Logistics behind brewing A LOT of beer...

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DRoyLenz

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So, two of my best friends are getting married, and they requested that I brew up a bottle of beer for each of their guests at the wedding. They have not finalized the guest list, but they are shooting for 150 guests (I think).

To me, that sounds like I need to make 3-4 batches. Now this is my wedding present to them and funds are a bit tight right now, so I'm thinking of using this as an excuse to move on to AG brewing, so that I can keep prices down. I will probably be using DeathBrewer's stove top method (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-stovetop-all-grain-brewing-pics-90132/), or perhaps invest in a turkey fryer (30-Quart Outdoor Turkey Fryer).

The wedding is not until August 7th, 2010, so I have time to plan and execute. I have a few questions to people who have done something like this in past, or just know whats going on.

- Do you guys have suggestions on a couple of recipes I could use that would be widely accepted? Ideally, they would use similar grain bills so that I can order more in bulk.

- Does anyone know of a good HBS that I could order from that would sell bottles on the cheap? From my research, the cheapest I'm finding is $0.50 a bottle.

- From someone who has never done AG, but has some very drinkable extract brews under their belt, how many AG brews would you think I would have to practice with before making a beer I would feel comfortable distributing to the masses?

- Does anyone have a recommendation on a place I could find a quality, but not pricey turkey fryer?

I'll probably have a few more questions in the near future, but this post is already way longer than I wanted it to be.

Thanks in advance guys!
 
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Make some brewing friends and enlist their help. If you were in my area I would lend out my equipment; I am sure you can find generous people in your area.

For bottles, get on craigslist and look around. Otherwise go to bars and talk to the manager to see if they will save them for you.
 
This doesn't answer your questions, but make sure they mean 150 attendees and not 150 invitees. That makes a big difference. Are they inviting 150 people or are they inviting 200 to 300 and expect the attendee rate to end up at about 150? 150 attendees is a fairly large wedding. Also consider that not everyone drinks beer. Are you going to give beer to them anyway or do you think they'll have the option to decline the beer party favor?

Oh, actually I can answer one of your questions - I wouldn't buy bottles. Go to a recycling bin at an apt complex, collect a bunch and soak and delabel them with PBW. Since saving money is a concern, recycling bottles is one of the easiest ways to save money.
 
Man, stovetop? I mean, I brew on the stovetop, but if I were trying to put together that much beer and want it to taste consistent across all the bottles, I'd try to find a bigger setup to brew on for that purpose. Not necessarily buy a whole rig, but maybe find someone locally who will let you brew on their rig in exchange for some beer or whatever.

Oh, actually I can answer one of your questions - I wouldn't buy bottles. Go to a recycling bin at an apt complex, collect a bunch and soak and delabel them with PBW. Since saving money is a concern, recycling bottles is one of the easiest ways to save money.

+1 on this, there should be no reason to buy bottles if you have that much time. One thing I do is just ask my friends to save me their pop-top bottles, and then I take them off their hands every once in a while. It only takes a few beer-drinking friends for the bottles to quickly add up.
 
I did the same thing - making beer for friends' wedding as my gift, and moving to AG, as my gift to me... :) I made 20gal for an 80 person wedding that's actually this weekend. Only I kegged instead - the idea of bottling 20gal into bottles wasn't exactly thrilling.

After the upgrade in equipment to do all grain, it would've been cheaper for me to do extract. Maybe in a few years, I'll have saved some money by having gone all grain. Oh well, I'm not sorry about it, and I'm definitely glad I did it. (It took me like 3 batches to really get it right though.)

Good luck.
 
They have not finalized the guest list, but they are shooting for 150 guests (I think). To me, that sounds like I need to make 3-4 batches.

Your friends must drink far less than mine. One batch is about 50ish servings, so you're assuming everyone drinks one beer?

In my experience, in wedding type situations only about half the people will drink, but those that do will drink about 3 beers apiece. Assuming you bring more than one style of beer, you'll probably want more like 250 beers there.

