Tap Handle #124: Humpback Premium Ale

This is a whale of a tap. Sorry, I couldn't resist. A really beautiful tap that is extremely rare. According to a young lady that wrote the blog, she and her mother hand-painted these for the brewery in 1996. Because they were hand-painted, no two of the 250 taps are alike.

When I was in school during the 90s, I had to take a science class with a lab, so I chose Oceanography. One part of the class was a trip to the Oregon Coast to look at tide pools and go out on a boat for whale watching. That was the best class I ever took. This tap brings back memories of that class, making it one of my favorite and most prized taps.

Humpback Premium Ale was founded in Cerritos, California in 1996. It was actually brewed and bottled under contract by a brewery in St. Paul, Minnesota. However, it didn't last long and the brewery closed in 1998. That's all the information I could find about it, and explains why the tap is so rare.