Successful Festival

A few months ago, I received an invitation from the Antwerp Beer College (ABC) inviting me to have a stand at the annual Modeste Beer Festival held at De Koninck’s brewery. Last year I was offered a stand outside with the T-shirts and the jewelery, as Ginger Tipple is not a proper beer. This year I was offered a stand together with the regular beers, “I am part of Antwerp brewing” was the official explanation.

Named after one of De Koninck’s previous owners, the Modeste is Antwerp’s main beer festival featuring local beers. This year there was also a Polish brewery, Nepomucen.

Tipple on Tap

Although I had produced a few kegs for a customer in Jamaica, this was the first time I was serving Ginger Tipple on tap. I had no idea how to connect the keg to the draft equipment. Furthermore, as I had second-fermented in the keg, which is always a risky business, I was not sure how the tipples would pull.

One of the ABC’s experts connected the two beer kegs, and behold, the Tipples were producing a beautiful head, a light foam which lasted a respectable 90 seconds. You could taste that the head was natural and without the additives used by a lot of commercial beers.

Tap Labels

As a real newbie to kegs, I had not thought of the decal, the label to clip on to the beer tap, so I improvised with using bottle labels. I could not have manned the stand alone and my wife and two sons were there to help. My sons enjoyed tasting the excellent beers on offer from the other breweries.

Tipple Hop & Ginger Quad

The Modeste was also the first major event at which we were selling the 7% Tipple Hop and the 11% Ginger Quad. The Tipple Hop was our best seller. At 5pm with 2 hours still to go, we finished our 1st 30 liter keg and debated whether to open the second. In 2 hours we sold another 15 liters, which is a lot when you are serving tasters of 150ml!

Some visitors remembered Ginger Tipple from 2017 and were happy to see that we had expanded our range and were offering some of beers on tap.

Best Compliment

The best compliment came from the brewer and owner of one of Antwerp’s best breweries, ‘t Pakhuis, Ed Van Den Ouweland, who commented to a few people “De Tipple Hop is het lekkerste bier van het festival” the Tipple Hop is the most delicious beer of the festival.

Ginger Tipple Gets A Head

One of the criticisms of Ginger Tipple, especially from Belgians, was that there is no head, no foam, no froth, no Belgian lace, therefore it cannot be a beer.

Appearances are important, even before one tastes or smells the beer, and while Ginger Tipple scores high on the flavour, aroma and colour, the froth disappeared within seconds. Even though plenty of lambics and geuzes do not have foams, but they are part of Belgium’s beer psyche. Ginger Tipple is not yet there.

This is about to change!

We carried out an experiment with some bottles of our new beer, the soon to be launched Tipple Hop. We double dry-hopped with two different hops giving it tons of hoppy flavour and aroma. At 7% ABV it also has a pleasant soothing effect on your nerves. A touch cloudy; if we could classify it, we would call it a New England Ginger Pale Ale.

In our laboratory, we developed a gluten-free non-chemical based additive which adds proteins to the Tipple Hop without affecting that delicious blend of ginger and hops.

Brewer Jeremy Sulzbacher commented “The commercial additives I tested left an unpleasant taste, so we developed our own natural foaming agent. This one even enhances the flavour!”

We are keeping the details secret, and it will be a few months before we can go commercial with it.

Not Modest at the Modeste