Try this calculator http://www.evite.com/pages/party/drink-calculator.jsp. It will calculate how much beer you need, and appropriately reduce the amount if you also have wine and/or liquor. But just be aware that when it asks for the number of drinkers, it means drinkers, not guests!

In any case, I don't think three batches will be enough unless there's domestic bottles around as well. If you're going AG, buy big, and for low gravity beers you could do 10 gallon batches.

- Do you guys have suggestions on a couple of recipes I could use that would be widely accepted? Ideally, they would use similar grain bills so that I can order more in bulk.

Most of your grain bill will be base malt for virtually every beer, so don't stress the bulk too much. The price difference between hops by the pound and hops by the ounce is enough that I'd really try to get similar hops in most of the beers and buy those in bulk.

Low gravity beers with mild flavor (light pale ales, etc) are popular in non-beer geek crowds. Hefes are also popular. The dual advantages of these beers are people get less drunk, and they cost less to make.

- Does anyone know of a good HBS that I could order from that would sell bottles on the cheap? From my research, the cheapest I'm finding is $0.50 a bottle.

You've got a year -- start telling friends to save bottles and give them to you. Or, consider buying some kegs and building some jockey boxes. Much easier to transport, much less time spent bottling...

- From someone who has never done AG, but has some very drinkable extract brews under their belt, how many AG brews would you think I would have to practice with before making a beer I would feel comfortable distributing to the masses?

Depends how quickly you learn from your mistakes.... At least two. Honestly, none of my early AG batches tasted bad. But they were stressful and things went wrong and I had to improvise... Not good if you're making a LOT of beer in a tight schedule.

- Does anyone have a recommendation on a place I could find a quality, but not pricey turkey fryer?

Amazon?
 
Just make sure if you are thinking that you will be serving your beer at the reception that the venue is legally allowed to serve a home made alcoholic beverage. I was thinking about brewing for my wedding, but was told that the bartenders could not legally serve something that they were not certain the alcohol content of.

Otherwise, my advise would be to make more than you think you'll need. There is always an afterparty...
 
Last month I supplied beer to two weddings (one for a friend, other for a cousin). Since both weddings were back to back weekends, I had to stock up on beer well in advance. I brew 10 gallon batches and ended up bringing 20 gallons to each wedding. To stock up 40 gallons I had to buy more cornies and double brew several weekends.

The second wedding was catered by a local restaurant and they told us in advance that they had no problem serving our homebrew. The reception was held on the property of the bride's family, so legally this might not be the same as if it was held in a rented hall.

All of my beer for both weddings was served out of cornies. A combination of a keggerator I brought and picnic taps. This saved a lot of bottling. Both weddings had other beer/wine/liquor being served, so my 20 gallons was just a contribution (one wedding was 60+, other was 100+). Each wedding drank all the beer I brought, I had nothing to bring home.

So now on to the types of beer I brought. Originally I planned to bring an assortment of beers to each wedding, but I ended up bringing mostly lighter colored beers. I didn't bring any stouts or porters since my experience has been that a lot of BMC drinkers are immediately turned off by the darker color. My American Wheat is always a big hit with the non-craft beer crowd, so that was half of the beer for each wedding (60/40 wheat/pilsner malt). Simple, cheap, always good. I also brought a keg of pale ale and IPA.

If I could do it again, I might have brought a stout to each wedding since with that many people there were bound to be enough drinkers to at least put a serious dent into that keg. And it would have shown everyone that I CAN brew other types. But overall, I was happy with how things went.

My recommendation would be to buy equipment for 10 gallon all-grain batches. Its only a bit more expensive to buy and will save you a lot of time. And chances are, you'll probably want to do some 10 gallon batches again at some point in the future anyway. When the time comes, brew up two batches of the same beer, whatever you decide on, then bottle them both. That's roughly 200 bottles which is enough for you to sample and share 50 leading up to and after the wedding and have 150 for the guests.

Most of your other questions you had have already been answered. I say start accumulating equipment for 10 gallon brewing and get a few under your belt. Using the same grain bill and equipment, you shouldn't have too much difficulty making two beers back to back that are very similar. Good luck!
 
