# The great taboo: ice cubes in beer.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 7, 2003, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025 "2003-09-07T02:05:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/1 "2003-09-07T02:05:22Z")
Beer is one of the only beverages that people will absolutely not put ice into, regardless of how warm it is. Soda, lemonade, water, whiskey, etc., people will drink with ice. But never beer. I know I would rather drink it warm than with ice.
Has it always been this way? Or has there been a time when folk woud put a few cubes of ice in a warm beer?
What about other countries? Is there somewhere on the planet where putting ice into a warm beer is commonly done?
---
### Author:  [@Not\_In\_Anger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Not_In_Anger)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/2 "2003-09-07T02:09:55Z")
Putting ice in beer is simply not done. In any culture, in any point of history. It ranks with incest as the #1 taboo of all time. Drinking beer warm is aceptable, though not desireable.
---
### Author:  [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/3 "2003-09-07T02:14:08Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Not In Anger \*
> \*\*Putting ice in beer is simply not done. In any culture, in any point of history. \*\*
While it’s incredibly easy for me to take your word for it, I still gotta ask…Cite?
---
### Author:  [@Not\_In\_Anger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Not_In_Anger)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/4 "2003-09-07T02:20:17Z")
haha. I’m a amateur history buff, and i get most of my relevant info off anthropologists that everyone else considers to be crazy. While I’m only a anthropology dillentante, I know my beer, and no fool would ever insult it with a ice cube. It would be like pissing in the sink.
---
### Author:  [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/5 "2003-09-07T02:21:13Z")
How about an [anti-Cite](http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2002-09-26/foodpick.asp)?
> [@](#):
>
> Any self-respecting American beer drinker would wince at the prospect of drinking a brew poured over ice, but a recent excursion to central Mexico revealed that the idea isn’t so bad after all.
---
### Author:  [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/6 "2003-09-07T02:23:11Z")
And [another](http://www.canucksalmanac.hispeed.com/articles/1982_finals.html):
> [@](#):
>
> New York Islander Goalie Billy Smith , his red face beaming as he drank beer on the rocks last Sunday night while his teammates sipped champagne from the Stanley Cup, spoke for everyone…
---
### Author:  [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/7 "2003-09-07T02:24:37Z")
There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.
Here’s the [right way.](http://www.u-magazine.com/magazine/articles.php?article=Beer+Cubes)
---
### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/8 "2003-09-07T02:29:58Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Not In Anger \*
> \*\*It would be like pissing in the sink. \*\*
There’s no need to insult the Irish. 😃
My brother used to put ice in his beer because someone told him it would help reduce his chronic heartburn. It was some years later that he finally realized that the drinking was probably a large part of the problem.
---
### Author:  [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/9 "2003-09-07T02:31:39Z")
Don’t stone me – I’ve done it out of desperation.
But come on, adding ice to Budweiser does _what_ to the beer? It can’t be any more watery as is. Oh, yeah, the “desperation” was both (1) drinking Bud in the first place and (2) putting ice into it.
---
### Author:  [@Not\_In\_Anger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Not_In_Anger)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/10 "2003-09-07T02:32:15Z")
There have probably been about a million contrary posts between this and my last post but. Beer is the basis of civilization. All cultures evolved from an hunting and gathering society to a state of fixed agriculture on the basis of the knowledge that the latter was unable to consistently support brewing on at the correct speed, and with the correct transmission of knowledge. Sumeria’s chief accomplishment, besides writing and the wheel, was in convincing its male citizens to stay in place and plow that semifertile soil. The area is not exactly habitable. Civilization is simply a by-product of beer-grewing, which I shouldn’t have to explain to anyone who aint from Wisconsin, Chicago, or Manitoba.
---
### Author:  [@Not\_In\_Anger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Not_In_Anger)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/11 "2003-09-07T02:39:35Z")
I forgot to cite my evidence, which was that civilizations evolved in very hot countries with no possible technology for making ice cubes.
---
### Author:  [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/12 "2003-09-07T02:46:03Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Not In Anger \*
> \*\*I forgot to cite my evidence, which was that civilizations evolved in very hot countries with no possible technology for making ice cubes. \*\*
This doesn’t prove anything, sorry. Civilizations evolved with no way to put food in cans or fast food restaurants or electricity either, but most places have all those things now.
Whether we _should_ have canned food, fast food or electricity is another matter.
