Picking out great wines to go with your meal and building a fun gin bar for the evening are fantastic ways to personalise your wedding bar, but don’t forget to put some thought into the beers too. You can add character and personality to your drinks list with a little thought and imagination in your beer selection.

Beer basics - building a beer list

To start with, you’ll have a feel for the preferences of your friends as well as your own particular favourite brews. If the majority of your beer drinking pals keep it simple with branded lager then there’s clearly not much point in stocking the bar with challenging porters and double IPAs. Choosing a crowd pleaser is as good a place as any to start.

A range of styles

Our experience at The Wedding Arrangers tells us that the majority of your beer drinkers will be looking for a cold lager, especially if you are hosting a summer wedding. Pale ale has increased in popularity and is a great alternative for drinkers looking for a hike up in hoppy flavour. Not all pale ale is expensive craft beer - many good quality breweries now produce pale ales at an affordable price. Traditional real ale is another popular request with most real ale drinkers preferring the beer drawn from a cask (barrel). See below for our thoughts on draft beer -vs- bottles or cans. Guinness is another common suggestion, especially where there is an Irish contingent in attendance. Guinness drinkers are split on the question of canned, bottled or keg and pouring a good pint of the black stuff from draft is a skill most Dublin bar tenders will tell you takes years to perfect. Non-alcoholic beers are increasingly a wedding must have. These beers have developed in quality over the years and are a great alternative to OJ for grown up non-drinkers.

Cask and keg beers at weddings

Whilst we completely agree that draft beers can taste fresher and that there’s little to beat a well conditioned cask ale, these beers can cause a problem when installing a bar at a dry hire wedding. Firstly, you’ll be stocking a bar from scratch, often in a blank canvas space with no fixed bar or any apparatus. Your draft system will therefore need installing especially for your day and at most venues will need collecting on the night, even if your party finishes at 2am. Casks don’t need an electric pump system, but they will need tapping properly, tilting through the evening and, in an ideal world, they need keeping at cellar temperature. If you are stocking the bar yourselves you’ll also need to consider that any beer left over in the barrel will most likely go to waste as you won’t have a draft system or space for a cask at home. Breweries and suppliers also require that full size kegs are returned.

Many breweries now produce branded mini-casks or polypins which are easy to transport and reduce the risk of wastage. If you have a decent number of real ale drinkers at your wedding you could even consider purchasing a range.

If you are set on a draft system for your dry hire wedding, talk to your planner in detail about the associated costs and logistics at an early stage. It’s also worth checking that your venue will allow pressurised gas inside the venue for keg beers and ensuring you position the bar close to mains power.

Telling your story

How can we reflect your story with beer? Is there a great craft brewery in your local area or perhaps close to your venue? Is there a great brewery in your home town? What about the place where you met as a couple? Even if you find that some of these local beers are a touch over budget you may find it fun to serve a case or two during the welcome drinks or earlier in the day whilst guests can appreciate them.

Brew your own beer

The ultimate way of personalising your bar! If you’re not lucky enough to count a brewer amongst your friends why not join a brew class and make your own wedding beer?

Think session!

Drinking at a long wedding day is most definitely a marathon not a sprint. Those high strength continental lagers and craft beers may be delicious, but over the course of a long event those percentage points really add up. Think about beers of a ‘sessionable’ strength - no more than around 4.5% ABV ideally.

How much beer should I buy for my wedding?

As a general rule of thumb, you should consider that around a third of the alcohol consumed at your wedding (excluding any welcome fizz) will be beer. Overall we find that around a third wine, a third spirits and a third beer tends to work. Your friends may start out drinking 2 or 3 drinks per hour, but will slow down after time and for every ‘guzzler’ there’ll be another holding back. Before buying crazy amounts of any drinks talk to an experienced planner who should be glad to help out. At The Wedding Arrangers we also supply bottomless bars for our clients’ weddings at less than the cost of a London pint per guest per hour, and we can personalise them to your tastes. Get in touch today to talk about your wedding bar.

Food, Music, Booze

As London entered Tier 2 of Covid lockdown options for socialising with friends were somewhat curbed. However, it’s not going to stop the fun entirely and we’re looking forward to dinner on the heated terrace at Galvin Bistrot and Bar this week as well as hoping for a cheeky drop in at local bar Untitled to try out their latest pop up, JAE.

Musically we’ve been immersing ourselves in the wildly eclectic Keleketla! album - a reminder of summer beats as we approach the winter nights this weekend.

Until next time - stay safe.

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