By Donavan Hall, Long Island Beer Correspondent I had arrived at Tap & Barrel just a few minutes before Rich Thatcher, long enough to have studied the menu of 52 tap offerings — well, it was 51 that night. Nothing was on tap #42. I had asked the bartender if the absence of a beer on tap number 42 had any special significance. 42 is just one of those special numbers. Just saying “forty-two” can conjure up whole worlds, universes even, in the imagination. Locked inside that number are the deep mysteries of life, the universe, and everything. To contemplate…