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Ice Queen of Graceland
Our Rating: 3.25 / 5
Mad Scientist’s Ice Queen of Graceland drinks like a cherry-coconut smoothie with vanilla gloss and a stubbornly low sparkle. We love the bold dessert intent and coconut-heavy finish, but we keep tripping over gritty sediment, fast settling, and a metallic cherry edge that turns “fun” into work by mid-glass.
Beer Name: Ice Queen of Graceland
Brewery: Mad Scientist
Beer Style: Ice Cream Sour (Smoothie / Pastry Sour)
Alcohol: 6.0%
Taste Notes: Sour cherry, coconut, vanilla, honey, pulpy/grainy, metallic, drying berry
Serving: Can
Serving Size: 440 ml (14.9 fl. oz.)
Where’s Graceland?
Ice Queen of Graceland is a 6% ice cream sour from Mad Scientist, packaged in a 440 ml can and built around sour cherry and coconut, with honey and vanilla in the mix. The can pushes a tight service window at 6–8 °C, asks for a spin before pouring, highlights freshness over ageing, and flags sulfites. Oats plus maltodextrin sit in the ingredient list, true to the Mad Scientist approach.
We served it at 6 °C in a wheat glass with a hard pour. In the glass, we see murky, opaque dark cherry red with a slightly bluish hue. Head stays absent, and the carbonation sits close to flat, leaving the surface quiet and the texture smoothie-thick from the first mouthful. Sediment floats through the liquid, then drops fast, and every swirl paints grainy streaks onto the glass walls.
Aroma demands proximity. We get synthetic-leaning cherry, shredded store-bought coconut, and a faint cereal tone that reads as oat and pale malt. Most of the detail lives right at the rim. As the beer warms, coconut grows louder and sweeter, and the cherry stays candy-coded.
On the first sip, we split. We get sour cherry with heavy sweetening, then coconut as a slightly oily coating. Honey sits as a small floral wobble in the background. Texture dominates: thick, grainy, pulpy, persistent. A metallic line runs through experience and finish; some of us accept it as structure, the rest see it as a distraction.
A Thick Queen
As the glass progresses, the handling note stays active. Sediment settles in seconds, so the distribution changes sip by sip, and the grainy mouthfeel stays constant even when the swirl looks thorough. Oat material and fruit pulp cling to the glass in sheets, and the pour never builds foam. It’s not particularly enjoyable to the touch. Carbonation remains very low; the palate stays thick and heavy, with only a faint prickly lift at the edges.
Flavour development shifts emphasis more than shape. Early sips lean hard on sweetened sour cherry with a synthetic edge, mid-glass brings more coconut through the aftertaste, and vanilla rounds the exit into ice-cream-flavoured sweetness.
With warmth, cherry eases slightly, and a drying, tongue-gripping effect comes forward, close to berry-skin tannin in feel. Chokeberry is listed, and that could explain the later drying scrape and the way the sweetness turns more syrupy and lingering.
From a process angle, the texture levers behave as declared. Maltodextrin is largely non-fermentable and adds body without fermenting out; paired with oats, it builds chew and viscosity. Potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate are classic beverage stabilisers, and the sweetness stays fixed from start to finish, matching the can’s fresh-drink focus. With this amount of viscosity and adjunct list, it’s no surprise that Mad Scientist had to pull a few modern levers to keep it behaving well.
BJCP 2021’s most useful anchor is 29C Specialty Fruit Beer. The style expects fruit to lead while keeping a recognisable beer base. In our glass the fruit-and-adjunct layer dominates, the base beer reads as a quiet cereal undercurrent, and hop expression stays minimal. Calling this a beer base at all is definitely an argument to be had, depending on how conservative and classic you might be.
On Untappd, Ice Queen of Graceland sits at 3.51. That lines up with how the beer lands as a flavour-forward, texture-led can: thick smoothie body, loud sweetened cherry, coconut-heavy finish, and a metallic edge that some palates file under “structure” and others experience as friction. It’s an overall fun experience. With emphasis on fun… It’s not quite an enjoyable one, though.
We end up where we end up because this beer pulls hard on a few big levers and asks you to enjoy the consequences. Oats and maltodextrin push a dense, pulpy chew that delivers the “ice cream” idea through weight and coating; low Carbonation keeps that mass in place, so every sip sits broad and slow on the tongue. Sour cherry gives the front-end pop, coconut and vanilla stretch the finish into dessert territory, and the late drying grip keeps the sweetness articulated, even when it lingers. Our scoring spreads along the same fault lines we keep circling in the glass: the people who enjoy maximal texture and coconut-forward sweetness go with the flow, and the people who lock onto the metallic cherry note, the grit, and the fast-settling sediment keep feeling the beer’s mechanics more than its flavour design.
- Viktor: 2.75 / 5
- Laurits: 3.00 / 5
- Casper: 3.50 / 5
- Jesper: 3.75 / 5
Our Average Score: 3.25 / 5