If you're brewing for 150 people, that's a large enough crowd that you should shoot for a recipe that caters to the lowest common denominator (to which about 40% of the population will belong).

Low hop aroma.
Light color.
On the fizzier side.
You can boost the ABV for added character but make sure to ferment cool to prevent alcohol "heat".
 
I'm in the western burbs (near Naperville), I've got a case of empty Harpoons I won't be using... you're welcome to them if you're ever in the area, as my gift to the happy couple haha. :)
 
Yeah I would say go with a light colored beer but I wouldn't shoot for cloning a macro lager. There is no point in brewing all this beer and soaking a ton of time into it if you can buy it for the same price from the beer distributor.

If you're looking to do this on the cheap and turn out with good beer definitely don't buy the bottles, shoot for a relatively simple grain bill, buy grain in bulk and absolutely buy hops in bulk. Just my thoughts.
 
Based on the original post it sounds like the beer is as a wedding gift to the attendees (akin to the small favors typically left on the tables at the reception for guests to take home). If that is the case, then one labeled bottle per guest is all that is needed.

This definitely sounds like a fun project and a good "excuse" to get into all grain brewing.
+1 on craigs list for the turkey fryer (if you can't find one there check out e-bay or amazon). As far as bottles you may want to look to freecycle (www.freecycle.org) -- this is a site that facilitates giving away things you no longer have a use for but others might. I have friends who have had good luck acquiring bottles from freecycle (most of my bottles are from beers I have consumed).

good luck!
 
If you're brewing for 150 people, that's a large enough crowd that you should shoot for a recipe that caters to the lowest common denominator (to which about 40% of the population will belong).

Low hop aroma.
Light color.
On the fizzier side.
You can boost the ABV for added character but make sure to ferment cool to prevent alcohol "heat".


Sounds like a perfect opportunity for Centennial Blonde :ban:


As for going all grain just for economics...

I do stove top partial mash normally at 6lbs of grain per batch. So depending on the gravity of the beer I can mash anywhere from 70% to 35% of the grain bill. I can bust out a batch of Centennial Blonde for ~$20 from AHS (with harvested yeast).

If you are set on All Grain... by all means, but I think partial mash may be cheaper than the price of the equipment needed. Either way, that should be fun.

I did a wit for my brothers wedding August 7 of this year. It was my first undrinkable beer!! It was worth a good laugh. They are in his basement now. They are slowly improving. We hope for it to be drinkable for the holidays.
 
Yeah get some friends to help out. If you're married you won't be much longer if you try doing 4 AG batches on your stove.

Invest and move to the garage or patio.
 
So, I just spent the last 20 minutes responding to everyone's comments in one post, then accidentally erased it. So instead of doing it all over again, I'll just summarize what I was going to say.

The beer is intended as a party favor, not for mass consumption. I'll be bottling it, and labeling it nicely, and placing the beers on a table for the guests to choose as they wish. I think this will cut out on the legal issues as well, but I'll be looking in to those as well.

I just talked to the bride-to-be, and she said that they are planning for 250 PEOPLE!!! So considering that, I definitely think I'll have to move on from extract brewing. There is no way I'll be able to make that much good, consistent beer with extract brewing. I'll have to move up to AG, or at least PM.

I'll be sending out a mass email to my friends to have them all save their bottles for me. There is also a local bar that I'm pretty tight with one of the bartenders, so I'll talk to him.

As far as what recipes, I agree that they primarily need to be aimed at BMC-type drinkers. I also want to make another darker, maltier beer, for the people out there who appreciate that kind of thing. Here's what I'm thinking:

- Belgian Wit (I have a recipe that has proven pretty popular in the past)
- Centennial Blonde (thanks for the recommendation Cap'n Jazz)
- Raspberry Kolsch (I've heard the fruit beers move the quickest at these kinds of things)
- Oatmeal Stout (for all the lovers out there)

I've got a buddy who is just getting in to brewing who is willing to help. He had his dad brew beers just like this for his wedding (he also did Root Beers) a year ago, so between the two of them, hopefully I'll have all the help I'll need. I also have a friend who just moved to the Naperville area who has a garage and a little more space to work with (I'm working in a tiny, 700 sq ft condo.

