Winner: Flying Saucer

With more 80 varieties of beer on tap and 120 available in bottles, the Flying Saucer, a Texas-based chain with two locations in the Memphis area, more than lives up to the promise of a Boundless Beer Selection. The Saucer offers everything from your standard American pilsners to obscure Belgian ales brewed by monks.

Members of the Saucer’s UFO Club — 11,000 members at the 10-year-old downtown location and 3,000 at the year-old Cordova branch — get incentives to try them all, but downtown manager Kevin McDonald gets to do it for a living. “You have to know what they all taste like in order to recommend the right thing,” he shrugs.

McDonald is more perplexed by his establishment’s ascendancy in the Most Frosty Mug category. Though the bar cools its kegs, chilled mugs are strictly forbidden because they can freeze the taste out of brew. “There’s even a sign over the taps that says ‘Frosty Mugs Are For Amateurs,’” he says.

1400 Germantown Parkway in Cordova, 755-5530; 130 Peabody Place in downtown Memphis, 523-PINT. Open 11 a.m.-1 a.m. Monday-Wednesday, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Thursday-Saturday; noon to midnight Sundays; beerknurd.com.

Finalists: Bosco’s, Chili’s