Homebrew Wedding

I'm throwing this out here hoping for any criticism/advice about my current plans for the wedding day!

Beer and wine will be served, by bartenders, with all of the alcohol provided by us. The venue is cool with it, as well as the support staff.

I've enlisted the help of a few fellow homebrewers to help me out. Two of them will be brewing two 5 gallon batches, and another will be helping me out with the rest. I'm going to provide bottle caps and bottles, the caps are the labels, to keep things a bit more simple for them

Although I'm not certain about the total number of batches we'll need I have a rough guess and a menu mostly worked out.

Centennial Blonde ale, courtesy of Biermuncher here
Citra Pale Ale, courtesy of FATC1TY here
A house IPA I've been working on, lower abv, similar to Founders all day IPA
A wheat I've been working on
An Irish red, one of my recruited friend's wonderful recipes
And whatever the last friend decides to brew, hopefully his hazelnut chocolate porter, can you say delicious?

I'm thinking two 5 gallon batches of the pale, ipa and wheat will be enough, and I'm just going to brew as many batches of the blonde as possible. At least 3-4, but hopefully more. Our house is a busy place in the summer, extra beer certainly won't go to waste...

This puts the total amount of beer at about 65-70 gallons, probably not enough right? The number of people attending will probably be around 150, with like 170 invited. Why so much beer you ask, maybe. I would certainly rather have too much than too little.

I've tossed around the idea of adding a cider but haven't decided yet.

And the best part is that I've added a few primaries and secondaries to the wedding budget. So new toys for me, yay!!

What do y'all think? Sound like a good plan?

Sounds great. Can I come?

I think your volumes are a bit high but as you said, better too much than not enough. I'd think about having some bmc stuff too as homebrew still scares some people even with the more accessible beers you're planning. Also, since you're bottling, remember your bottles will have sediment and will need to be poured into glasses to serve (unless you have filtered from a keg into bottles). Or risk a gaseous morning brunch. This means having lots of glasses and educating the bartenders to pour properly. I like your beer selections though - good variety, but not too "out there". Maybe make something special for your bridal/grooms party if they are beer people.

Congrats on the wedding too!

..And here I thought I was making too much beer for my wedding. Haha.

I'm having 8 different beers for my wedding(~40 gallons) with about 200 people attending.
IPA aged with chardonnay soaked oak
Belgian golden strong aged with chardonnay soaked oak
Coconut cascadian ale
Milk chocolate cherry sweet stout
Saison
Strawberry blonde ale
APA that used french saison yeast
Cream ale

I think that will be more than enough....and in my opinion quite a bit of variety. I think I'll have a bunch leftover which is more than fine with me as all of mine have turned out very well so far. I still need to get labels printed up and put them on and the last two bottled but then Im good. One piece of advice....As the guy above stated, you should really have something that might appeal to the BMC crowd. A cream ale is always a good choice if you can't lager.


Good luck with the wedding, and congrats!

DocScott said:

This means having lots of glasses and educating the bartenders to pour properly. I like your beer selections though - good variety, but not too "out there". Maybe make something special for your bridal/grooms party if they are beer people.

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dpatrickv said:

A cream ale is always a good choice if you can't lager.

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Thanks for the responses guys!

I've got a centennial IPA aging on some bourbon oak chips for the wedding party. Smells sooooooo good.

The beer will be served in pint sized ball jars. But good point on making sure they know what they're doing. I've had a few of my BMC drinking friends try the blonde ale with mostly all positive feedback, but I've been wondering what to do about the diehards. Do you think a cream ale would suffice, I haven't brewed one yet, or do you think I should bite the bullet and get some miller lite or some such thing. I like to.. help.. people step outside of their comfort zone, but don't want to offend either.

dpatrickv said:

..And here I thought I was making too much beer for my wedding. Haha.

I'm having 8 different beers for my wedding(~40 gallons) with about 200 people attending.
IPA aged with chardonnay soaked oak
Belgian golden strong aged with chardonnay soaked oak
Coconut cascadian ale
Milk chocolate cherry sweet stout
Saison
Strawberry blonde ale
APA that used french saison yeast
Cream ale

I think that will be more than enough....and in my opinion quite a bit of variety. I think I'll have a bunch leftover which is more than fine with me as all of mine have turned out very well so far. I still need to get labels printed up and put them on and the last two bottled but then Im good. One piece of advice....As the guy above stated, you should really have something that might appeal to the BMC crowd. A cream ale is always a good choice if you can't lager.