If you guys have any further recommendations, I'd appreciate any pointers you have. I'll post back with my progress to let you know how it is all going. Thanks again to all the help guys! I really appreciate the responses.
 
Boy, I give credit to you for thinking about attempting this. My buddy is getting married, and I jokingly said I'd bring the beer....then made sure he realized I was joking when I thought about how MUCH beer it'd be.

My wedding was 1 year ago. We had 100 guests attend. We went through 2 kegs of beer and 37 bottles of wine. Those are half barrel kegs, not wimpy corneys.

So for my buddy's wedding, I figured I'd need to brew 30+ gallons per 100 people. Even if he only has 100 people, that's 6 corneys! I only OWN 8.

Of course, if they are only meant to be "samplers", like 1 beer per guest, then the #s go down quite a bit.

Good luck! :mug:
 
For the bottles, if your friends are like mine and only can supply me with damn twist-offs, you can check out recycling centers. I actually get mine at a big package store that does some recycling and they sell me any style of bottle for the .05 cent deposit. If they have larger (16+oz) bottles around they let me have at them too. Won't cost you anything if you go that route.
 
Also, something else to think about that could be easily overlooked, your labels need to clearly show how to properly pour and drink the beer, otherwise you'll have a bunch of clueless folks drinking straight out of the bottle.
 
Man, you are some good friend to brew, bottle, and give away 5 or 6 batches for a wedding. That's a lot of work and expense. Speaking of expense . . . .

Buy your hops and base malt in bulk. That'll save some good money. Hops are especially cheap right now, so that should help out quite a bit. Buying specialty malts in bulk probably is not worth it. Everyone else has the right idea about bottles and a turkey fryer.

On the recipes, I'd just pick two of the four you have. Since you aren't really moving beer here (i.e., one bottle per guest), variety might not be the right idea. I don't know how the happy couple plans on distributing the beer, but limited choices tend to work more smoothly. I would go with the Centennial Blonde and the oatmeal stout. If the beers are distributed randomly, you would hate to stick the wrong person with a raspberry beer or wit. For example, I wouldn't mind receiving a wit, a Centennial Blonde, or an oatmeal stout. However, I'm more likely to throw a raspberry beer at you than drink it. :) I imagine you and the engaged couple know your audience best, though.

Plus, if you are talking about getting four recipes into show form over the next several months while first converting to AG, that might be ambitious. Shoot, you may knock 'em all out of the park on your first try, but then again, you may not. Play it by ear, if you like.
 
Man, you are some good friend to brew, bottle, and give away 5 or 6 batches for a wedding. That's a lot of work and expense. Speaking of expense . . . .

They are reimbursing me for much, if not all of the expense. I think my gift to them is the work itself, but let's face it, we all got in to this hobby because we want to make beer. I can't imagine a better way to really learn and hone my craft. I'm really excited about this (and only a little nervous, we'll see how nervous I get as the zero hour approaches.)

Plus, if you are talking about getting four recipes into show form over the next several months while first converting to AG, that might be ambitious. Shoot, you may knock 'em all out of the park on your first try, but then again, you may not. Play it by ear, if you like.

This is a really good point. I figure I'm going to want one practice brew in for each style I want to make, so that I can refine it the second time around. I think it might be reasonable to have 2-3 styles, 4 may be too ambitious.

The plan is to just put them out on a table and have people take what they want. At the last wedding I went to, a year ago, where they did this, the Cherry Wheat (or whatever the hell the fruit beer was) went the fastest, and the "good beer" (if memory serves, it was a stout), got finished off last.
 
FWIW, I'm brewing 10 gallons of the 10-10-10 BGS for my wedding next year (on 10-10-10) to be used as the toast. I thought this was a good medium. I wanted to brew for the wedding, but didn't want to provide THE alcohol bill, or even enough for guests to take home.
 
