Brew Variety For Party

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@mckenry you might be right, prob easier to buy a couple of slabs of light instead of trying to make it then I can focus more on the better stuff
 
@mckenry you might be right, prob easier to buy a couple of slabs of light instead of trying to make it then I can focus more on the better stuff

Betcha you'll end up with 1.5 cases of light leftover
 
I've been brewing for my Wedding in January and all guests (130ppl) are super keen on what I'll be serving.
It'll be co-brewed with another member here in this forum and this is what I'll be serving.

Running 6x 19L cornies with 2 triple font taps.
Galaxy Australian Pale Ale
Blood Orange Ginger Beer
Ginger Beer
Amber Ale.
Darker Amarillo Ale Amber fALE
Wheat Hefe

In Bottles as backup/extras
Galaxy/Citra/Amarillo Summer Ale
Galaxy Australian Pale Ale

Purchased Insipid Water
Pure Blonde
Coronas
maybe something else

Knowing who will be at the Wedding and how they drink is very
important in deciding what to make, how much to make and what to buy.
I'll have 160L of "Hand-Crafted Ales" which should see then through the
reception along with wine and spirits.
 
Knowing who will be at the Wedding and how they drink is very
important in deciding what to make, how much to make and what to buy.
I'll have 160L of "Hand-Crafted Ales" which should see then through the
reception along with wine and spirits.


IMHO this is the paragraph that sums it up. You need to know the drinking habits of the guests. If you don't then find out. Cater for that with a little bit added on for safety and your laughing.
 
Guys your advice has been priceless, never catered for something with homebrew so this is a huge learning curve.

Pretty much decided on 8 cornys, 5 pale and 3 IPA, a slab or 2 of light and a few (3) slabs of home brew as backup and obviously if there is anything left, I get to drink it anyway :D
 
And a goal should be to get the wine drinkers drinking your fine ales ;)

Once one of their crowd tries one of your fine ales and confirms to the rest "this is noice", they'll all try it... except the real stubborn ones
 
Sneak in a massively late hopped beer in there too I reckon, something to awaken the hop senses on the guests.
 
:icon_vomit:
I agree with most of these guys , do a heap of aussie style pale so to keep the scrutineers at bay and a couple of fancy beers so you can still enjoy your party.

Lol Light beer is that cheap just buy a couple of cases for sure, Cascade's light is actually not bad at all for a colourless, tastless, alcohol lacking garbage drink.

Your a good man for wanting to cater for such a crowd and Id be stoked if one of my mates done that. Good effort.
 
:icon_vomit:
I agree with most of these guys , do a heap of aussie style pale so to keep the scrutineers at bay and a couple of fancy beers so you can still enjoy your party.

Lol Light beer is that cheap just buy a couple of cases for sure, Cascade's light is actually not bad at all for a colourless, tastless, alcohol lacking garbage drink.

Your a good man for wanting to cater for such a crowd and Id be stoked if one of my mates done that. Good effort.


If I had to go light I'd go Boags Premium light over Cascade. No Carlton taste.
 
Having recently catered my brother-out-law's wedding, there were a few things that I didn't think about, which seem more obvious in hindsight.

You're going to need to plan the beers so they have enough conditioning time. Going through the hottest part of the year shortly, you'll probably want to keep them cool too, so make sure you have enough cold storage space. All this time and kegs taken up means that you'll have a lot less for personal consumption over that period! Not only that, but it takes a while to restock (I'm only just getting back to a level I'm happy with and the wedding was 10 weeks ago :eek: ). It's good that you're thinking about it now, but bear in mind what season we're about to enter.

If you don't have someone "manning" the kegerator(s), prepare yourself for a lot of wasted beer. This was the most frustrating part for me; knowing how much time and effort went into making the beer and then seeing people towards the end of the night walking away from the kegerator with the tap still running. It really dampened my mood :angry: . I reckon I would have lost about 10L out of 6 taps over the course of the night (judging by drip tray emptying), and at least for the first half of the night, one of the caterers did most of the pouring. Some people just can't see past homebrew being "cheap" and are blinded to the waste. You might also get the bartender wanna-be's who think it's cool to always let the tap pour for a few seconds before putting a glass under it. Make sure you have someone to at least keep an eye on the drip trays and clean up any mess before it gets out of hand.

For what it's worth, I made 6 beers
50L Fat Yak knock-off (outsourced)
19L honey/lemon/ginger spiced wheat ale
19L Green Bullet hopped pale ale
19L Eurolager (think Becks)
19L Scottish Export (something more malt focused)
19L Chocolate porter
plus ~13L bottled ginger beer

There were about 80-90 guests with around half being beer drinkers. The beers are listed in order of how much was drunk out of the kegs, and we went through about 110L all up. I was pretty nervous at the start, but the beers ended up being very well received. Having said that, I'm not in a hurry to do anything like that again in the near future!

Cheers,
tallie
 

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