---
### Author:  [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/13 "2003-09-07T04:20:47Z")
This horrified attitude about ice in beer is way over the top. No one even blinks at ice in soda. What happens, does the ice soak up the alcohol, or chemically react with the hops? Get over it.
---
### Author:  [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/14 "2003-09-07T04:44:48Z")
Putting ice in beer is standard in Vietnam.
On my first visit to that country eight years ago, you _could not_ get cold beer anywhere. Refrigeration wasn’t universal, and although some places had refrigerators, there were enough that didn’t have them for people to get used to putting ice in warm beer, and it becoming standard practice. The ice is chipped off an enormous block of the stuff (in an old-fasioned ice chest, delivered early in the morning by cyclo). Even places that have refrigeration use it to make their own ice to put in the warm beer, and don’t usually think to chill the beer itself. It usually sits on a shelf, but I’ve also seen cans of warm beer _on top of the refrigerator_! I used to arrive at a restaurant, and immediately order an ice bucket, and jam two or three cans of beer into it as soon as I could. Partly, this was because of distaste at the idea of putting ice in my beer, but it was also because the ice over there can be a ticket to Bali Belly.
When I went back to VN in 2000, a few places had “cold beer” on big garish signs outside, in the same self-conscious way motels used to say “COLOR TV!”. This was mainly in more upmarket places in Saigon, and the young crowd would drink it. The old guys would order a cold beer and still put ice in it. Old Vietnamese guys in Australia often put ice in their beer. Anyway, I still found myself in places with no cold beer, and as I’d spent a lot of time in Asia that year, my guts were bullet proof, so I risked the ice.
Given that Vietnamese beer is bland rice-based Budweiser-ish stuff (or worse, locally produced Fosters - blech!), and given that it was usually a zillion degrees Fahrenheit, even at night, it wasn’t so bad.
---
### Author:  [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/15 "2003-09-07T05:05:03Z")
I personally find ice in milk to be more abhorrent. I’d much rather freeze my glass than put an ice cube in my beer. There’s something to be said for the way a beer leaves a bit of itself on your upper lip, ice cubes bumping in to my face would ruin that. Maybe it’s just me.
---
### Author:  [@SkyBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkyBum)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/16 "2003-09-07T06:50:04Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Desmostylus \*
> \*\*There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.
>
> Here’s the [right way.](http://www.u-magazine.com/magazine/articles.php?article=Beer+Cubes) \*\*
That is just plain _brilliant_!
I can remember sitting on the deck of the White Owl on a hot summer afternoon and floating a glass filled with ice cubes in the pitcher of beer. And I’ve downed many a lukewarm beer before I’d water it down with ice (especially here in Utah where the 3.2 beer is practically water anyway).
---
### Author:  [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/17 "2003-09-07T07:25:14Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Desmostylus \*
> \*\*There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things.
>
> Here’s the [right way.](http://www.u-magazine.com/magazine/articles.php?article=Beer+Cubes) \*\*
One question:
What in the HELL is an ice cube bag? How do you fill it? And why is a tray so hard to find for this man? Otherwise a great idea.
---
### Author:  [@Mr.Sheepshead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Sheepshead)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 10:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/18 "2003-09-07T10:36:37Z")
I just wanted to add that my dad will add ice if he’s drinking Old Style. Even when it’s coming cold out of the tap. I guess I assumed he did it to cut down the uh, ‘edge’ of Old Style. He will also only drink Old Style in a shoop so maybe it’s a part of the Old Style ritual much like a lime is to Corona.
When he drinks any other beer, he reverts back to civilized consumption techniques.
---
### Author:  [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/19 "2003-09-07T14:36:07Z")
Ice in any drink can melt and water it down if you take too much time to quaff it. If my beer isn’t cold enough (although I don’t personally mind warm bitter), I wouldn’t hesitate to add some ice to it at home. At the bar, the beer is cold enough. The beer cube idea sounds pretty good, but then again, cubes of lime cordial might be a nice touch too, for those of use who enjoy lime and lagers on occasion.
If I added a lot of ice to my Canadian beer, and it did melt, I’d just tell people it was American. 🙂
(Canadian beer is actually mediocre, so I stick to Guinness and microbreweries.)
---
### Author:  [@Fop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fop)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2003, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025/20 "2003-09-07T15:05:53Z")
There’s always soapstone: [http://www.icecube.se/English/Product.htm](http://www.icecube.se/English/Product.htm)
[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-taboo-ice-cubes-in-beer/200025.md?page=2)