FWIW, I'm brewing 10 gallons of the 10-10-10 BGS for my wedding next year (on 10-10-10) to be used as the toast. I thought this was a good medium. I wanted to brew for the wedding, but didn't want to provide THE alcohol bill, or even enough for guests to take home.

That's a very cool idea. With a year to condition too, awesome.

What is a BGS?
 
What would you guys say to using DeathBrewer's Stovetop All-Grain Method (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-stovetop-all-grain-brewing-pics-90132/) to make 5 gallon batches for this? I'm not anticipating making any high grav beers. The highest of which would be the Oatmeal Stout (1.048 – 1.065 OG).

I just did that for a 9 lb grain bill for a PM, (10 gal batch). I don't think there'd be much difference between a 9 lb and 12 lb grain bill, (12 lb for 5 gal would be around 1.065 at 75%).

It worked well, and I got around 71% efficiency (and that was with a 6-8 degree undershoot in mash temps due to crappy thermometer). The time before when I used a 6 lb grain bill for a 5 gal PM I got 80% efficiency.

Having a true MLT would be nice, but the BIAB (brew in a bag), worked rather well.
 
That's a very cool idea. With a year to condition too, awesome.

What is a BGS?

Belgian Golden Strong

What would you guys say to using DeathBrewer's Stovetop All-Grain Method (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-stovetop-all-grain-brewing-pics-90132/) to make 5 gallon batches for this? I'm not anticipating making any high grav beers. The highest of which would be the Oatmeal Stout (1.048 – 1.065 OG).

My stovetop method works great if you have a good burner and the right size pots. It should work fine for 5 gallons at a time.

However, seeing as you are brewing a large amount of beer, I'd say making a $100-200 investment in getting a cooler for your mash and large pot would be beneficial...then you could make 10+ gallon batches and get these ready in a jiffy!

If you can't spend the money, however, there is nothing wrong with the stove-top...it makes just as good of beer as any other method.
 
I just talked to the bride-to-be, and she said that they are planning for 250 PEOPLE!!! So considering that, I definitely think I'll have to move on from extract brewing. There is no way I'll be able to make that much good, consistent beer with extract brewing. I'll have to move up to AG, or at least PM.

Why would you not be able to make good, consistent beer with extract brewing?

Extract makes good beer, and in some ways, extract can make more consistent beer - especially if you're new to AG and its equipment and don't have your process dialed in. Heck, I've been AG'ing for a little over a year, and while my beers come out good - I'm always missing OG due to some efficiency issues I'm working out.
 
Why would you not be able to make good, consistent beer with extract brewing?

Extract makes good beer, and in some ways, extract can make more consistent beer - especially if you're new to AG and its equipment and don't have your process dialed in. Heck, I've been AG'ing for a little over a year, and while my beers come out good - I'm always missing OG due to some efficiency issues I'm working out.

That's fair. I guess I'm just trying to convince myself to get in to AG brewing. :ban:
 
Why would you not be able to make good, consistent beer with extract brewing?

Extract makes good beer, and in some ways, extract can make more consistent beer - especially if you're new to AG and its equipment and don't have your process dialed in. Heck, I've been AG'ing for a little over a year, and while my beers come out good - I'm always missing OG due to some efficiency issues I'm working out.

I second that. Extract is potentially more consistent, especially if you're new to AG. Also, I disagree with the assumption on this thread that AG is cheaper. I think you're just using that as an excuse to upgrade to AG :) Which is fine, I won't stop you. On my partial mash brews, I've only saved $1 or $2 on the whole recipe, because malt extract from morebeer.com is actually quite cheap. It's $2.30 per lb (6 lb bag of DME @ $13.80). At $1.40/lb on US 2-row at my LHBS the grain can add up to the same as malt extract unless I get really good efficiency. (I know I could buy bulk grain, but I don't have room to store it, plus a miller costs $$$).

I may have even lost money on a couple of my partial mashes due to low efficiencies (50-60%). I'm using Deathbrewer's stove-top BIAB technique but haven't been able to figure out how to improve efficiency yet. No big deal - IMO you don't do PM/AG for price. You do it for control, experimentation, love of the art of brewing, or achieving lighter SRMs.
 
