Brewing Beer for my Wedding

[Luzer]

I’m lucky enough to have a fiancé that will allow me to brew the beer for our wedding next year. I thought it would be as easy as “I’ll make what I like and call it a day”. Typically it’s not and I have a few questions. We will have wine and our signature cocktail so it’s not just beer. Hopefully we stay around 100 people and on average I would say that they are light to moderate drinkers but the outliers might bring the total volume of beer needed up.

I wanted to make a SNPA clone, Whitehouse Honey Porter, and a Belgian double but alas I must please the masses . I’m changing to SNPA clone, Whitehouse Honey Ale, Oktoberfest lager, and bottle a Raspberry or Cherry ale. I will be kegging and the bar people said that they can provide the taps so my job will be a little bit easier. A few guests said that they would like a raspberry or cherry beer and I haven’t tried it so hopefully it goes well.

Here’s the beer schedule:
15 gal of SNPA clone
10 gal of Whitehouse Honey Ale
5gal Oktoberfest
24 bottles of the Raspberry or Cherry ale

Do you think that BMC drinkers be happy? I’m between the WH Honey Ale and a wheat beer.

Thanks.

 

[h-bar]

Is the Whitehouse ale the one that is actually brewed in the whitehouse? From what I remember in the newspaper article about it, the recipe looked pretty mild and I think anyone could enjoy it. But it is your wedding and your choice!

 

[pkrath84]

I've made the honey ale. It is very drinkable and pleases the masses. You'll be fine with that one.

 

[Schol-R-LEA]

Unless you can expect a lot of pale ale fans, 15 gal. of the SNPA clone might be a bit much. If it fits your schedule, you might want to cut back to 10 gal. of that, and insert a 5 gal. batch of something really light in both body and color like a cream ale or an American Premium lager - Cream of Three Crops would probably be a good choice. Without something like that, the BMC crowd are still likely to howl about how heavy the beer is to their taste.

 

[Piratwolf]

Congratulations on your big day!

I'm brewing beer for my BIL's wedding this fall--wine & specialty cocktail like yours--and planning on 30-40 gallons for 200 people, many of whom are mid-twenties volume drinkers. I've been looking at various catering & wedding websites as well as HBT and it looks like the general idea is something like this:

• 30-40% will not drink (children, elderly, teetotalers, Mormons, devout Muslims) or only have one drink to be polite, usually wine or a cocktail
• 50% will have 2-3 drinks
• 10-20% will get hammered

Of course this needs to be tweaked based on your guest list.

But if these generalizations hold, you're looking at (12oz cups/bottles assumed) approx 310 beers (10 beers per gallon x 30 gallons - spillage + 24 bottles) for 50-70 people. They're relatively low ABV, which is a plus, but still that's some work for most people.

[Edit: never trust a history teacher's math!] Now take into account that 50 people will only have 2-3 beers, which in the best case means 100-150 beers down & ~160 to go. The remaining 10-20 will have to pound 8-16 beers each to take care of all that beer--and then you have some very "memorable" wedding guests, not to mention the legal liability if they're driving after the reception is over.

Obviously there are a lot of variables and YMMV. Plus, it's not necessarily bad to have more than you need and you can always finish the rest off later. Just wanted to share the info I've found and to put out the somewhat sobering consideration of liability in case you hadn't considered it.

Cheers! Have fun & I hope it's a blast!

 

[Andrikos]

Make sure you brew a BIG beer (or sour/funky) of your choice to age so you can enjoy a bottle with every anniversary...

Congrats on the upcoming nuptials...

 

[dpatrickv]

I made 8 different beers for my wedding this last month.
SNPA clone w/french saison yeast(9%)
Coconut black ipa
Milk Chocolate stout
Saison
Cream ale
strawberry blonde
Chardonnay oak aged IPA
Chardonnay oak aged Belgian Tripel

I took right around 200 bottles total, came home with about 30(Mostly of the black IPA and stout). The saison went quickly, as did the strawberry blonde and cream ale.)

