Sharing what I did for a wedding:
I brewed six different beers, shooting for a minimum of a case of 22oz bombers each, targeting enough beer for 40-60 people. My goal was to brew either 3 gallon batches, or 6 gallons and split the batch to make two different beers, or brew 8 gallons and keg whatever was not bottled. This is what I shared via the awesome Swap’toberfest.
It worked well to bottle in this case. I know that I needed to focus on presentation, and so I passed up labeling in favor of a ribbon glued around the bottle’s body and a ribbon tied on the neck. Using sharpies and so on just wasn’t going to work, and so I iron-on’d text onto all the ribbon.
It’s all color coordianted. Everything needed to be sailing themed for the wedding, hence the anchors tied onto the ribbons and the “Shipside homebrewery” name:
This was actually for a picnic the day before the wedding, and so I was just getting set up when a literal bus-load of family showed up. It was great to look around and see 50 or so people all having a good time with beers in hand.
Lessons learned:
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get out of the way. Get it all set-up and let’m figure it out
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lots of great tap-houses and Belgian beer exposure in America; people love to talk beer and want something interesting
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regardless of how creative the beers are, there’s always contingents that want only a light Pilsner or a strong super hoppy IPA
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in this case the wedding couple asked that no one get smashed and so most everything was around 5% ABV. But, there’s always a few who really really really want that bold IPA
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for those who can’t or don’t like beer, having something Gin-based was important. If I did it again, I’d make a pitcher of Zombie and have that available
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it was a special time of seeing all the family together for a very rare event. A number of people wanted ribbons untied to take with them afterwards, and it was also fun to hand-out the remaining bottles
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last but not least, having the wedding couple participate in the making and naming of the beers was important. Everything beer-wise was sailing themed and the wedding itself was heavily Hawaiian themed. Aloha!
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Mike