Wedding Beers and the Big Day

• Post By: Scott
• Date: 10.03.2013
• Category: Personal

Well, the big day has finally come and gone, and we’re officially married. It’s sort of funny how months and months of hard work culminate into one night that goes by in what seems like a flash. Nevertheless, we had an absolutely amazing weekend that we’ll never forget. Vows were said, beers were drank, and laughs were had. Seeing as this is a homebrewing blog, we should probably talk about the beer. I won’t get into too many details about each recipe, as each will have a dedicated post, but let’s cover some of the fun of brewing for a wedding.

 

I normally don’t get nervous serving my beer for friends, family, or even strangers, but these batches had me a little anxious. I don’t think it was so much the expectations, as it was the high risk of catastrophe. So I focused on doing all the little things right (I’ve never purged an empty keg with CO2 half as much as I purged the Enjoy By keg before racking.), and thankfully ended up with three fantastic beers.
The next challenge was how to transport, present, and serve the beer at the reception. As I’ve mentioned in the past, our venue let me serve homebrew, which was great. The problem was in the presentation. Bottling was out of the question, as we had too much going on to bottle ~150 beers. Having the beers on draft sounds like the way to go, but it was tough making a cobbled-together draft system look good. I cringed at the idea of three kegs with cobra taps sitting in the corner on ice. Thankfully my father-in-law put together a beautiful faux-kegerator, which was hollow on the inside. He mounted three shanks and taps, and we kept the beers in a rubbermade tote full of ice behind the hollow box. A mud pan for a drip tray, and a big ‘B’ from Hobby Lobby finished it off. My sister drove the kegs and CO2 tank out from Phoenix, and 40lbs of ice later, we were done. It worked fantastic, and we received numerous compliments on it throughout the night.

 

PS: If anyone in OC is interested in buying the faux-kegerator off of us, please drop me a line. You can see it in the back of the picture below. Comes with 3 taps, 7ft of tubing each, and the liquid-out ball-lock connectors. (The ‘B’ is removable)

Speaking of presentation, I’ve spent entirely too much time in Microsoft Publisher over the past 3 weeks. With that said, the labels we made for each beer were worth the effort. Those were put into some cheap frames from IKEA, which together looked really nice and professional.

 

The beers themselves were a huge hit. Despite the 9.4% ABV, the Enjoy By clone was without a doubt the crowd favorite. That keg kicked in a few short hours. Even those that don’t normally drink IPAs loved it. The Cali Common lasted a bit longer, but it too was floating by the end of the night. The hoppy wheat was last on the list, but only about one gallon was left when I checked on the kegs in the morning.

As for the wedding, it was fantastic. The weather was beautiful, and the views from Laguna Beach never disappoint. I’d like to thank all of our friends and family for coming to celebrate with us. Double thanks to the wedding party, our friends, and all of our family that helped make this happen. We really couldn’t have done it without you guys. Finally, cheers to my beautiful bride, as all this home brewing crap is technically your fault =). Thanks for being so supportive. I love you babe.