100 taps, is that a good or bad thing?

If all the beer can sell through efficiently, yes.

If a large amount of the beer cannot, no.

 

Yeah, pretty simple answer. If they have a huge market and can keep those 100 lines running fresh beer and cover a broad range of styles, then yes its a good thing. If not, then just a gimmick.

 

Keeping those taps clean and fresh must be a bitch. Besides, do you really need 100+ taps? How many variations of pale ale are you really peddling? I'd rather see a smaller, well-curated tap list.

 

My amateur opinion pretty much mirrors what has already been said. Would have to be a lot of turn over on those taps to keep them fresh and my main concern as a consumer would be how well the lines were being clean. Must also be difficult for the staff the know all the tastes and nuances of each beer. Would make it tough for them to sell.

 

It's also likely that most of those beers aren't purchased in large kegs, so they have less beer to sell to begin with. This means the beers on tap would get switched regularly too as they sell, or if the beer goes bad, it isn't a huge financial blow to replace it. I'd guess a place with 100 taps probably has lots of 1/4bbl or 1/2bbl kegs (or smaller?) for things they think will move slowly.

That being said, I think it's kind of ridiculous to have 100+ taps.

There's a craft beer bar I go to a lot that has about 30 taps and the ability to purchase over 150 or so different bottles. That seems like a better idea to me. That way your staff is really knowledgeable about the 30 draft beers rather than needing to know something about 100 or more of them. The bartender said that about 4 beers they have don't move a lot anyways, so I can only imagine how slow some things in a 100 tap bar moves.

 

Do you guys get something bigger than 1/2bbl kegs? Or did you mean to type 1/6?

 

It would most likely have to be 1/6th kegs just for the sheer space alone. Barely any craft is put into 1/4 kegs anyway and 1/2 kegs are a huge amount of beer to turnover for these places.

 

The poor bartenders must waste a lot of time standing around waiting for people to make up their minds. Or do they just spin a wheel and you get whatever the arrow lands on?

 

There's a place here that has some huge number of taps, and most of the clientele drinks BMC or a handful of the most popular craft options. Half the taps are ciders and crafty garbage anyways. They have the taps color coded to indicate price, a pint of Furious is something like 8.50. Ridiculous.

 

Try and imagine how many of those taps are taken up by inbev and millercoors...(I don't think its 100 taps of pure craft...)

Second.... its scientifically proven that the brain does worse (for most) with "more" choices... the big factor is dread... "oh... man... this ipa was good but I don't know if that one would of been better" this works well for the business but not so well with the consumer.. your more likely to try that beer you wish you should of, whether it be that night or another. Dread is a mother trucker...

Your more likely to be happy and confident with your choice of... example...chocolate if it was between chocolate vanilla and strawberry at one place than walking into another place that has 100 flavors and missing out on what could of been...

Me personally... I'd rather walk into a place that has the 100 taps than one that has 10 (unless the said 10 has something worth visiting). I like choices.. but every now and again it bites you....

 

My favorite places have a smaller tap amount, maybe in the 10-20 range. The lists are well selected and exhibit a few great examples of multiple types of beer and rotate basically biweekly, minus a few staples. They also have a decent bottle list as well.

 

I don't think beer, in a keg, in a cold refrigerator, goes "not fresh" as fast as "the freshness police" on this site would like you to believe. I've cranked up 4 month "old" collar dated double jack, and customers all say it's "the best (d)IPA I've ever had, can't beat THIS one FRESH out of the tap." Even knowing what I know, I agree, tastes absolutely great.

Now I can and will check bottle dates with the best of you on glass bottles, in a room temp, under a light, etc, but keg beer can hang for a little while.

Also, just because they have 100 taps, doesn't mean they have more than 40 on at any given time.

 

Some of my favourite pubs only sell one draught beer. As long as it's a good one, that's plenty for me.

 

If there are a thousand mice in that maze that have access to the hundred feeding tubes it's OK for the tubes. if there are only a hundred mice every one gets there own and the tubes barely flow, if there are fifty mice half the tubes go stale and become poisonous, then the mice die one by one out of curiosity. What you end up with is no mice and poisonous tubes. I'd rather have a stellar amount of fresh beer with a limited amount of seasonal/rare taps

 

I've always been a fan of ~25 taps, constantly rotating and offering at most two high quality takes on a single style. No need for 6 IPAs/Wheats/etc.

100+ taps fails to impress me. A well thought out and executed seasonal list with 12 lines, one style per, is much more impressive to me.

 

The store I work for has 60 taps. We sell enough to rotate often and have a wide ranging selection. It works for us, but you can definitely turn a massive amount of taps into a bad thing.

 

There is also the perk of moving that much product when it comes to allocations. Buying that much beer from distributors means you get first choice when something allocated comes out, on Brown distributing's pre-order sheet they have a section labeled "beer's in this section go to locations best supporting the brewery." I'm currently managing 17 taps, and unwilling to go any more biased than 2 current taps per brewery. If you have 100 taps you are more than able to put everything Stone has to offer on tap to guarantee those kegs of Enjoy By.

 

I find the places with dozens and dozens of draft lines tend to have a lack of character. I prefer the oftentimes smaller cozier places with fewer taps and friendlier more real clientele/employees. A few solid regular beers and a couple that rotate is all I need.

 

As long as the beer is selling and they are flushing and maintaining the system correctly their is no reason not to have 100+ taps.

It's he same question for are 5 taps too much, yeah it they don't clean and maintain properly.

As long as the staff are passionate about providing a quality product and you can see that, I wouldn't be questioning it