Bud Ice is, of course, the "ice beer" offering from Anheuser-Busch. A-B claims that it’s the first (American) draft beer to be "ice brewed", which I’m not really in a position to verify thoroughly; they claim it was introduced in 1984 which seems early enough to be plausible.

This beer is 5.5% alcohol, which seems to buck the 5.9% trend of the other ice beers I’ve got my hands on this time around. And I will say that it has perhaps the most interesting bottle I’ve seen (though one of the worst, most boring labels): the shoulder of the bottle is all beveled angles and edges, like it’s been chipped or carved from ice. Clever.

Oh, and there’s apparently even a "Bud Ice Light" too, which I didn’t see in the store but is listed online. That seems magnificently pointless.

Appearance: Gold, almost orange in color. Crystal clear with some bubbles rising constantly.

Smell: Very neutral, low profile; there might be a slight fruity off-aroma but I can’t be sure.

Taste: Fairly bland but for a bit of corn or vegetable—squash, perhaps. Aside from the DMS-iness, not much to report.

Mouthfeel: Smooth, clean, a bit (over)carbonated, and featurelessly light.

Overall: Eh. Very bland even for the style.

On BeerAdvocate, it scores an overall grade of D. On RateBeer, it scores 1.27 out of 5 and is in their 0 percentile.