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The Saint Louis Brewery is introducing new tap handles at about 1,000 retail accounts, a large project designed to give the maker of Schlafly beer a distinctive look at bars.

Schlafly will be replacing all existing tap handles in the market with the new design over the next month. It’s an investment of over $100,000 by the brewer and its wholesalers. That’s roughly $40 per handle, said Dan Kopman, Schlafly’s chief operating officer.

The new tap handles were manufactured in the United States, which Schlafly was told might add as much as $15 to the cost of each handle. But since the little brewery encourages drinkers to “buy local,” “we gotta put our money where our mouth is,” said Troika Brodsky, Schlafly’s point man on the project.

The new handles are made of shiny metal in the general shape of a pizza slice, with a slide-out piece that matches the assigned color for each beer style (yellow for wheat, orange for pale ale, etc.). They will replace tap handles that in some cases have been out in the market for more than a decade.

What will the people think? Will they pull attention to Schlafly beers? All to be determined in good time. We’d be interested in your impressions.

“They’re puurrrty,” said one online fan who had seen the handles already.

As the first retail account to ever serve Schlafly beer on draft, Blueberry Hill hosted an event this afternoon to unveil the new tap handles.

“This is such a beautiful sight,” said Joe Edwards, the restaurants’ founder, after three old Schlafly handles were taken off and replaced with the new ones.

The ceremonial switch-off marks the end of “a year and a half of thinking WAY too much about tap handles,” said a clearly relieved Brodsky.

Once exchanged, all original tap handles will be sold through the Schlafly Tap Room (downtown St. Louis) and Schlafly Bottleworks (Maplewood). All proceeds will donated to Habitat for Humanity St. Louis.

In 1991, St. Louis Brewery became the first new brewery to open in St. Louis since Prohibition. It is now Missouri’s second-largest craft brewer, behind Boulevard in Kansas City.

The tap handle project is “a little thing in the grand scheme,” said Kopman. But it helps burnish the image of the company. And now that it’s out of the way, Schlafly “can get back to focusing on beer.”