Four O Ice Beer
Copper Mountain Beverage Company

710ml can, faux street graffiti imagery on the label. How is an 'ice' beer only 4.5% ABV? Not that I'm complaining about low-test when Minhas is involved.

This beer pours a clear, very pale golden straw colour, with three fingers of puffy, thinly foamy off-white head, which leaves a few broad swaths of tree copse lace around the glass as it quickly bleeds away.

It smells of a pithy, diluted semi-sweet corn graininess, an acrid chemical skunkiness, and some dead leafy, um, 'dryness'. The taste is rather sweet, saccharine gritty corn and rice 'malt', with some toned down industrial effluent character, and an ethereal stab at a faint, not particularly unpleasant dead vegetation drying essence (I'm not calling it hoppy, no sir, no how.)

The carbonation is quite innocuous at first, and mostly just lazily absent thereafter, the body medium-light in weight, and smooth enough, I say through grated teeth. It finishes still sweet, but at least a tad moderated, with certain cooked veggie notes skulking about.

Nothing special, but nothing entirely awful, either, by the parameters of the given style, that is. Pretty tame for such heady exterior packaging, but then I find that contract brewers are just that - more focused on the part they control - the marketing - than on what's actually contained inside of it.

CAN you dig it? I had hoped to be over 200 on the CANQuest by the first of the year, but this is only # 190, plus given my dislike of its malt liquor brother, I was in no hurry to crack this open.

As is becoming par for the course, I got a finger of fizzing bone-white head with limited retention. The color was a pale straw-yellow, very reminiscent of ginger ale, with NE-quality clarity. Nose was lager sweet with a definite cereal presence. I am getting soooo tired of drinking this kind of thing, especially in CANs. Mouthfeel was medium with a slight sweetness accompanied with cereal qualities on the tongue. Finish was slightly dry, not at all off-putting, relatively speaking. It was pretty much standard for its style and becoming what I expect to get out of CANned beers, but comparatively head and shoulders above its malt liquor counterpart. For the price, it is worth a try.

Poured from a 24 oz. can. Has a very pale yellow color with a small head. Smell is primarily of malts, some corn. Taste is crisp, malts and corn, slightly sweet. Feels light in the mouth and goes down very easily. Overall this is pretty much a mediocre beer, but much better than the Four O malt liquor.