Brewing for a wedding!

So I just got engaged and have now started planning my wedding. I am wanting to brew all the beer and wine for the big day, but I was wondering if anyone has done this and has any advice?

In particular, any equipment, or as I live in Manchester what you guys think of U Brew and going all grain over premium kits?

All grain is much better in my opinion and cheaper, although don't know what ubrew charge.

Think about what will you brew, a lot of people are put off my the word homebrew or just like bland lager.

How will you serve it? Will the venue let you provide you own alcohol? What about transportation? Yeast settlement?

I brewed a lager (with ale yeast) as favours for the men for my wedding.

I brewed a couple of AG batches with a buddy for his wedding. If you haven't done AG yet, give it a couple of tries first to get your head round the process. Anyway, after thinking it through, we factored in a few consideration:

(1) Brew for the guests, not yourself. Something light in colour and body, not too strong in ABV or bitterness, and clear. The wedding demographic aren't going to appreciate a smoked Imperial stout or a screw-your-face-up American hop-bomb.

(2) Personalise it. My buddy is Australian, his wife German and the wedding was in Cambridge, so we did recipes that mixed Australian and German ingredients and techniques. We settled on doing Greg Hughes Spring Ale but subbing for Galaxy and Hallertauer Hersbrucker hops, and we did a pseudo-lager with Summer hops. Galaxy and Summer are Ozzy, Munich malt and Hallertauer Hersbrucker are German, and Maris Otter was developed in Cambridge.

(3) Keg, cornies if possible, but we used King Kegs. Guests aren't used to bottle conditioned beers and would just glug from the bottle. You don't want a queue for the toilet. This was the first time I used kegs, and unfortunately the pseudo-lager leaked, had to be reprimed three times and was flat and nasty in the end. We didn't serve it. The Galaxy one was great though, and didn't last long at all.

(4) Think about how it will be stored and served. Moving a full batch in a keg will stir up less sediment if you have to move it. We were lucky in that we could keep the keg in the catering fridge at the venue and didn't have to move it very far, and it was kept cool in the shade, so was nice on the hot summer day.

(5) Make sure the venue will allow you to serve homebrew. Many won't if they have a bar.

I have brewed twice for weddings, most recently for my brother and sister-in-law a month ago.

I would say you already have some great advice. Definitely serve it from a keg, and take care to eliminate any sediment from it, as it will inevitably get shaken up on the journey and, as happened for me, when the caterers turn up and decide to move everything around!

I brewed 2 AG beers, gave them a good 2 weeks in primary to make sure they had finished, transferred to a secondary and cold crashed this to 3 degrees for at least a week before filling the kegs from the secondaries. I used plastic bottom tap kegs and I didn't prime them on the basis that the beer didn't need to last, and priming would only start the formation of sediment again.

I filled the kegs with CO2 from a Hambleton Bard cylinder before filling with beer, then kept them at 3 deg C, adding a little CO2 each day to get some condition into the beer.

I kept them chilled like this until I left home the day before the wedding. Luckily the reception was in a marquee which I could access the evening before the "do" so I could set them up. The aforementioned caterers shifted them while I was at the ceremony but, fortunately, there was so little sediment in the kegs that the beer remained clear.

The only issue was having to add a little CO2 from the Hambleton Bard cylinder every so often to aid dispense. This was an alien concept to most of the punters there so needed some attention. With hindsight I would have got a large CO2 cylinder and regulator and used top pressure or vented the top of the keg and let air in, on the basis that most of the beer wouldn't make it to the end of the evening anyway (and I was right on that one!).

Fortunately this wedding was in a marquee in a private garden, so persuading the venue to let me serve it wasn't an issue.

I had previously brought primed kegs to a wedding, and found that the beer had got cloudy during the journey there. After a couple nobody seemed to mind, however!

Hope this helps and good luck. It can add a really personal touch to a wedding to donate a few brews to the proceedings.

[FONT=&quot]I brewed some beer for a friend’s wedding in July. They were used for wedding favours for the male guests and seemed to go down very well. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]I use corny kegs so could bottle from the keg eliminating any sediment (using a beer gun). Which was a good thing as most people drank straight from the bottle. Decided to go for a simple English Pale Ale and got a lot of compliments about it. I did brew a test batch before the final version which I was glad about, the first batch wasn’t up to scratch. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]How many guests are you planning on brewing for and what is the bar setup going to be like?

[/FONT]

Thanks for the advice so far. We're probably going to have 60 or less, so may stick with bottles as I have never touched a keg and don't want to be left with one after as I'm trying to drink less (hence not brewing much these days).

Do you think people will be ok with a good few kits (like festival) when bottled and aged four 6 months?

I brewed for my sister's wedding recently. It was only a token contribution of 40 bottles but they went down incredibly well. I wouldn't want to brew all the beer/wine for a wedding, you'd be brewing non-stop to keep up with demand.

I bottled mine and did what I could to avoid excessive sediment. I think the best decision I made was to use the Wilko Gervin ale yeast (Nottingham yeast by a different name). It sticks solid to the bottle and even though they got pretty shook up, they still poured clear.

If you're looking for a recipe, I made a session IPA which went down very well with the crowds.

I think the best decision I made was to use the Wilko Gervin ale yeast (Nottingham yeast by a different name). It sticks solid to the bottle and even though they got pretty shook up, they still poured clear.

