Beeps: Three Years, One Tap Handle. How Three Taverns' Light Lager Got Its Shape

By Brad Lugar, Steel City Tap Co.

Quick answer: The Beeps tap handle for Three Taverns Brewery in Decatur, Georgia took three years and four months from the first sketch to a sample in hand. The design was settled in two rounds. Almost all of the rest was waiting, and that is normal. This is the whole story, with the sketches, the CAD, the model and the first casting, and what it says about how a custom tap handle actually gets made.

What is Beeps, and why does it need its own handle?

Beeps is Three Taverns' light lager, 3.5 percent, year round, in cans and on draft. It launched in the summer of 2023 and it is the beer that does not look like anything else they make. Three Taverns built its name on Belgian styles and big IPAs. Beeps is the easy one. Red script, white body, a bowling pin of a can. The kind of beer you order two of.

A beer like that on a tap wall full of hazies needs a handle that reads from the door. Not a flat lever with a label on it. Something with a shape.

We have worked with Three Taverns since 2018, starting with a run of wood handles for the core lineup, then magnets, then a full set of magnetic plate handles in 2025. So when Brian Purcell, their founder, asked for a Beeps handle, we already knew the brand and the wall it was going on.

Where did the design start?

The first sheet is dated June 8, 2023, one week after Beeps hit shelves. Five directions, one logo. Our design director Alex Shaw drew the same bulb five ways: a ball cap, a flat cap, a flared cap, two caps in silver, and a grip in red, blond wood and dark wood. The point of a five-up is not to pick a winner. It is to find out what the brewery reacts to before anyone invests in a drawing.

Three Taverns reacted to the shape, not the color. The bulb and the ridged grip stayed. Everything else was negotiable.

By July 27, 2023 it was one handle: red grip, gold cap, gold base, Beeps across the white. That proof sat for ten months. In May 2024 Brian came back ready to order and asked for one change. Put the Three Taverns 3 on the red. One number, in white, on the grip. It made the handle theirs instead of the beer's, and it took one revision to land.

Then it sat again.

Why did a two-round design take three years?

Because the design was never the slow part. Here is the honest calendar.

• June 2023Five concepts, a week after the beer launched.
• July 2023Direction locked. Red grip, gold cap.
• May 2024Brian ready to order. The 3 goes on the grip. Waiting on a distributor quantity.
• April 2026Back on. 'I believe we are ready to move forward with this handle.'
• August 2026One phone call. Next morning: 'This will work.'
• September 2026CAD proofs, the body model, production drawings.
• October 2026First casting in hand.

Nothing in that list is a complaint. A brewery runs on distributor commitments, seasonal cash and the twenty other things ahead of a tap handle on any given Tuesday. The handle waited on the beer, and the beer had to earn its place first. Beeps did. By the time Brian wrote back in 2026, it had been a year round beer for three years and was on enough taps to justify a hundred handles.

If you are working back from a launch, count the approval rounds, not the production days. We wrote the same thing about Rollertown's Big German, a very different handle with the same calendar.

What happens between a drawing and a handle?

The drawing you approve is a picture. The thing on the bar is a solid. Getting from one to the other is where most of the craft lives, and almost none of it is visible to the customer.

In September the sketch became a model. Every curve on the grip now has a number behind it. The bulb, the waist, the four ridges, the taper into the base. The script and the 3 are placed on real surfaces instead of floating on a drawing, which is how you find out a letter wraps around a curve differently than it sits on a page.

This is the body with the color stripped off. We look at it this way on purpose. Color hides shape. A grip that looks right in red can have a flat spot or a ridge that is too shallow to feel in the hand, and you only see that in a plain model. The section lines are the same check from the other direction: slice it every few millimeters and make sure the profile is still the profile all the way around.

What does the first sample tell you?

This is the first casting, shot from every side before it goes to Decatur. A sample is not a photo op. It is the last cheap place to be wrong. We check the gloss on the white, the red against the can, the gold on the cap and base, how the 3 sits on the ridges, and whether the whole thing feels like the drawing when you pick it up.

It does. The script reads clean, the 3 sits exactly where Brian asked for it in 2024, and the handle has the weight a bar handle should have. Three Taverns approves the physical sample before the run starts. That is our rule on every custom handle, and it is the reason the run comes out looking like the sample instead of like a surprise.

What this project taught us

Keep the file warm. Three years is a long time to keep a design on the shelf. The reason this one picked back up in a week instead of a month is that every proof, sketch and note was in one folder with a date on it. When Brian wrote back in April, we sent him the exact handle he remembered the same day.

Do not redesign while you wait. The temptation on a stalled project is to keep improving it. We did not touch the Beeps handle between 2024 and 2026, and that is why the 2026 proof matched what the brewery had already approved. A handle that drifts while nobody is looking has to be re-sold.

One decision maker, one change at a time. Every revision on this handle came from Brian, and every one was a single sentence. Add the 3. That is the fastest kind of project there is, however long the calendar says it took.

Every order runs through our shop in Birmingham, Alabama, from the first sketch through the sample you hold before anything goes into production. If you have a beer that has earned a shape of its own, send us the can. A logo, a photo of the can, or a napkin drawing is enough to start.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a custom tap handle take?

The design takes two to three rounds, usually a few weeks. The calendar is set by approvals and by when the beer is ready for it. Beeps took three years from first sketch to sample because the brewery was waiting on distribution, and the handle waited with it.

Do you make a sample before the full run?

Yes, on every custom handle. One physical casting goes to the brewery for approval before production starts. Nothing is cast in quantity until the brewery has held the handle.

Can a brewery change the design after the first proof?

Yes. On Beeps the only change after the direction was set was adding the Three Taverns 3 to the grip, requested ten months after the first proof. Small, specific changes are fast. The slow ones are the open ended 'make it better' rounds.

What does the brewery need to send to start?

The logo, a photo of the can or label, and a sentence about where the handle is going. Formal art files come later, after the direction is picked.

Where is the handle made?

Every order runs through our shop in Birmingham, Alabama. Design, sculpting and color approval happen here, and we build in our own shop and with trusted production partners.