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GingerTipple

Dr Beer – The New Tippler

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Ginger Beer

It is always a great feeling to recruit a new customers. But when it is a specialist beer bar, or beer café as they are called in this part of Belgium, I am especially pleased.

Dr Beer offers a large selection of beers and ales, but there are only two gluten-free beers on his menu, and they are both from Sulzbachers.

Jeroen Peeters

The owner of Dr Beer, Jeroen Peeters, has been familiar with Ginger Tipple since its early days when he worked at Antwerp’s famed Beer Lovers Bar. When I went to show him the latest versions of our Tipples, he was impressed with the progress we have made.

As a brewer and foodie, Jeroen runs beer and food pairing workshops and tasting events.

And of course there is always a selection of excellent beers available, some of them as good as Ginger Tipple!

Tipple on the Corner

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The Corner House

Alan O’Grady opened his bar, The Corner House, earlier this month on Antwerp’s trendy Nationalestraat. He designed it to be the perfect place to pop in for a drink on your way home after work or a place to spend the evening.

This is not a bar which wows you with a selection of hundreds of ales, by bringing brews from Brunei or beers from Beer Sheba.

This is a bar with atmosphere. When I went there to deliver some samples, I immediately felt the impulse to sit down and have a pint, or pintje in the local lingo.

Ginger Beer
Allan @ Work

The Perfect Stella

I ordered a glass of Stella Artois. Many bars and restaurants serve Stella on tap, but not all are the same. The quality can be affected if the keg is old, storage at the wrong temperature, tubes not cleaned properly etc. This one was perfect!

Sometimes, the challenge of pulling a perfect pint, is in fact not that simple. It does help if you enjoy what you serve.

The Tipple Effect

Ginger BeerNew customers are critical to the growth of any new business and we invest in selecting potential clients. I was delighted to receive the order from The Corner Shop for the regular Ginger Tipple and our Ginger Quad.

Ginger BeerI delivered yesterday evening and within a few hours was happily surprised to see pictures of Ginger Tipple in the bar and on the menu. This must be the record, as it usually takes a few weeks or even months for bars to change their menus. The Corner House is featuring the Ginger Tipples as their gluten-free offerings.

Nationalestraat

This long road links the Antwerp’s Old City with the artsy Antwerpen Zuid which is full of Art Nouveau buildings, galleries, museums, bars, cafés and great shops. The road was widened in 1884 and has now been restored and is home to a lot of the city’s trendier shops.

The Corner House is open from 10 am until 3 am, so you can Tipple 17 hours a day!

 

 

Not Modest at the Modeste

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Ginger Beer

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

Ginger BeerAlthough 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.

Ginger BeerTap 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

Ginger BeerThe 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.