down the drain.

I don’t know how well you know me, but I think you should know that I never ever pour cold beer down the drain.  This stuff is bad.  If you have to poison someone this beer would be a good candidate as it already tastes like poison.  This beer was a gift, so I didn’t pay for it; however I looked it up online and I guess it usually costs like $8.99 a twelver. That’s a goddamn ripoff.  Spend a few bucks more and get a case of Old Style, or better yet spend a few bucks less and get a couple 40’s of Mickey’s.  This shit is gross.

A picture says a thousand words

 Note:  I came up with half a dozen captions for that last picture.  Some of the highlights include:
"how the mighty have fallen" and "fuck you Game Day Ice."  The second one isn't very clever, but it describes my mood perfectly.