I went out to Homebrew Headquarters to pick up some new tubing to replace the draft lines on my kegorator and came home with a pretty cool impulse buy: a new tap handle and faceplate from Switch Taps.

It’s an interesting update to the tap handle concept. Switch Taps’s handle replaces your old tap handle with one that has a slot that you insert different faceplates in to. Those faceplates tell everyone what kind of beer you’ve got on tap. They’ve got a number of different styles, and while my local homebrew shop didn’t have a large selection, they’ve got more on their website. I’m hoping they’re going to add to the list, but in the mean time, I picked up a lager faceplate since it was the closest to the doppelbock I’m going to be serving from that handle. Yes, I know it’s not really that close, and while they do have a bock handle on the website, I didn’t have that options at the LHBS.

The handles have the standard 3/8-16 thread that all U.S. tap handles use, so you shouldn’t have any compatibility issues. The faceplates are short, so if you’ve got clearance issues, like I do, you won’t have to worry about things like the freezer door hitting your tap handle and spilling your beer on the floor. The faceplates slide in to a slot on the front of the handle and are held in place by magnets. That makes it easy to swap them out when you change what you’ve got on tap.

Starting with your plain, boring tap handle.

Take it off.

Screw on the Switch Taps handle and adjust it so that the slot is facing forward.

And finally, slide the new faceplate in to the handle.

These things rock, and I’ll be upgrading my other tap handle soon.