Also for those talking shit about natty, alcohol is alcohol.
That is true of 100% distilled product. It is not true of naturally brewed products.
In the case of ice beers, they undergo a process (freeze distillation) which in my opinion would increase the concentration of compounds that you don't want in beer (congeners, fusels, yeast byproducts, etc.) and may be the cause of the hangovers you are experiencing.
This is also true of some other brewing processes out there, such as high gravity brewing. You may have heard about the "watering down" lawsuit recently against AB, which is funny because high-gravity brewing, the process of brewing a strong beer and then watering it down, has been standard industry practice for a while. The big problem I see with this method is that yeast are under more stress, and will produce a worse ratio of undesirable byproducts.
My guess is also that with the cheaper products from these companies, they will do anything they can to reduce lagering time. The greater the lagering time, the more many of these undesirable byproducts get reprocessed by active yeast into ethanol.
You don't need the ultra-fanciest craft beer to test out the theory. Budweiser would be a decent test, it's brewed better than the ice beer stuff. Some of these big beer companies are trying to cut into the craft market, sometimes successfully (Coors Batch 19 seems to get good reviews for instance), that would be an even better test. (As would, yes, some of the craft beers, however "sissy" they are.)
A decent vodka (don't need a super-premium name, just a solid one) would also be a good test, and would be more in the "alcohol" vein if that's what you want. Vodka is pretty close to alcohol and water. Beer never will be.
