Palette Palace
When the organisers or the Modeste Beer Festival offered Ginger Tipple a stand, not in the main beer hall but outside in the Palette Palace together with the t-shirts and beer-cap jewellery, I was not to sure. But it worked out really well. I had never realised that walls and ceiling of this structure are composed entirely of wooden shipping palettes.
First, it was a bit quieter than in the main beer hall, which made it easier to explain to people all about ginger Tipple. The beer aficionados all fully understood that one cannot and should not survive for 8 full days without any beer.
Jews & Brews
Even though Ginger Tipple was not ‘inside’ the organisers were proud to have a Jewish brewer exhibiting, perhaps because the Muslims cannot. They even announced it to the other brewers before the festival opened. A lot of people came to our stand and were not put off by seeing 2 orthodox Jews standing there with Kipot
It’s a Ginger Thing
Almost every ginger haired person looked at our roll-up poster and wanted to be photographed next to it. Christophe and Matthias Bergmans of www.studiorauw.be did a great job designing the poster and managed to portray Ginger Tipple as the refreshing ginger thing – which it is.
Talk of the Event
Lode Habraken from Ginger Tipple’s main Belgian distributor Van Ecclepoel, travelled in from Herentals, told me that a lot of people were saying that Ginger Tipple was THE new beer which had to be tasted. A lot of brewers also came to see this illegitimate beverage at a beer festival. But if they can serve Coke and Sprite, we can certainly serve Ginger Tipple.
It’s Hard Work
We served about 400 glasses of Ginger Tipple in 8 hours and I couldn’t have managed without the enthusiastic help of my wife Shifra and tallest son Yedidya.
Brewers at these events are expected to go and visit the other brewers and we swap drinks for free. I must have tasted over 20 beers – real hard work. Some were excellent, some were good and a couple we had to pour out they were so bad. When I went to the sink at the rear counter and asked them to pour one down the sink, they immediately knew which beer it was; and that brewer is so proud of his drink!
Hopfull and Hopeful 
I took the opportunity to present to some experts the new version of Ginger Tipple, which uses the same ingredients, but the cascade hop is grown in Germany and not the USA. They were unanimous that German cascade was a bit lower on the citrus flavours and introduced some delicious earthy undertones to produce an even better Tipple.
Looking forward to next year’s Modeste Beer Festival.
