Ann Arbor and warm beer

For this week's issue of Metro Times, the editorial staff took a thermometer to 104 Detroit-area bars to find the coldest beer around. In first place was Lime Light Grill & Bar in Warren, which sells an aluminum bottle of Budweiser cooled to 25.1 degrees for $3.50. (The bar uses Anheuser-Busch's "Chill Chamber," a sophisticated machine that makes shitty beer in aluminum bottles unnaturally cold and expensive.)

Five Ann Arbor bars made the list, and the results don't look good:

• #9 - Conor O'Neill's (Coors Light, bottle, $2.50, 31.7 degrees)


• #89 - Rick's (Bud Light, bottle, $1.50, 43.7 degrees)


• #91 - The Brown Jug (Miller Lite draft, chilled glass, $2.95, 43.9 degrees)


• #94 - The Arena (Pabst Blue Ribbon, glass, $2.00, 45.7 degrees)


• #103 - Ashley's (Stella Artois draft, glass, $5.00, 50.3 degrees.

In the interest of fairness, I called Rick's, the Jug and Ashley's for a response. (I didn't call the Arena because, well, who gives a shit about the Arena?) Bartenders at Rick's and the Jug didn't sound too concerned -- nor should they be. I love Rick's and the Jug for the atmosphere (delightfully trashy and comfortably Michigan, respectively), the $2 pitchers and the $4.25 40s. I won't begrudge them their warm beer.

Ashley's, whose Stella Artois was the second-warmest brew on the list, is the big disappointment here. I couldn't get a bartender on the phone -- after two rings, I got what I believe was a recording of Paul Giamatti asking for bartender applicants -- but I'm assuming they keep their beer above 50 degrees because that's how their specialty Trappists, porters and stouts are meant to be served. Ice-cold beer would clash with the bar's sniffy, grad-student image.

The problem: Stella Artois, like Budweiser, Miller and their ilk, is a pale lager -- a weak-flavored category that, as any beer nerd will tell you, demands to be served near-freezing.

So Ashley's is serving bathwater-warm beer, presumably because they and/or their customers think it's more highbrow that way. Such is Ann Arbor.