 

[Piratwolf]

I took right around 200 bottles total, came home with about 30(Mostly of the black IPA and stout). The saison went quickly, as did the strawberry blonde and cream ale.)

How many people were there/were drinking, if you don't mind telling me? I really don't want to be the guy who screws up my BIL's wedding!

 

[dpatrickv]

How many people were there/were drinking, if you don't mind telling me? I really don't want to be the guy who screws up my BIL's wedding!

There were 200 people there total, but I think only 30-40 drank any of my beer. Most of the guests were either non drinkers or wine/mixed drink people.

 

[PJoyce85]

Make sure you brew a BIG beer (or sour/funky) of your choice to age so you can enjoy a bottle with every anniversary...

Congrats on the upcoming nuptials...

That's a great idea. I brewed a Quadruple for my wedding coming up in September and will bottle, cork and cage them and add special labels just to be fancy.

Getting such a large amount to line up at their peak of freshness has got to be tough. To please the BMCers there, maybe try a Kölsch. I agree with cutting back the SNPA. I might think about dropping the Oktoberfest, but that's a tough one.

Do you know the menu? Knowing that could help with selecting a brew or 2 for the more serious beer drinkers.

 

[dpatrickv]

That's a great idea. I brewed a Quadruple for my wedding coming up in September and will bottle, cork and cage them and add special labels just to be fancy.

Getting such a large amount to line up at their peak of freshness has got to be tough. To please the BMCers there, maybe try a Kölsch. I agree with cutting back the SNPA. I might think about dropping the Oktoberfest, but that's a tough one.

Do you know the menu? Knowing that could help with selecting a brew or 2 for the more serious beer drinkers.

Cream ales are more approachable to BMC drinkers IMO.

 

[daksin]

If the venue is providing the taps, you may need to keg your beer into sanke kegs, as they definitely won't be set up for homebrew-style corny kegs. Five gallon batches would go into sixtels (one sixth of a barrel) if you can find them. If you can make a 15 gallon batch, that would fill a half-barrel keg.

One more thing to consider is transporting the kegs, if you've never done that before. You'll want to crash all the beer in separate kegs, and maybe fine it with gelatin or isinglass, and then jump the totally sparkling beer into the serving kegs so you have absolutely nothing to get stirred up and cloud your beer when moving the kegs around.

 

[Luzer]

Thanks for all the replys. We are going to have an outside bartending company come in to serve the alcohol since they can get insurance and its part of the venues contract.

I plan on making a barley wine with my fiancé a year to the date before the wedding so we can use it for toast and to give out to the wedding party (and have some left over for years to come I hope). Anyone know good recipes? It’s surprising hard to find a good barley wine recipe. I have the Rouge Old Crustacean aging right now since it was the only one I could find in my local liquor store to compare with my homebrew. Side note: does it matter if I age with a cork bottle caps?

I’ll look in to how they plan on serving the kegs. Hopefully it works with a ball lock keg.

Does it matter when I put gelatin in the kegs and would it work in the secondary then transfer to the keg?

New beer schedule:
10 gal of SNPA clone
10 gal of Whitehouse Honey Ale
10 gal American Premium lager - Cream of Three Crops or Oktoberfest
24 bottles of the Raspberry or Cherry ale

I’m going to make the American Premium lager - Cream of Three Crops and a Oktoberfest and give them to my BMC friends to see what one they like more. The wedding will be on September 5th so the Oktoberfest might be a good fit.

 

[Luzer]

Looks like the outside bartending company doesn't have the ball lock connections on their jokey box's. I think I might make my own or use cobra taps.

 

[daksin]

Just pick up some sankey kegs. You're not really going to be able to adapt between their system and corny kegs, and cobra taps just aren't classy! It'd be way cooler to have them pouring your beer right off the taps.