diff --git a/synapse/lib/ingest.py b/synapse/lib/ingest.py
index <HASH>..<HASH> 100644
--- a/synapse/lib/ingest.py
+++ b/synapse/lib/ingest.py
@@ -692,7 +692,7 @@ class Ingest(EventBus):
                     return None
 
                 # FIXME optimize away the following format string
-                valu = valu.replace('{{%s}}' % tvar, tval)
+                valu = valu.replace('{{%s}}' % tvar, str(tval))
 
         if valu == None:
             path = info.get('path')
Stringify any tval we are going to replace inside of ingest template. This allows the use of integer values in xref node templates, which will then get fed through their normalizers.