First beer ship hailed a great success

The first ever beer ship on Lake Zug has been hailed such a success that two are now planned for next year.

The beer ship event took place on MS Rigi on Friday and Saturday as she lay at anchor in Zug harbour and proved very popular, so popular in fact that with as many as 680 visitors on Friday and 700 on Saturday, some people had to queue before they could embark.

As previously reported, the idea for such a beer ship came from Kurt Petak (second photograph), who experienced a beer ship on Lake Thun last year. He enjoyed it so much he thought it would be a good idea to introduce one to Lake Zug. He was naturally so delighted to see how many attended that he felt it better to organise two such events next year.

The idea behind the tasting event was to allow locals to get a taste of the products of regional breweries, with Petak now considering whether to invite a guest canton or even a guest country to next year’s sessions. “We could even get a guest country to provide some of its culinary specialities, too,” he said, as he praised the organising committee and volunteers who had helped get it all ready.

The event reminded one visitor, Tobias Bollmann, of the wine ships which have been a feature on Lake Zug for some time, “though brewing has a centuries-old history, too,” he said, adding what a marvellous variety of regional beers was on offer.

One other visitor, Nadine Willimann, explained how, only two hours previously, she and her friend, Philipp Hess, had been at the Schweizerhof hotel in Lucerne when they had decided spontaneously to go to the beer ship event in Zug. As Hess confessed, he was a great fan of Zug and was looking for a flat here, bearing in mind he worked in Oerlikon while his girlfriend worked in Lucerne.

Andreas Brand of the Rigi Seebodenalp hotel restaurant and his wife Asha (as seen in the photograph) were most taken with the occasion as they handed out the Rigi beer he brews in his basement, and which can be found at the Bistro zum Pfauen on Kolinplatz and at the Weber-Vonesch drinks market on Industriestrasse in Zug, among other places.

Australian-born Paul Calder, who brews a traditional malt beer in Appenzell, said he would very much like to sell his “long-haul pale ale” at Weber-Vonesch outlet, too, and has already been in talks about this.

As for visitors Ursi and Hanspeter Brändli, they enjoyed beer from the brewery in Baar best, with him preferring the dark as she preferred the light. She mentioned how she had lived in Germany for a long time and got to like beer there.