The History of the Beer Tap Handle

(via Lowlander Beer)

What is the first thing you do when you sit down at a bar? Probably scanning what’s on tap and look for something new before settling to something tried before. Although you should never judge a book by its cover the attractiveness of the tap handle is quite a big factor in decision making. From simple logo signs to gnomes and a ginormous goose; breweries realize the potential for tap handles and keep on crafting bigger, more attractive ones.

These colorful markers weren’t always marketing gimmicks though

THE HISTORY OF THE BEER TAP HANDLE

Back in the 1930s’ it was fairly common to advertise a certain beer, but pour customers a lower quality one. You can imagine the government passed a law requiring bars to identify the beers on tap once they found out. Slowly this evolved into more and more breweries creating tap handles with their logos or mascots. It was not till the craft beer movement of the early ‘90s though that brewers really had to stand out with unique, inspirational tap handles.

At the start of Lowlander Beer, when we were researching recipes and looking at ship logs to retrace what might have come back to the trading ports of The Netherlands we discovered all kinds of intriguing stories about the Lowlanders. Whether it was the unbelievable story about monkey trading, the historical facts about the poorters or adventurous and questionable discoveries of the Lowlanders, These stories made us laugh and open our eyes to something we didn’t know before, so it felt right to include some of these stories onto our bottles.

And now to take those stories to the tap as well: our 3D tap handles bring the characters on our labels to life. Have you already spotted the monkey, ice bear, beaver or poorter?