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One outcome of opening a company was that I had to apply for a new brewer’s license. I know it sounds like a cliche, but Ginger Tipple was all in my wife’s name, and I now had to move it to the company.

Shifra and I made an appointment with the customs office and custom’s auditor notified us that he will also be at the meeting. The auditor was sick, so fortunately the audit was pushed off indefinitely.

First, you cannot transfer the license, I have to apply for a new one and close the old one – read, go through all the form filling and bureaucratic delays, pay the EUR 1,000 deposit for the new license and then whistle for the repayment of the deposit on the old license.

Second, if that was all … I received a lesson on the paperwork required to monitor the brewing processes. I have to send a form to two different email addresses notifying customs 48 hour in advance of actually brewing. They need to know how many liters etc. The form still has a date format of __/__/19__ which gives you an idea of how modern their paperwork is.

Then I have to complete a spreadsheet for each stage of the brewing, from raw ingredients to vat to tank to bottle. Massive breweries like Stella Artois must employ somebody full-time just to fill and send out the 48 advance notifications and complete the spreadsheets for them.

Oh! Don’t forget the online weekly reporting of sales with accompanying payments which never seems to work properly.

I had pity on the lovely ladies at the Antwerp customs who tried to help. They have the onerous task of wading through all these forms and notices and sales reports and license applications etc., but they don’t have the brewer’s satisfaction of drinking a wonderful pint at the end of the paperwork (which never ends…)

Yes it’s true, Friday 21st July was a sunny day in Belgium, at least where I was in Herentals. One of my distributors, the fine food and drink purveyor Van Ecclepoel hosted a small beer fair for 6 of their brewers outside their shop in Herentals. They sell and distribute an impressive array of Belgian beers, obviously including Ginger Tipple.

It was a public holiday for Belgium’s national day, and the Rabbi came to inspect my brewery, so I was running late for the beer fair and did not have time to buy some sun lotion. The sun beamed its rays on me and I was roasting.

For the next five hours, a lot of people approached my stand and tasted. Some did not like it, some were being polite saying that it was ‘special’ while other really enjoyed it. One older man who is a warrant officer 2nd class in the Belgian army stayed there enjoying quaff after quaff but commented that the ginger beer was not cold enough. Another lady came back for thirds!

The mother of the main beer salesman, Lode, as a ginger lover drank her first alcoholic drink in 0ver 50 years, a Ginger Tipple, and then wanted to dance with me.

What was most gratifying was the way the other brewers, who all turn out excellent beers, reacted to tasting Ginger Tipple.

Domesticus
VICUS bier
Brouwerij Savio
Hopscheppers
Ivan Geudens van Vals Paterke

They were all impressed with what we have achieved without using any malt or grains. At the end, we swapped bottles – and now for the best part of being a brewer – enjoy drinking them.

As for the sunburn, the 1st degree burns caused so much swelling on my forehead that it almost ironed out all of my wrinkles.

The Antwerp World Diamond Center, the organization which supervises and promotes Belgium’s diamond trade, has just placed an order for a private label batch of Ginger Tipple for its events.