Need 3-4 beer styles for a wedding...GO!

I need to pick 3-4 beer styles for my brother's wedding in August!

My other brother and I will be homebrewing 150-200 bottles.

There will be about 180-200 guests, only about 100 will be drinking and most will drink moderate amounts (2-4 drinks).

There will also be 50-60 bottles of assorted homemade red wine and store bought whites and about 50 of the drinkers will probably drink nothing but wine.

Here are the 4 styles of homebrew we are thinking of doing for the event:
for the BMC drinkers:
1. Cream Ale (4.3%abv)
2. American Wheat (blue moon clone 5.5%abv)

For the more refined beer drinkers:
3. American IPA (Columbus/Cascade, 6.5%abv)
4. Belgian Tripel (9.0%abv)

Any suggestions on our choice of brews for a crowd? I already have a good recipe I've done before for the American Wheat, Tripel and IPA.

I'm still thinking there should be a few cases of BMC for those who don't like our homebrew, I'd rather they not waste it!

It's pretty exciting to think about serving up to 100 people our own homebrews! I get excited when even one friend tries one of my best brews and is amazed that I brewed that!

A tripel sounds like the perfect wedding beer to me.

I'm currently brewing for a wedding June 30th. I've got my IRA about to go in a keg, I'll be brewing BM's Cenntenial Blonde next weekend and then I still have to figure out a 3rd style. Im leaning towards an APA.

SuburbanBrewer said:

I'm currently brewing for a wedding June 30th. I've got my IRA about to go in a keg, I'll be brewing BM's Cenntenial Blonde next weekend and then I still have to figure out a 3rd style. Im leaning towards an APA.

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Make sure there is also BMC there so the Coors drinkers don't waste a bunch of your best homebrew! That's the main reason I'm doing the $15 cream ale batch!

Jayhem said:

Make sure there is also BMC there so the Coors drinkers don't waste a bunch of your best homebrew! That's the main reason I'm doing the $15 cream ale batch!

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I'm buying the ingredients as my gift to my buddy, and he's buying two cases of lite for people drink if they choose. Best part is, at the end of the night, I take what's left in the kegs home with me!

Those sounds like solid choices.

A blonde ale (maybe a Belgian blonde?) would be another good choice... but I honestly can't fault any of your selections.

Wheat beer is a solid choice, especially around my neck of the woods, so I'm glad you have that covered.

At my wedding, we had some BMC (I think miller), Boulevard Wheat, Sam Adams double bock, and some Avery Mephistopheles. Pretty much everyone was happy. If I were to do it all over again, I would have liked a spiced (cinnamon, orange peal, coriander) tripel over the double bock.

If I had to pick right now, I'd say:

Munich Helles
Classic American Pilsner
Belgian Tripel
Imperial IPA

But then again, it depends on how much time you have. My tripel takes 3 months from brewing to drinking.

"I'll Keep the Car Running" Porter.

AmandaK said:

If I had to pick right now, I'd say:

Munich Helles
Classic American Pilsner
Belgian Tripel
Imperial IPA

But then again, it depends on how much time you have. My tripel takes 3 months from brewing to drinking.

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Yea a good 3 months on my brother's Tripel. I have time though wedding is in August.

I don't know where you are but out here weddings are great places to even old family scores. I would keep all the beers on the low alcohol side. Mabye change the tripel for a nice sessionable Belgian blonde.

corkybstewart said:

I don't know where you are but out here weddings are great places to even old family scores. I would keep all the beers on the low alcohol side. Mabye change the tripel for a nice sessionable Belgian blonde.

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Haha.

Fortunately we have a pretty laid back family that generally get along. The ones that do drink heavily are BMC drinkers and probably won't touch the Tripel (unless they get sloshed I guess...)

Jayhem said:

The ones that do drink heavily are BMC drinkers and probably won't touch the Tripel (unless they get sloshed I guess...)

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In my experiences, the tripel is what I've used to get people to convert to good beer. It goes really fast in my house, so that may be the first to go!

I like to get real drunk at weddings if possible and probably the best way to do that would be if they made available a Barleywine, a Belgian Quad and a Russian Imperial Stout. I would go with that.

cmybeer said:

I like to get real drunk at weddings if possible and probably the best way to do that would be if they made available a Barleywine, a Belgian Quad and a Russian Imperial Stout. I would go with that.

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Might as well save some cost and just go with cheap vodka for the people only looking to get trashed.

Jayhem said:

Might as well save some cost and just go with cheap vodka for the people only looking to get trashed.

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Or, better yet, you could make a cheap vodka Imperial Stout!!!

Seriously though; If I had to make three beers for a wedding I'd go with my three most consistent and best tasting recipes. For me that would mean my ESB, Oatmeal Stout and RyePA. Now is not the time to get crazy and try that open fermented, fig flavored, belgian pepper stout recipe you wrote one night while you were drunk. Keep it to what you know and are good at.

cmybeer said:

Seriously though; If I had to make three beers for a wedding I'd go with my three most consistent and best tasting recipes. For me that would mean my ESB, Oatmeal Stout and RyePA. Now is not the time to get crazy and try that open fermented, fig flavored, belgian pepper stout recipe you wrote one night while you were drunk. Keep it to what you know and are good at.

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This is good advice. 3 of the 4 recipes I've mentioned I have already done and they turn out great. The only one I haven't done yet is the Cream Ale but it would be hard to mess that one up.

Coffee stout would go pretty well with the cake

Around here, I can't imagine a imperial IPA and a tripel going over well for the amount that gets drunk at weddings. I would prefer something I could drink a bunch of and not get completly obliterated. But that is me.
I would go
Cream ale for the bmc drinkers
Wheat for everyone
Pale ale for everyone
And maybe 2 1/2 batches of heavy stuff.

Also, I would brew 5 beers just in case one doesn't turn out. I went to a wedding where there were 2 kegs of homebrew and one was horrible. Don't know what happened but I would guess some sort of infection went on and they kegged it anyway. Hate for that to happen to you.

Flat Tire would be a very good beer.

D_Nyholm said:

Around here, I can't imagine a imperial IPA and a tripel going over well for the amount that gets drunk at weddings. I would prefer something I could drink a bunch of and not get completly obliterated. But that is me.
I would go
Cream ale for the bmc drinkers
Wheat for everyone
Pale ale for everyone
And maybe 2 1/2 batches of heavy stuff.

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I like the Pale Ale idea. I may do that instead of the IPA as more people would like a Pale Ale around 35ibu.