Ice "Fishing"(Drinking)

Winter is fully upon us and while negotiating your way back from the bar on icy sidewalks can be quite an endeavor, there are a few positive aspects of the season such as ice fishing. Ice fishing seems to be restricted to states sharing a border with Canada, and I think this may be as much cultural as temperature related. It takes a hardy soul to spend the day standing on a frozen lake waiting for a small flag to pop up. I was fortunate to spend the last weekend doing quite a bit of standing on a frozen lake with the Portlandtaps crew and friends. This particular ice fishing trip was involving quite a bit of standing and not so many of those little red flags. Luckily we were prepared for this occurrence with a healthy supply of MCD (multiple cold domestic) beers.

Not only were we prepared with a healthy quantity, we had the variety to do a tasting. A tasting to bring you our pick for the best ice fishing beer. Now before you throw all of our beer credibility away, remember that we do enjoy the fine microbrews especially the many this great state has to offer. Every beer has its place however and ice fishing has some unique requirements for a beer:

1.The beer has to taste good ice cold, and by ice cold we sometimes mean slushy.
2.The beer has to be in a can, I don't have a snowmobile so all those beers are packed in and bottles get heavy.
3.The beer needs to be on the lower end of the alcohol spectrum (4-5%). Ice fishing requires an all day commitment to drinking and you need to be able to pull your traps and walk out at the end.

With these requirements we are mostly constrained to the MCD category so here are the contestants:

Miller Lite: A classic light beer (Great Taste Less Filling). This beer won good marks for its cold temperature flavor and superior body for a light beer.

Bud Light : When chilled to below 32 degrees this beer literally tastes like water, which may be just what you are looking for if the slightly skunky flavor of many MCDs is a turn off.

Budweiser: An American classic, this beer has full flavor for a MCD and is quite refreshing when cold although this is more of an after work beer on a hot day for me.

Coors Light: The most popular beer of the Coors family this beer has a little more of a beer taste than bud light although not as much as Miller Lite. This is not one of my favorites although the mountains on the can do turn blue when its cold and man were they blue.

Coors Original: This brew is less popular than its lighter cousin but has a great flavor. Very smooth and clean when cold, but enough flavor to let you know you are drinking beer. The cold activated blue mountains on the can again are a nice touch although when my beers are all sitting on the ice I can be fairly assured of their temperature.

Labatt Blue: A Canadian offering and its imported for Canada daily as it says on the can. Zane found this beer to be highly drinkable and more flavorful than most of the American contestants, plus mentioned that the Canadians probably know a thing or too about a good ice fishing beer.

PBR: What can I say, its PBR. If you love it you love it. When chilled properly this beer has good character, although upon warming it turns skunky rapidly.

Molson Canadian: Another Canadian offering and a fine one at that. The two Canadian beers were the only two to exceed 5% alcohol, go figure. This beer has fully body and great flavor. This beer for me has been a long time ice fishing standby.

The Winner is.......!!!

Coors Original, The Banquet Beer. This beer just can't be matched for flavor when ice cold, while still going down smooth. The blue mountains are a gimmick but the wide mouth can has some obvious advantages. Molson Canadian is a strong runner up, and may I suggest a variety for your next trip. Perhaps Coors for the morning working into Molson Canadian for the afternoon. If you noticed in the picture many of the beers used for this tasting were tall 24 once cans. Normally I shy away from these because the bottom third of the beer always gets warm before you get to it. When its 15 degrees out however all bets are off and your beer will stay cold as long as you need it to, just watch out for slush forming. Be safe out there on the ice this year and remember that if you can't catch a fish, you might be able to catch a buzz.