It`s Friday night and you`re sitting at a packed bar scanning the beer lineup. You want something different — something you wouldn`t normally drink at home — and have a scant few seconds to decide when the bartender approaches.
“What`ll it be?” she asks.
A tall tap handle with a miniature elephant on top catches your eye.
“What`s the one with the elephant? Can I try that one?”
Competition for consumer attention is at an all-time high in today`s crowded craft-beer market, and nowhere illustrates the point better than the draft selection at your local beer bar.
Where in years past there may have been just a handful of taps, many bars have expanded their offerings to include a dozen, two dozen, even 50 or more taps, as is the case with Boulder`s Backcountry Pizza and Tap House. With that many beers squeezed into limited real estate, it`s important to stand out from the crowd, and tap handles are like mini billboards that your eye whizzes by at 60 miles per hour. They have to make a quick impression.
“When you have 25 beers on tap, the more distinctive tap handles really stand out,” says Mark Stuhlbarg, a bartender at Old Chicago on Pearl Street in Boulder.
“People always ask about the Hazed and Infused handle,” he says, which has a pearlescent body with strips of color wrapped around it like flameworked glass.
Stuhlbarg has seen a lot of change in the 12 years he`s been at Old Chicago. He serves way more draft beer than bottles these days, he says, and people have moved away from ordering imported beers in favor of local craft beers. And the tap handles themselves have grown bigger and more sculptural.
“I can`t say that bigger is better, but that`s the direction it`s headed,” he says.
The handle for Odell`s 90 Shillings Ale is the tallest in Old Chicago`s lineup, and a passing server tells me that many people ask about that beer just because it stands above the rest.
“People will pick something out that`s different,” says Nick Tarsi, who was recently tending bar upstairs at the West End Tavern in Boulder. “A tap handle is enough to get people`s attention and maybe ask for taster, but then it`s up to the beer.”
But being different isn`t always enough. A successful tap handle should also communicate something about the brewery`s brand and about the beer itself.
For example, the unique gnarled-wood tap handle for Twisted Pine`s Razzy Xpress, a raspberry and espresso truffle stout, depicts a train going into a heart-shaped tunnel with a bouquet of raspberries spilling out and hot-pink lettering.
New Belgium`s tap handles, in contrast, are made from recycled bike rims and reflect the company`s commitment to cycling culture and sustainability. Tap handles for Left Hand Brewing Company are a molded hand holding the Left Hand logo, and Oskar Blues uses reproductions of its iconic cans. And there`s no mistaking an Avery tap handle — you can see the distinctive red “A” from clear across the bar.
Paul Fichter is president and founder of Taphandles in Seattle, a marketing and branding company that designs and builds many of the sculptural tap handles you see in bars today, including those for Avery, Left Hand, Twisted Pine, Odell, Breckenridge Brewery, and Ft. Collins Brewery.
“Some of our big brewery customers have done studies where they`ve found that the tap handle is the second most powerful influence on beer choice after server recommendations,” he says. “Great tap handles pour more beer.”
Taphandle`s design team spends a lot of time talking with brewery owners about what they`re about and why they`re in beer, Fichter says, and strives to reflect that story in the tap handles and other marketing materials they design to quickly convey essential information about the company.
“It`s like a dating game,” says Fichter. “We try to authentically convey the brewery`s message to the person who`s going to most appreciate their story.”
Call it the pull of attraction. However, as the West End`s Tarsi says, it`s ultimately about the beer, and while tap handles are an important sales tool to draw attention to the product, people like what they like, whether that`s a super-hopped Imperial IPA or an ice-cold bottle of Coors Light.
“At the end of the day you have to give the customer what they want,” he says.
Contact Tom Wilmes at boulderbeerguy@gmail.com.