That's fair. I guess I'm just trying to convince myself to get in to AG brewing. :ban:

by all means do it - just don't use the excuse that it's somehow superior to extract.

there's been many, many threads on here about the key's to making great beer, and pretty much all agree: proper sanitation, correct yeast pitching rates, controlled fermentation temps (at the lower end of the yeast tolerance), primaries longer than the "instructions" of 7-10 days, and at least 3 weeks in the bottle. Notice that nowhere was AG, PM, or extract mentioned. Revvy has a nice blog about it :mug:
 
Man, you are some good friend to brew, bottle, and give away 5 or 6 batches for a wedding. That's a lot of work and expense.

20 gallons of beer for each wedding probably cost me around $60 for grain, hops, yeast, propane, cleaner, sanitizer, etc. And since that was my wedding gift in both cases, I probably saved money. The labor involved is for a hobby I love, so if anything I was being subsidized to brew. In other words, I got to refine my brewing skills for free since I was going to be out that money anyway for a wedding gift. Maybe this is a rationalization, but I am always looking for an excuse to brew. And having a hundred people drink my beer at once is more than worth the effort in my opinion. :tank:
 
On my partial mash brews, I've only saved $1 or $2 on the whole recipe, because malt extract from morebeer.com is actually quite cheap.

FWIW, I got 55 pounds of DME for under $100 from north country malt during our last group buy.
 
's $2.30 per lb (6 lb bag of DME @ $13.80). At $1.40/lb on US 2-row at my LHBS the grain can add up to the same as malt extract unless I get really good efficiency. (I know I could buy bulk grain, but I don't have room to store it, plus a miller costs $$$).

Without a doubt AG won't save money if you're not buying bulk. That same 2-row would cost 75 cents a pound in bulk... FWIW, I've been picking up big food-grade buckets from Ace for a few dollars apiece, then buying airtight twist-off lids for about $7 each, and it's working real well. They stack nicely and hold about 25 lbs of grain each. Can't help you with the mill, though; you need to spend a little to get a high-quality mill, and the cheap ones generally say they won't let you use a drill and you don't want to hand-crack 23 lbs when making your barleywine.

But it will take years to recoup the savings once you factor in the costs of extra equipment and time.... All grain is more fun, you get more control, and there's something magical about converting grain to beer. I've been under the impression from the beginning this is his excuse to go AG, and I'm not going to stand in his way. :)
 
I think you're on the right track here. If you are making the switch to all grain I would suggest doing a few test batches of the beers you are going to brew to make sure you get everything right before you have to "officially" brew it. I know when I first started AG it did not go so smoothly with hitting my numbers.

As far as consistency and your feeling that AG will help improve consistency. I definitely think that extract will give you better efficiency compared to starting out at all grain. However, if I were doing this I would go the AG route.
 
I'm in the process of planning everything out, and I'd like to start working with some recipes in Beer Smith, and start figuring out the best way to do all of this. Right now, I'm working with the assumption that I'll be working with the following styles:

-Belgian Wit (I have an extract recipe, but I'd like a good, simple AG recipe from which to work)
-Centennial Blonde (I'll be working from the recipe in the Recipe Database)
-Oatmeal Stout

For the Wit and Stout, I have some recipes that I downloaded in to Beer Smith, but does anybody have any recommendations for other recipes that you can vouch for?
 
-Belgian Wit (I have an extract recipe, but I'd like a good, simple AG recipe from which to work)..

For the Wit and Stout, I have some recipes that I downloaded in to Beer Smith, but does anybody have any recommendations for other recipes that you can vouch for?

As far as a nicely rounded Wit...this one has some testimonials:
Just Another Brew Day
 
As far as a nicely rounded Wit...this one has some testimonials:
Just Another Brew Day

Oh yeah, I remember reading this thread last week. I like the idea of the freshly grated orange peel, fresh ground coriander and Chamomile Tea (somebody listens to the Jamil Show). I'm saving this recipe now, I'll let you know how it works out for me!

Thanks! :mug:
 
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