Al die taphendels zien er uit als een chaotisch oerwoud...
Do tap handles sell more beer?
While I was chatting with a friendly couple at The Crest Gastropub a while back, the wife said her husband will often choose a beer based on the tap handle. He is a designer (and avid comic book fan) so he clearly has an eye for aesthetics. He remembered liking an Ommegang beer. Well, not so much the beer as the ornately checkered handle.
How often do people choose a beer based solely on the tap handle? Does the handle alone sell beer? Obviously there’s a branding aspect for a brewery, but what effect does it have in enticing drinkers?
“People do order based on tap handles, more than you’d expect,” said Collin Castore, co-owner of Seventh Son Brewing Co and Bodega. “With all the handles at Bodega … I always encourage people to order from the list, but there are still the people who go, ‘What’s that one?’”
I didn’t expect this to be the case. Most craft beer aficionados will find the beer list before the emergency exits. Did you see the hottie sitting at the corner of the bar? Nope, but it looks like the Kitka milk stout from Brew Kettle is on tap.
After my conversation with the aforementioned couple I noticed more and more people asking about handles. Then I even did it. Apparently it’s influential consumer; therefore ’s imperative to breweries. Which is why Seventh Son employs an atypical handle — a small, wooden version with the logo etched in it.
“If you’re looking at a big row of all these gaudy, ostentatious tap handles people will go, ‘What’s that little one there?’ That’ll force the bartender to say, ‘That’s a new brewery in town called Seventh Son,’” Castore said.
The quality of the beer is obviously still the most important component, but tap handles are essential in getting customers to notice said quality. It’s like the tree falling in the words proverb. If someone produces the greatest beer in the world and no one is drinking it, what’s the point? (www.columbusalive.com/content/stories/2013/07/11/distilled-do-tap-handles-sell-more-beer.html)
When you're younger, hangovers are a sort of afterthought to drinking. They only come into an 21-year-old's vocabulary after you drank like a collegiate rookie, getting so obliterated that you end up hugging the toilet for the better part of an evening.
But as one gets older, hangovers start to come into play much more than they did in your early years. Once you hit your thirties, something terrifying happens as your brain and your body start to part ways.
In your mind, you're still a 21-year-old who can do all the things he used to do as a 21-year-old. Namely, staying out until three in the morning on a Tuesday, drinking and saying things which you think are funny, but on sober reflection probably aren't as funny as you thought at the time. You stagger home, get three hours of pseudo-sleep, get up, go to work and do it all over again the next night.
But the problem is that your body has other plans for you. After the (already depressing) 30th birthday, three glasses of wine can send you on a two-day hangover, unable to cope with blinding 40-watt light bulbs and noises louder than a cough.
So, to make a long story short, as a 30+-year-old man who enjoys an ale from time to time (a lot of the time), I am keenly aware of my hangovers. My age has forced me to plan my drinking evening the way someone with OCD organizes their kitchen cabinets. ... Basically, I act like an old woman so I can still act like a young man.
And there's one thing I've learned from all this: Tap beers give me a much worse hangover than bottled beers. Every. Single. Time (www.mandatory.com/2012/09/28/why-you-should-never-drink-tap-beer-again/).