Good luck with the wedding, and congrats!

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Depends on if everyone drinks, but that only comes out to about 2 beers per person, 40 gallons = 5120 ounces, 12 ounces per beer, you have 426 beers. Probably will work but that is less than 3 full size kegs for a wedding of 200, that is usually low, but with high ABV and fun beers it may go either way.

OMullering said:

Thanks for the responses guys!

I've got a centennial IPA aging on some bourbon oak chips for the wedding party. Smells sooooooo good.

The beer will be served in pint sized ball jars. But good point on making sure they know what they're doing. I've had a few of my BMC drinking friends try the blonde ale with mostly all positive feedback, but I've been wondering what to do about the diehards. Do you think a cream ale would suffice, I haven't brewed one yet, or do you think I should bite the bullet and get some miller lite or some such thing. I like to.. help.. people step outside of their comfort zone, but don't want to offend either.

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Make a cream ale. The recipe I made was just some 6 row, carapils, and corn with .5oz of Saaz at each 60/20/2 and both my future father in law and grandfather in law really enjoy it(They will usually only drink Busch Light).

Indytruks138 said:

Depends on if everyone drinks, but that only comes out to about 2 beers per person, 40 gallons = 5120 ounces, 12 ounces per beer, you have 426 beers. Probably will work but that is less than 3 full size kegs for a wedding of 200, that is usually low, but with high ABV and fun beers it may go either way.

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Well, I really only expect MAYBE half of our guests to drink my beer, probably closer to 50 or so. Most will go to the bar and pay for mixed drinks or Busch Light. Not to mention, 3 of those beers are over 8% with one almost 10% so I don't expect them to be slammed quickly. The cream ale is actually the lightest and that still finished right about 5.2%.

dpatrickv said:

Make a cream ale. The recipe I made was just some 6 row, carapils, and corn with .5oz of Saaz at each 60/20/2 and both my future father in law and grandfather in law really enjoy it(They will usually only drink Busch Light).



Well, I really only expect MAYBE half of our guests to drink my beer, probably closer to 50 or so. Most will go to the bar and pay for mixed drinks or Busch Light. Not to mention, 3 of those beers are over 8% with one almost 10% so I don't expect them to be slammed quickly. The cream ale is actually the lightest and that still finished right about 5.2%.

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Ok I didn't know you would have the option to pay for other drinks, you should be golden then!

dpatrickv said:

..And here I thought I was making too much beer for my wedding. Haha.

I'm having 8 different beers for my wedding(~40 gallons) with about 200 people attending.
IPA aged with chardonnay soaked oak
Belgian golden strong aged with chardonnay soaked oak
Coconut cascadian ale
Milk chocolate cherry sweet stout
Saison
Strawberry blonde ale
APA that used french saison yeast
Cream ale

I think that will be more than enough....and in my opinion quite a bit of variety.

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I would say so!

BTW, I think the belgian in wine soaked chips would be very much almost like a champagne, perfect for a wedding.

mbobhat said:

I would say so!

BTW, I think the belgian in wine soaked chips would be very much almost like a champagne, perfect for a wedding.

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It's pretty much all chardonnay and a smidge of oak. Lot of pear/apple type notes. Probably one of my best I have made with the exception that I slightly overcarbed it.

Man I'm sooo jealous! The stupid venue we're using for our wedding won't allow outside booze. But - they do have a great craft beer package they let me create.

I think you have an awesome selection of beers! Another good option for the BMC crowd is a Belgian Witbier - I make that as one of my go to party beers and people looove it.

One suggestion for a bit of flair for your guests. You should make personalized beer coasters for the event. We did them for the save the dates. $130 shipped for 250 full color double sided coasters. http://www.microbrewmarketing.com/ I highly recommend!

I did this last fall for my wedding. I had ~130 guests and had 6 5 gallon batches of beer. 1 apfelwein and a cider. We bought 6 cases of wine to go with it, which was way way too much. We only went through like 2 cases of the wine. All said and done, there wasn't enough beer left in the kegs to save. 3 were kicked, and the other three ranged from 1-3 pours to 5 left max. Although it seems close, by the time the 2nd 2 kicked, there were only a handful of the hardcore left, so it was fine.