Tap Handle #401: Peckerhead - Koltzh Ale
Rarity: Scarce
Mounting: standard 3/8" ferrule on 5/16" hanger bolt
What a great name for a brewery! It's refreshing to see a brewery name that challenges conventional sensibilities and actually offends people who decide what is proper and what isn't for everybody else. Unfortunately, a name does not a brewery make, and all too often these breweries that dare to be different crash and burn. Peckerhead certainly fits that mold. The tap features a colorful and animated woodpecker character perched on a tree limb, next to a barrel of beer that he has pecked a hole in. Although the top banner implies that Peckerhead is two words, every reference I can find shows it as one word. On the back of that top banner is what appears to be the artist's initials - it looks like a "C" but is difficult to tell - and I can definitely make out a copyright symbol and a '01 (but it is so faint that it can't be seen in the photos). It's a fun tap that is also extremely rare and expensive. This particular tap is the only one I've seen with a beer name on it - the Koltzh Ale sign is actually screwed into the banner with tiny screws.
Click through to read more about Peckerhead Brewing, their Koltzh Ale, and to see more photos of this fantastic tap...
There's not much information available regarding the Peckerhead brewery and pub. It was founded in 1998 in Douglasville, Georgia. They had three core beers: a Kolsch, an amber ale and a brown ale, and had a few other special or seasonal offerings. The brewpub had live music shows that occasionally featured an established talent, such as Derek St Holmes (best known for his vocals on the song "Stranglehold" by Ted Nugent). It's not clear exactly why the brewery closed, but they ceased operations in 2003.
Sometime between 2003 and 2006, the Metropolitan Hotel in Hilton Head, South Carolina bought the rights to Peckerhead and named their restaurant & bar after it. They even created a website (I've attached a link to the website below) and used the former brewery's artwork, although they never brewed any beer using the Peckerhead name. The Metropolitan Hotel suffered from quality issues, and had so many bad reviews (seriously, see it all here if you love a good horror novel), it's no surprise that Peckerhead was eventually closed, reopening later as Hinchey's. It is here that Peckerhead's story comes to an end.
Peckerhead Koltzh Ale was based on a traditional German Kolsch Ale that is renowned for its light, clean, crisp refreshing flavor. It was brewed with the best barley, malt and malted wheat available and finished with the finest noble hops. It had a slightly floral, malty, slightly fruity, light hop aroma with a cloudy appearance, nice head retention, and a very pale gold color.
Ratebeer weighted average: 2.8 out of 5
Beer Advocate: no entry
There is no website for the Peckerhead Brewery; however, there is an old website for the Peckerhead restaurant & bar in the Metropolitan Hotel (the restaurant & bar no longer exist, as detailed above, but the website remains), which you can find here.
Source Material
Various sources such as Ratebeer and patent websites
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