Tap Handle #426: Lickinghole Creek

September 10, 2014

Tap Handle #426: Lickinghole Creek

Tap size: 12"
Rarity: Very Rare
Mounting: internal 3/8" nut

The Lickinghole Creek tap is a real beauty, with the logo prominently featured on a "shield" that resembles a pump clip. The brewery’s logo, a heart and cross, is essentially an adaptation of the merchant’s mark utilized by the East India Company, with the cross designating travel and the heart a symbol for Richmond. The brewery initials LCCB can be found within the heart. On top of the tap is a cardinal, Virginia’s state bird, and down lower you'll find hops as well as dogwood flowers, the Virginia state flower. There is a small flat space under the logo where a sticker of the beer variety is attached. The detail is excellent and the colors are bright and beautiful. The tap is pretty rare, I've only ever seen one other besides mine. Friend of the blog Steve helped me obtain it, so a big thank you to Steve for his contribution to the museum!

Click through to read more about Lickinghole Creek and their beers, and to see more photos of this beautiful tap...

Lickinghole Creek Brewery was founded in 2013 in Goochland, Virginia by Sean-Thomas Pumphrey, his wife Lisa, and business partner Farris Loutfi. Pumprhey was a Richland native who attended the University of Montana, where he fell in love with craft beers from Big Sky and Rogue. When he returned Virginia to receive an MBA from the University of Richmond, he was dissatisfied with the local craft beer scene and began homebrewing his own beers while planning on opening a brewery someday. While he was working as a car salesman, he looked to the family farm to see if he could grow the crops he would need for his own beers. His family owned a 221-acre farm, so he went through the county zoning process and all the other state and federal hoops and red tape to build a 4,100-square-foot building, and modeled the brewery after a Virginia-style horse farm.

The project was three years in the making before beginning production on site in 2013, utilizing a 20 bbl system. The brewery’s name comes from Little Lickinghole Creek, which runs adjacent to the farm and was named in pre-colonial times for the wildlife that stopped for a refreshing drink. The water used for brewing is drawn from two on-site wells that require minimal treatment before use. The waste water is also treated and purified on site before being returned to the ground.

Since Sean is a history major, the beer names, tap handles and logo pack a lot of meaning. Lickinghole Creek started with three principal beers. Magic Beaver Belgian-Style Pale Ale is named after a pond on the brewery’s property. Short Pump Saison is named for a famous tavern that was utilized by travelers as a mid-way stopping point between Richmond and Charlottesville...the tavern’s porch was expanded over the years until it covered the water pump for horses so that there was not enough space for a full stroke and the shaft and handle had to be shortened for use. That tavern was also located on the Three Notch Road which was later named Three Chopt, and became the name of their third core beer, Three Chopt Tripel.

Lickinghole Creek has been growing their own hops, blackberries and pumpkins, the latter of which were used in a fall seasonal called Pumpkin Ain’t Easy. The brewery has planted its own barley seedlings, and also have plans to grow an herb garden, blueberries, fig trees (to be used in some of their many Belgian style ales), as well as orange trees (to be perhaps used in a saison). The brewery has also experimented with barrel aging their beers. Lickinghole Creek brews are distributed throughout central Virginia. The brewery was a driving force behind state bill SB 430, which was signed into law earlier this year and helped define farm breweries in Virginia.

Lickinghole Creek’s Short Pump Saison matches Premium Imported Belgian Pilsner Malt with two types of Rye. First Wort Hopped (an old German brewing technique) with American Grown Galena Hops and Hop Bursted (a newer American technique) with large amounts of Columbus and Nugget hops. The combination of the malt, rye and hops creates a beer with a distinguished hop aroma, a more undeviating bitterness and a more balanced beer. Bottled versions are 100% Bottle Conditioned in their Warm Room, which is a method rarely used in the U.S.