Staff photo by Gage Cureton Rick Black pours Starkeller’s sour beer “Binary Storm” for a customer at Lamplighter Family Sports Bar and Grill Tuesday. Lamplighter now has 28 beers on tap.

NEW ULM — There’s more choices for happy hour at Lamplighter Family Sports Bar and Grill with 28 beers now on tap as of Monday.

Rick Black said when he started working at Lamplighter two decades ago, Lamplighter only had eight tap beer selections.

Twenty years later, the sports bar and grill offers over two dozen beers on tap with big names such as Schell’s, Grain Belt, Summit Brewing Co., Sam Adams and even craft beers from nearby Mankato Brewery and Lost Sanity in Madelia.

Black said he also wanted to help promote The Starkeller, and added two sour beers, Binary Storm and Black Prism, to the selection.

Lamplighter’s growth in the variety of tap beer it offers is also somewhat of a recent trend for the business. Black said it was only ten months ago that they increased their selection from eight beers to 16, and then again to 28.

He said he had the idea to increase the selection for years, and after the old owner left, and Herb Knutson stepped in, they started offering more.

“When Brian sold, [Herb] kind of took on to my idea of promoting Schell’s,” Black said. “He let me go from eight to 16. What we did is offer half of those to Schell’s.”

He said the idea was to offer Schell’s Brewery an abundance of spots on the tap line while also adding other specialty beers in – all with the goal of attracting more visitors and customers from larger cities.

“When we went from eight to 16 our market was basically just New Ulm,” Black said. “I told [Herb] what I wanted to do was put 12 more lines on of different specialty beers so that I could bring people in from Lake Minnetonka, Blaine – your city people.”

Black said Lamplighter’s goal is to attract more customers during tourist seasons not only with their food menu, but with their larger selection of beer.

“I want to draw that market,” Black said. “Bring that market to us and also maybe broaden the horizons for us here in New Ulm to offer them something.”

When asked if Lamplighter will consider adding more beer in the near future, Black said they’ll stand fast.

“Not unless we can build a bigger beer cooler,” he said. “I think we need to absorb what we have and work with what we have, along with the food.”

Gage Cureton can be emailed at gcureton@nujournal.com.