The snobby beer connoisseur may scoff at those who drink beer with ice. But in Vietnam, as much as 75% of drinkers enjoy their beer with ice, a habit I myself have picked up and have grown to love whilst living in Saigon. If I’m having beer, I’m almost certainly having it on the rocks, be it room-temp or already chilled; a cheaper beer from a convenience store or a craft IPA at a pub — in which case I will somewhat embarrassingly ask for a separate glass of ice. Iced beer is far superior to normal, boring beer. Below, I offer my five-point defense of why.
1. A cold plunge
No one likes lukewarm beer. And what better way of fast-tracking the cooling process than pouring it directly into a glass of ice? Though it needs saying, ice is not just for the tepid. On a hot and steamy day (by which I mean night, obviously), I crave an ice-cold beer atop ice-cold ice. I like my beer so cold, in fact, that it might just give me a thrilling brain freeze — the stuff of childhood, sure, back when we had yet to learn how too fast or too much might just backfire up along the neck. Though who would’ve thought, many a year later, what joy it would be to re-learn that same lesson over again?
2. A snack
When drinking, I constantly find myself seeking something to nibble on, accustomed to Korea’s “anju” culture, a parallel to Vietnam’s nhậu culture. A sip to whet my appetite, a bite and a nibble, and a swish to awash the food, ad infinitum. But rarely do I not feel sick once I’m done, a problem of too much bloat. I find ice a perfect zero-calorie solution — something to suck and bite on to ease the boredom of the mouth. After all, an ice is just an ice.
3. A lie
As a lightweight, I delight in the fact that ice can give the illusion of multiple drinks in one. What would have filled merely one tall glass can now be poured into multiple icy glasses. The volume of beer is the same but what do I care? Oh, the satisfaction of slamming down a glass in one go like a boisterous viking! Why split the G when you could go all the way?
4. A natural timer
Critics of iced beer will complain that ice waters down beer. Yet how come the same critics do not bat an eye when it comes to other commonly iced drinks? Coffee, tea, cocktails, juice, the list could go on and on. Sure, ice waters down beer like any other drink, but must that be a bad thing? When my beer begins to taste more and more like piss, I take that as Dionysus’s sign for me to gulp down what has probably already gone flat anyways and order myself another one.
5. Bubbles!
Beer experts will tell you that creating foam when pouring beer in fact helps enhance the taste of the beer and the drinking experience. But personally, I drink beer for its carbonation and the belch that helps to release — nay, sublimate — not just gas but something more incorporeal like pent-up discontent. (Is this a good place to emphasize that I am not an alcoholic?) I mention this for the reason that, apparently (and I’ve long suspected such from experience), pouring beer over ice helps to reduce the amount of CO2 that escapes. Granted, the ice needs to be “rinsed” — but who says it has to be with water? I prefer to rinse my ice with a swirl or two of beer.
To be clear, none of this is an endorsement of alcoholism. Ideally, we should avoid drinking altogether. But if we are going to drink anyways, we might as well have our beers in their optimal form: served ice-, ice-cold.