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Excellent! I will brew a trial beer this weekend and see how the flavour of the year effects the taste!

I will also buy more brew buckets so I can brew 70 litres at a go!

Kyral210 said:

Thanks for the advice so far. We're probably going to have 60 or less, so may stick with bottles as I have never touched a keg and don't want to be left with one after as I'm trying to drink less (hence not brewing much these days).

Do you think people will be ok with a good few kits (like festival) when bottled and aged four 6 months?

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I'd have thought if you're going to be brewing for a wedding you'd want it to be something pretty special, a kit will give something decent for drinking at home but I, personally, wouldn't serve it at a special occasion.

Hmmm, I have a garden... How expensive is it to start all grain brewing?

What about stove top extract? Is that an option?

Kyral210 said:

Hmmm, I have a garden... How expensive is it to start all grain brewing?

What about stove top extract? Is that an option?

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All grain Brew in a bag (BIAB) costs maybe �£100 for a starter kit. Look at the Homebrew Company or Getterbrewed for basic set-ups, or check ebay for second hand gear.

Grain is cheap, hops vary from cheap to expensive. i've found the Homebrew company the cheapest overall, particularly for grain. Excluding equipment costs I reckon I can make 42x500ml bottles of beer for about �£17. That's for 4.5KG of grain and 200g of nice American hops. If I was making a less hoppy beer it might be more like �£12 per batch but I do like my hoppy beers.

Stove-top extract is another option but is actually the most expensive way of making beer as the cheapest you will find dry malt extract is about �£5 per KG. You will probably need 3-4 KG of DME plus some specialty grains and hops making it more like �£25-�£30 per batch.

The big drawback to all grain is the time it takes. A typical brewday is 4-6 hours and there is a lot more cleaning up to do than with extract/kits. It is definitely worth it for the quality of beer you can produce but to make enough beer for a wedding would be a big ask.

Maybe you could make one or two really special beers and put a couple of growlers of them on each table, a bit like table wine. Glass growlers also look really cool. You can then get a cask of good beer from a local brewery for when your beer has been drunk.

I've got two kits sitting at home with absolutely no inclination to do them since starting all grain brewing, a peco boiler or decent sized stockpot for BIAB would be the only extra expense as it sounds like you have everything else. I would try to workout my likely consumption for the day and overbrew by about 20% keeping the greener beers to the end, this would give any unconsumed a longer shelflife, i would also lean towards providing a corny (can be quite a bit extra cost) filled with a stout if you have stout drinkers coming as well as some turbo ciders in bottles.

I brewed 300 bottles for my wedding which was the biggest "order", and I've brewed for many other friends' & family's parties.

In terms of what to brew, I wanted to brew for myself whilst keeping the "sh*t muncher" drinkers happy, so I made an IPA for those who are into craft beer, pils for those who just want a beer, and a Belgian ale as something a bit different. You'll find all your beer will go, whether it's any good or not, because your friends and family will love drinking beer you have personally made.

For my wedding, I took a couple of days off work and utilised weekends for brewing, and over the course of 2 weeks managed to get 6 batches done (2 of each). I bottled on weekends as it's possible to bottle more than one batch in a day. My system at the time was a standard size which could comfortably produce 23-25L of most types of beers. I made 2 of each in case on batch went wrong I had a back up. Luckily they all came out well so I had a load extra I saved for myself!

I did buy in all the bottles understanding they'd only be used once because I'm not gonna spend my wedding collecting the bottles! Once made and bottled, I boxed them up and ave them to the caterer who left them in storage until the wedding where he put them out long before anyone actually arrived, which gave them some time to settle. I don't think there were any bottle bombs, but I think I also used carbonation drops just to be on the safe side.

Some friends designed the labels for the beers which added a nice touch.

I worked at uBrew and it's a rip off.

You say you live in Manchester, get in touch with Steve at beer nouveau he offers his brewery kit out to use for home brewers or stag/hen party's then the beer can be served at your wedding, he's also just opened up his brewery tap and serves some really good beers.

If you're planning on going down the bottle route consider leaving it in the fermenter for 4 weeks or so before bottling. You'll wind up with a lot less sediment in the bottles.

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Brewing wise while best results can be obtained from AG brewing, the top shelf kits (2 x tins and no sugar additions) can brew beer comparable to those served commercially and better than some..

serving wise while bottling is the cheapest route for all styles being live with a sediment can be problematic serving en mass..

If low-moderate conditioned ales and beers are desired then pressure barrels and even poly pins can make excellent en mass serving solutions especially if intended to go all in one night

for high conditioned beers like lager or smooth flow bitters then you need to serve from high pressure kegs and pub style dispensing systems which is a whole new money pit to set up.

I would suggest the easiest cheapest way to get quality beer should be to brew good quality kits well in advance leaving to settle a good 3weeks in the FV before racking off into ploypins to condition with a minimal conditioning charge of sugar if any. then on the day hire a few beer engines and hook up to the poly pins in turn to pour using a sparkler to provide a head if needed.

you need to aquire the skills to ferment a kit well ie well cleaned and rinsed and sanitised equipment (and rinsed 3x if bleach/chlorine sanitisers are used) and maintain as best you can the optimum fermentation temps to get the best flavour anyway as without these even the most skillfully brewed All grain brew is likely to fail.

good luck..