We were the 2016 London Craft Distilling Expo's main sponsor this year and had loads of fun attending! What we took with us? A stand, a barrel, three iStill Wizards (Nick, Vic, and Avian), Veronika, an iStill 500 NextGen and an iStill 100 NextGen. Here's a picture of us, just before our departure from the Netherlands:

The Expo was in the boiler room of the old Truman Brewery:

We arrived in London in the afternoon of October 4th. After a trip with a van and most of the equipment through the Channel Tunnel. We could set-up the stand pretty soon after our arrival. Here are a few pictures of us building up the stand: [gallery ids="7224,7223,7225" type="rectangular"] Wednesday, when the Expo opened, we were joined by customers from the UK and Ireland. They brought their drinks with them and helped man the stand, answer questions, and pour drinks. And many thanks to them helping out! It was great to have so much support, especially since we had like 10 to 20 visitors continuously! Yes, I think we must have spoken to each and every one who visited the Expo. And the feedback we got was that they love the new look of the NextGen line-up and that the drinks our customers produced with them were awesome! Here's a few pictures: [gallery ids="7229,7230,7226,7215" type="circle"] Wednesday, in the afternoon, I gave a speech on the future technology of distillation equipment. When we do that again next year, we'll need a bigger room. As it was half of the people that wanted to attend couldn't sit. That's how crowded it was. Again, the feedback on the new technology I could share was very, very positive. If you are interested, please reach out to me and I will email you the Powerpoint presentation.

Odin explaining how column design helps harvest the right tastes:

At 18h30 in the evening, the stand was still crowded with dozens of customers and iStill afficionados. That was like half an hour after the Expo actually closed. Because we had a merry time with Avian taking the lead in hosting an awesome gin tasting, we decided to continue the party with Beer & Burgers in an adjacent grill bar. Quite the party! I remember (I think) hitting the sack at around 1h30 in the morning. [gallery ids="7218,7217,7219,7220" type="circle"] The next day of the Expo was a bit less crowded, which served us just fine, since it gave us more time for in depth talks to people interested in joining the iStill Family. We started to pack in the afternoon, enjoyed London's great traffic jams for a few hours, and finally made it back home to the Netherlands by Friday morning. A big applause for all of those who helped man the stand, and to the many, many people that visited us!

Here's a last picture of the run we did with the iStill 100 NextGen:

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