Product Review
Panther Ice Ale
I’ll be turning twenty-nine here in a couple of weeks. I’m not spooked over being a year away from thirty, but I do have the feeling that I should know better at this point in my life than to consume any type of Ice Ale, especially one called Panther.
Ice beer is beer that has been brewed normally then frozen for a while. Much of the water in the beer freezes, but the alcohol does not. Usually the ice is filtered out, and a much stronger beer remains. I generally associate Ice beer with the reckless, ill-conceived keg parties my roommates and I threw in my early twenties. We were poor, as were most of our friends, so it seemed logical back then to buy the cheapest, most potent keg of beer available—namely, Icehouse. As I remember it, anytime we hosted an Icehouse shindig, there were scads of partygoers in the throes of near-bile retching by night’s end.
Maybe it’s because I’m not yet thirty that I still have an attraction to cheap beers, especially varieties I’ve never seen before. And thusly, when I saw this rather regal, black and blue six-pack in the cooler at one of my local party stores, I could do nothing but grab it. Cupping it in my hands, I noticed that beyond being only $2.99, this shit was 7.5%! Lordy, was I in for it.
This frost-laced feline is actually from the same brood as Panther Malt Liquor. Both are products of the Gluek Brewing Company of Minnesota—the same brewery responsible for “Pappy Kershenstine’s Rattlesnake Beer,” ostensibly another inexpensive sud I’ll need to sample before the big three-oh (my!).
The forty-ounce Panther calls itself, “The Coolest Cat in the City.” The black cat on the paper label is shadowy and sleek, lurking in the foreground of a sizzling nighttime cityscape. The twelve-ounce Ice Panther is a bit more austere. On the can, we’re given only the bust of a modest and considerate beast. He is also golden, perhaps a rarer strain of panther—or perhaps cougar. He’s clearly in repose, and I made sure to hold his pensive attitude in my mind as I took my first sip of his wares. The other thought that rallied about in my mind was, should a man so near his thirties be drinking Ice Ale while walking home from the liquor store? It’s literally a ten-minute walk. Why couldn’t I have waited until I got home to tangle with the cool cat? It was repugnant. I could literally smell the booze on my own breath after half a can.
Walking with my beer, I looked ahead of me and saw a group of kids playing softball in a schoolyard. Slithering down the street drinking Ice Ale in front of children at play would have been a new low. I carefully placed the can back in my black plastic bag and walked the rest of the way with my head down.
I had some spackling to do at home. I like to think that beer helps me complete household chores with a vigor and efficiency I wouldn’t have if stone sober. I don’t have any specific evidence to support this theory, and in the wake of my Panther waltz, I’m tempted to rethink the whole fucking thing. I spackled. Some. Then I became obsessed with a creating a sound loop from a little skate video I found online. It was footage of Dan Drehobl doing some sort of nose slide to 50-50 on a hulking bit of transition. I kept replaying it, trying to figure out exactly what he was up to, and as I did so I noticed that sound of his wheels squeaking against the concrete was like a record scratch. I spent the next three cans of Panther (approximately one hour) getting a good .wav file (click to download .wav file!) and trying to create a useable loop. It was hard fucking work.
It felt like I was noodling away in a hot cloud of Panther breath. As if that swarthy pussy were breathing right down my neck. After a fruitless stretch at the computer, I leapt to my feet, quelled a head rush with some deep breaths, grabbed a fifth can out of the refrigerator, picked up my skateboard and ran out the door.
I felt like a caged beast suddenly unleashed in the fresh air. I felt electric. I landed two ollies in a row. Panther indeed, no Chester Cheetah jive here. I kept my head down and pushed around my neighborhood looking for (little) things to hop over. Eventually I rolled up to a ledge I like to session. It’s only about two feet high, but there’s a chain-link fence on top of it. The fence makes it kind of gnarly, because when I slam into it, it makes harsh noise, and when I grab it gets my fingers dirty. Plus the ledge only sticks out like eight inches so it’s total precision. The fence also provides some extra stability, which is admittedly un-gnarly.
I took the last gulp of Panther Ice and set the can down a few feet away, so that his ferocious tranquility could infect the ledge with its glower. With the antidote in my gullet and veins, I wasn’t thinking in terms of gnarl. I was on an undomesticated big-cat mission to skate and destroy.
I fucking killed the ledge.
Normally I just do frontside 50-50 stalls on it—it’s not slick at all. As a panther, I finally figured out the trick to backside stalls. Keep your eye on your back foot. See it? Or wait that’s not a foot at all. It’s, it’s … is it a paw?
