Wedding brew day - planning blog

Hey all.

Ive posted here with some planning questions, and with April 30th on the near horizon, it was time to start planning. I decided to keep a blog for this, but will update and take questions here as well.

http://weddingbrewing.blogspot.com/

Enjoy. I should be posting every 2-3 days or so.

Chris

Not that there's anything wrong with making too much ... but I don't follow your math 3*60=180 which is a little less than 20 gallons. Are you planning on killing 40 gallons between 10 people before and after the wedding? If so, then WOW!

I am planning to brew for my sister-in-law's wedding, but I'm pondering the logistics of getting the beer to the reception site. I suppose there's nothing illegal if you don't sell it, but I'm sure some facilities would be more receptive than others.

Congratulations. You've got a great idea going. Maybe you should just go with 60 gallons. It would make a great excuse to upgrade your equipment!

Awesome. I wanted to do something similar for my wedding in June but I don't really have the space in my apartment for that much stuff so instead I made a Sparkling Strawberry Mead for the toast instead. I hope it doesn't end up tasting like ass.

Good luck with this!

I am getting married at the end of May 2011 myself. I also had the idea of serving homebrew at the reception. I had a major problem finding a reception hall that would allow me to bring in my own beer (or any beer for that matter) if it was in kegs. The few places I found were trashy or had other requirements that either pushed it out of our price range or we just weren't interested in following (like using their catering service or paying for multiple services we didn't need). Ultimately we had to give up on homebrew and accept a place that serves BMC but is also willing to split costs to buy a keg of a craft beer to be available. Not as cool as having multiple homebrews on tap but the place has everything else we really like and if I can have a decent beer on tap I will settle for everything else being great and enjoy my homebrew for the rest of my life. =p

I don't know if you already have a place booked but you may want to lock down a location that will definitely let you bring in your own kegs and serve them before you start brewing that much beer.

The reception hall my fiancee and I have is the third floor of an awesome restaurant. We told them that were bringing bottles of beer we had made ourselves to give to guests. They said no. Then we said, "But there will be little tags around them telling people what table they sit it. It's not beer, they're place markers, we need them." The manager walked by as we were arguing with the head waiter, listened, then said, "I homebrew too, I think that's an awesome idea." Then we talked about the kind of beer it was going to be and all that, and he said to the head waiter, "These guys are alright, let them bring the beer." Score. We did have to agree to tell all our guests they couldn't drink the beer there...so their ass is covered.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

Good luck with this!

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I don't know if you already have a place booked but you may want to lock down a location that will definitely let you bring in your own kegs and serve them before you start brewing that much beer.

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Thanks!

We shopped places based on this, and were very upfront. No licensing, catering, or servers needed, no TABC licensing requested, nada. I even already asked if its cool to just have me load up my kegerator and plant it in the hall and they said thats fine too. REALLY good point though, and one I made sure was addressed in order to make this happen. I'll try to fit this in to the next couple posts though.

ReverseApacheMaster said:

Ultimately we had to give up on homebrew and accept a place that serves BMC but is also willing to split costs to buy a keg of a craft beer to be available. Not as cool as having multiple homebrews on tap but the place has everything else we really like and if I can have a decent beer on tap I will settle for everything else being great and enjoy my homebrew for the rest of my life. =p

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That's too bad... my wife and I got super lucky. She had a place in mind as soon as she started planning (a strawberry farm) and as it happened they were super excited about hosting a wedding, but also bound by law to not charge for events on the property. We brought in 40 gallons of brew, used their commercial kitchen for setup and the show garden for the ceremony, and left them with a couple months supply of beer. Good deal for all of us.

Blog has been updated again. Im using this thread to gain traffic and also allow for some more direct feedback and questions, so ask away on any of my planning. The show is about to get started.. less than 30 days remaining!

More updates.. I have water, yeast starters and NOW a brewstand, and more coming still! This brewday is this SATURDAY

This blog is great. Ill be watching it

Day is done.

We hit 45 gallons. 1.5bbl in pro terms.... 4 varieties. Missed one 5g batch due to lack of light and general tiredness. All in all, the most i have brewed in one day ever. By law, today, I consumed 1/3 of my annual limits for homebrew. Awesome. Pic for teaser, more on the blog.

8/9 carboys are fermenting already. is 12:29am here. Been up since 6am. I am tired.

I didnt take as many pics as I hoped (oddly enough, I was busy)



http://weddingbrewing.blogspot.com/

For the HBT specific questions:

All All grain. All milled in house.

Ran through about 85lbs of grain. All went to local backyard chicken owners. YAY.

4 varieties, blog has info there.

We had some last minute hop changes on the IPA. I swear I spec'd the hop bill 2-3 times, but I guess I goofed, so there were some last minute subs that were also the last batch of the day so they are not recorded as well as you might hope.

Anyhow, ask away. I have a few weeks of boring fermentation updates and kegging planning, so I would love to pimp HBT and post some user questions on the blog as well.

Go.