I’ve been approached about brewing for a wedding coming at the end of July. Seeing this as a great opportunity to test my home-brewing skills against the masses, I of course accepted the challenge.

Thankfully the host will also be supplying commercial beer in addition to my beer, which will total 15 gallons. I’ll be making 10 gallons of my blonde ale and 5 gallons of my smoked wheat.

Brewing for a Wedding – Planning

This requires a pretty quick turnaround so time is very short on this one. I got my ingredients ordered, and the last batch should be ready just in time. The smoked wheat ale only needs 1.5 weeks in a fermenter, so that’s a big help to the timeline. I also plan on brewing this beer last, as it should be consumed the freshest (not that any of the beer isn’t going to be fresh).

Tip: If you’re having the “client” buy your ingredients, remember to calculate the cost of propane and caps etc. Unfortunately you can’t make a profit for brewing for a wedding or other event, you can still get some great experience.

Brewing for a Wedding – Execution

My Calendar is marked, and everything will be done just in time for the wedding (this includes bottle conditioning time).









6/27/16: To kick things off I brewed 5/10 gallons of Blonde Ale, and I’ll fit in the other 5 gallon brew day into the 4th of July Weekend. I brewed the first half after work, which made for a late night, but I needed to get things rolling sooner rather than later.

7/3/16 Pressing on: on July 3rd I brewed the last 5 gallons of the blonde ale.

7/18/16 Pressing on: Bottling one batch tonight and one batch tomorrow night. All ten gallons will be ready for the wedding. Another update is the Smoked wheat is actually not for the wedding but they’re still having me brew it. So it’s just the 10 gallons of blonde ale for the wedding.

The final numbers on this beer are as follows

SG 1.054

FG 1.010

ABV: 5.75%

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