Re: Ice cold beer
I'll assume you're talking about standard lagers here. Other beers amongst us beer geeks are meant to NOT be consumed at ICE COLD temps. I won't get sidetracked with a better-beer conversation here.
Temperature dramatically effects how we taste food. For example, cold mutes how we taste sweetness. I can't speak for the science of it, but it's plainly noticeable to me.
Try an ICE COLD beer and a luke-warm beer side-by-side. The warmer beer will taste sweeter because the malty sweetness will be more discernable to your palate at that temperature.
Similarly, take a pure ice cream without scary additives (say, Breyers or some such) and leave some in a bowl to completely melt. You might be surprised how sweet it is -- some items are almost sickeningly sweet when not icy cold (i.e. McDonald's Shakes).
There may be other factors at play in when you taste beer warm vs. cold as well. For example, your tastes of warm beer were probably also flat and missed out on the effect the carbonated mouthfeel has on your judgement of flavor.
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