Question of the Day — 10 May 2011

Aha! Now you're talking, and this is a timely one, as the mercury starts to rise ...

With more than three decades of Las Vegas semi-professional beer-drinking under his belt, Anthony Curtis is an excellent person, if not the best, to pose this question to. His verdict falls into three categories, as befits the various beer-serving options:

• The award for coldest draft beer goes to the Four Kegs (also home to one of the city's great Strombolis), which serves its super-chilled beer in unusual stemmed glasses that are frosted within an inch of their lives -- it's common for the beer here to contain shards of ice in it, it's that cold.
• As to the coldest bottled beer, this accolade goes to Sonny's Saloon, a dive bar at 3449 Industrial. However, it's not all the bottles here that qualify as Vegas' coldest: they're all cold, but for some inexplicable reason it's only the Heineken (which happens to be one of Anthony's favorite beers), that gets the "coldest" award. On a very recent visit, the current writer was served a refreshingly chilled Corona, while Anthony was basically handed a Heineken slushy.
• Last but not least, when it comes to the coldest pitcher in Las Vegas, we give kudos to Larry's Villa, the diminutive local gentleman's club at Rancho and Bonanza. Here's a little of what Arnold Snyder had to say about it in Topless Vegas:

  "Larry's Villa is the oldest topless club in Las Vegas, operating in the same location since 1972. The founder, Larry LaPenta, died a few years ago at the age of 84. He was a real character and in the last couple years before his death, he started a storefront non-denominational church--Thomas Paines' Church of God and Common Sense. He may have been the only person in America who simultaneously owned and operated both a church and a strip club. Only in Las Vegas ..."

As an aside, Ozzie's, a neighborhood bar at Spring Mountain and Decatur claims, in a big painted sign on the back of the building, to serve "the coldest beer in America," but we've tried it and know it isn't. They do, however, serve darned cold (and equally cheap) white wine, served in frosted glasses that give the Four Kegs a run for its money.

As the questioner requested, this is only the Advisor's humble opinion as to where to find the coldest brews; if enough people respond with other suggestions, we might throw this open as a future Reader Poll.