brewing for a wedding, tips and recipe recommendations?

3 months until my friends wedding
200 attendees, looking like 35 gallons~
Stout, yoopers oatmeal. 3 gal regular, 1 coffee, 1 chocolate
Pprter, not sure on the base recipe, 3 regular, 1 chocolate 1 coffee
Brown ale, sparkys nut brown. 5 gal. No additions
pale ale, beecave haus pale
Blonde, centinal blonde
Cream of three crops

Cider, 1.014 fg 3 gallons straight apple, 3 gallons cherry back sweetened

Look like a good enough spread? Should I add a belgian? Mild? Session saison maybe, or an enkel?

I would say don't bite off more than you can chew and make sure everything is ready in time enough so that you can make sure it is ready for prime time and if it is not there is enough time for "the wedding" to make a back-up plan.

Your friend is counting on you, make sure you do it right and if not make sure you can buy some commercial stuff as a backup just in case. This is this guys more important day of his life (till kids anyways) and the last thing he wants to or needs to worry about is whether your homebrew turned out or not.

This isn't a criticism of your brewing ability at all, just a reality check for the situation. Outside of that, lineup wise, I'd have more stuff leaning towards the pale ale/"I normally only drink BMC stuff" end of things. Also, I went through 45 gallons at my 125 person wedding but that was just me and my alcoholic family.

Personally not only would I not add anymore things, I would simplify your original plan. 3 beers, with the majority of one beer being an easy drinking style, and 1 cider should be sufficient.

How are you serving? If kegs, consider carbing and then transferring to a clean keg so there's no sediment at all to be stirred up during transport, set up, and serving.

I supplied beer for a rehearsal dinner. Pretty much the same as a wedding. I made an IPA and a 2 row cascade smash blonde. I also picked up 5 craft beers from Kahuna big wave to Lancaster milk stout. The blonde was consumed at the same rate as the other 6 combined. In general these were not craft beer drinkers so if you know your audience you may have a different experience. My suggestion is to up the blonde. The cider may also cut down on the blonde usage if the women go to it. I also had wine so would assume the female use of the blonde was pretty low.

Personally, I think its way too much variety....both Stout AND Porter, in Coffee, chocolate AND regular !?!. That is 6 kinds right there...this is a wedding not a tap house!

I'd probably do either the pale ale or the cream ale, the nut-brown, and maybe the cider. That's it. I'd probably save myself some time/expense and buy a keg of commercial as fill in/backup.

That's a pretty large range of beers.

My first thoughts.

1. Indoor or outdoor wedding? If outdoors, what's the normal
temperature that time of year? Where I live it's too hot for stouts
and porters in late summer, IMO.

2. Do you know the audience? Lots of craft beer drinkers?
What's going to make the women happy alcohol drink wise?

3. IME, many of the women will be drinking wine. It doesn't fill them
up like beer does, which is important at a social event like this.


I don't have that large of a system(ie. fermentors), nor the time to produce that many different styles in a 3 month time span.
It's very possible that you do, and that's awesome.

I agree with one the other posters concerning the blonde, I would bet that is what goes first.

35 gallons of beer is straight up not enough beer for 200.

I brewed for my wedding we had ~65 people a lot of whom were drinking wine and we went through 25-30 gallons.

Generally speaking best advice is to keep most of the ABV's sub 6%. A lot of people won't be accustomed to drinking higher abv beer and will get themselves into trouble.

I'd do a decent volume of some easy drinkers at my wedding it was kolsch and a low IBU hoppy wheat. Then fill in variety with some smaller quantities.

Lighter beer is going to go much faster than the stout and/or porter. At least 50% should be blonde or cream ale. Also remember that non-craft beer drinkers will think 'Genesee' if they hear it's cream ale, which may not be a turn on.

Oh and anything that has higher SRMs than a pale ale will be considered a 'dark beer' by most attendees.

I agree with much that's been said. 35 Gallons is a shade more than 2 kegs. 200 people are going to kill that.

I would do a sweeter stout, the centennial blonde, and one more of your choice. If you did 70 gallons and all 200 are drinking that would be: 70 gallons * 128 ounces to a gallon = 8960 ounces. 8960 ounces divided by 200 people is less than 45 ounces per person (44.8) or almost 4 12oz beers.

There's also going to be wine, and mixed drinks as well. I'll brew up a belgian blonde probably instead of the enkel.

As far as capacity, I can ferment 25 gallons at once in my freezer of needed but more like 20 comfortably.

I am brewing for my wedding in a month and a half. We have bartenders serving for us. I plan on printing out and laminating an info sheet of my beers with highlights like abv and IBUs. Also, plenty of friends and family know about good beer and will want to know more details like hop varieties. I'll include that along with some graphics to be visually appealing. I'm planning on a San Diego style IPA, saison (5%), and a mild (4%). I'll also have a hard cider. I think the IPA will go first, but most of the friends and family search out things like Pliny or palate wrecker. So clearly we are a it different. I'm planning on 60 gallons total for the week. Some of that is rehearsal some is bachelor party or the week before the wedding.

Make sure you can serve homebrew at the wedding. That is an issue in some places.

Yea, a session saison sounds like a good idea!