After the Arkansas Razorbacks opened the football season defeating the Cincinnati Bearcats in a hard-fought battle in Fayetteville, Coach Sam Pittman was interviewed on the field, where the reporter asked him about his drink of choice for the celebration. Pittman smiled affably and said, “Well, you know, I’m not promoting it, but I like some old cold beer. I think I’m gonna have one. I’m not promoting it now.”

Not that Razorback fans needed another reason to like Pittman, who has calmly and coolly brought the program back to a top 10 ranking after years in the wilderness, but just saying that he liked old cold beer inspired many tweets and adoration from fans who also enjoy beer that has achieved its proper chill level. It’s relatable. It makes our coach seem like one of us, someone who might sit down at the tailgate and accept whatever beer you happen to toss him from the cooler. (As long as it’s cold.)

The importance of cold beer was already on my mind because I’d recently noticed that my old long-time employer Pizza Cafe was a finalist in the Arkansas Times annual Toast of the Town readers’ survey in the coldest beer category. It’s a category Pizza Cafe is known for because it has been serving up some of the coldest draft beer in town in frozen mugs since it opened on Rebsamen Park Road in 1991. Co-owner Richard Harrison said he bought the original freezer for $75, used.

“It put a badass freeze on the mugs,” he said. “Your beer might have small icy crystals floating on top. The old regular Michelob was the most popular draft, and we were noted for ‘coldest beer in town’ hoopla.”

In addition to the ice crystals, sometimes a ring in the shape of the rim of the mug would break off like a floating garnish on the top foam layer.

I worked there on and off from 1999 until 2020, and there were many staff changes, a few menu additions and subtractions, regulars who came and went, but the mugs were always frozen. Although sometimes we would get so busy on weekend nights that we couldn’t keep up with the demand and would desperately dump ice in the sanitizing dishwashing station to give the mugs a chill before we put them in the freezer. We knew how important the cold mugs were to people because regulars would gripe at us and give off surly vibes if the chillness didn’t meet their expectations.

So you can imagine what it was like to pop in there last year and notice a new freezer — without years’ worth of memorabilia taped to it — serving as a dark storage closet full of tepid glass mugs.

“Wait, no cold mugs?” I asked.

I was told that I didn’t know the half of it, and that it was one of many replacement freezers owner Frankie Fuhrman had purchased recently that had suddenly quit working after a few days. It was a mystery of modern science that electricians and contractors couldn’t solve. My jovial reunion with the crew suddenly fell silent. We’d worked through the worst part of the pandemic together, and now the beer wasn’t even cold. Pour one out for cold mugs?

I wasn’t the only former employee deflated by the news. Former interim manager Murdock Jones had his first legal beer at Pizza Cafe after turning 21 in 2001. He was visiting town for the first time since the pandemic and stopped in for a beer that was served in a warm mug. He said he felt betrayed.

“That Bud Light just didn’t hit the same,” he said.

Jennifer Finley worked at Pizza Cafe from 2004-2015. Her husband Jared Admire is a current manager at Pizza Cafe. She said when Admire told her about the mug situation she couldn’t believe it because the frozen mug was part of what distinguished Pizza Cafe from other restaurants over the years.

“The frosty cold mug was a part of the experience,” she said. “I knew in that moment that if the frozen mug didn’t come back it could be the end for Pizza Cafe.”

If that sounds dramatic from a former employee standpoint, current customers expressed similar concern.

“We definitely had some disappointed customers,” general manager Tony Mesa said.

Chuck Hamilton is one of those customers. He’s been a Pizza Cafe regular since 1992.

“They almost lost me over the mugs,” Hamilton said, though he did appreciate efforts made by the staff to try and keep the regulars happy.

“They would take a few mugs and tuck them back in the walk-in cooler, but it just wasn’t the same as pulling them right out of the freezer,” he said.

Admire said there were desperate, futile attempts like filling a mug with ice and sticking it in the refrigerator.

“They were trying anything to get ’em cold,” Hamilton said. He remembers people migrating to Pizza Cafe for cold beer after Diego’s Hogs Breath Cantina closed in Riverdale. When Pizza Cafe added a deck, he said it became one of the best places in town for a cold beer in cool, fall weather.

“Pizza Cafe’s a staple. Everyone loves it,” Hamilton said, “but without the cold mugs it just kind of takes something away.”

Owner Frankie Fuhrman said she went through five freezers and consulted with contractors, heat and air specialists, handy people and an electrician who came out twice and determined the outlet wasn’t on its own circuit.

Fuhrman said she was hearing excuses like, “They just don’t make freezers like they used to,” but she knew that there was a solution to the problem and decided to purchase a five-year warranty with the fifth freezer, which she found at a mom-and-pop shop in Benton.

Like the others, it quit working after a day or two and she sent it back. They sent her a replacement. When it stopped running after a few days, she called again and was informed that the first one was running just fine. “They were like, ‘It’s not us, it’s you,’ ” Fuhrman said.

I stopped in Pizza Cafe last week for a salad. Harrison was having a coffee at the bar while Mesa was working. I asked them how they finally resolved the issue. Harrison said it was a venting issue and the freezer needed more room to breathe because it’s crammed into a tight space. But Mesa shot that idea down and said that after the fifth freezer quit working he decided to plug it into a different outlet.

“Twenty minutes later it was cold,” he said.

“When Tony told me that, my jaw nearly hit the concrete,” Harrison later told me.

Harrison mentioned that sometimes the answer to an electrical ordeal lies in the question: “Is it plugged in?” But this wasn’t one of those embarrassing situations. It was plugged in. Each freezer briefly worked. And they consulted with experts.

Fuhrman said most of the money spent on freezers was refunded, but she did pay for one that didn’t work. All told, the project took a lot of time and energy.

“It was driving me crazy,” she said. “I think I shed a tear or two.”

I asked her if there was any point in time when she considered giving up.

“No,” she said, laughing. “It was frustrating, but I never gave up. It just didn’t feel right to not have frozen mugs.”

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