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My Wedding Setup + Questions

Kegging
#1

Hey Everyone, I am looking for advice/suggestions on my keg setup. I am getting married at the family farm on September 1st of this year, so basically we are doing everything ourselves including suppling beer. The goal will be to dispense two home brew kegs and two commercial kegs at one time. The third home brew keg will be for if either of the first two blows. I plan on running two gas lines out of my keezer to feed the commercial kegs which will be sitting in a big ice bucket. Here is my list of kegging equipment:

3 x Ball Lock Corny Kegs (10 gallons of Patersbier, 5 gallons of Petite Sasion)
2 x five-pound CO2 tanks, one fully pressured, one has dispensed approx. 6 five gallon kegs.
1 x Double gauge regulator
1x Three way distributor
2 x (Shanks + Perlick taps)
1 x Five cubic foot keezer; fits two kegs and both CO2 tanks + digital temp controller
2 x Commercial Sanke connections
2 x picnic taps
Misc amount of gas lines and 5/16ths beverage line

http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff11 ... gSetup.jpg

I haven’t figured out how much commercial beer to purchase and then what to buy. I’m thinking some Bell’s Oberon and then something more macro focused, Schell’s Pilsner.

MY QUESTIONS:
What extra washers, misc parts, tools should I have on hand in the event of something getting wrecked?
How much CO2 should I have on hand (I know this is a "how much do you plan on dispensing question but we’ll get to that)
How long should the beverage line be? (I’ve heard you need a minimum amount of hosing from keg to tap to prevent foaming, what is the min distance?)
I was told all commercial kegs (both craft and macro, and all sizes) come carbonated, all I need to do is set my regulator to 10lbs and dispense, that sound right?
What else should I consider?

#2

If you don’t already have Sanke couplers, you could go with hand pumps for the comm. kegs. They are carbonated. JMO, with the Patersbier and saison on tap, I wouldn’t go with anything macro focused. Let them guess what beers are yours. At our wedding we had a 1/2 bbl, and a 1/4 bbl. Most of my family aren’t beer drinkers though. Congratulations. :cheers:

#3

My advice is to train someone how it all works. The last thing you want to be doing on your wedding day is spending 30 minutes troubleshooting one of your draft lines.

#4

+1 We had a friend serving drinks.

#5

Why use a hand pump and have to dump anything that doesn’t get consumed?

#6

The sanke’s are bought so I’m going to use them (and probably sell one after the wedding). But yes to the bartender, I think I might ask my brother-in-laws dad to take that up. Anything else I’m missing? I spent the afternoon building a rolling cart for the keezer to sit in.

#7

Why use a hand pump and have to dump anything that doesn’t get consumed?[/quote]

Cheaper than buying everything for one occasion. If he plans on keeping commercial kegs on tap, or kegging in Sankes, by all means, buy. I’ve never had a problem with beer not getting consumed, though. :wink:

#8

Here’s the keezer:

#9

Congratulations!

Amount of beer is really hard to calculate. Depends a lot on how many people come and how much they drink. I was at a wedding with 100 people and we didn’t even get through a 1/2 barrel. But I’ve been to weddings with 250 people that made it through 4 1/2 barrels.

#10

Yeah, I’m really struggling with how much to buy, four firkins beer store told me 3 per person assuming some won’t drink any and some will drink lots. Then I’m trying to decide on all craft or macro, plus my 15 gallons of home brew.

#11

Ok, less than two weeks away and past the bachelor party, so now it’s safe to order the kegs for this shin dig. We are doing only beer and wine. Right now we have roughly 130 people coming. Here is what I’m thinking of ordering for kegs:

Commercial:
Schell’s Pilsner 1/2 barrel (15 gallons)
Bell’s Oberon 1/2 barrel (15 gallons)
Pabst Blue Ribbon 1/2 barrel (15 gallons)
Summit EPA 1/6th barrel (7.5 gallons)

Homebrew:
Patersbier 10 gallons
Sasion d’Ete 5 gallons

My fiancee and I went back and forth on the PBR, but I think we need it to keep the peace with the BMC crowed and ultimately, I just want people to have fun.

Based on my math, if I were to order all those kegs we would have 730 12 ounce beers. Which is a little over 5 per person. Should I get rid of a keg? A part of me doesn’t want to be stuck with a ton of this after the wedding, but with the sanke connections I can keep it on CO2 and it should be fine. Thoughts?

#12

Personally, I think you have way more than you need. Probably half the people will drink wine. Some won’t drink. How many kids? Just my opinion, unless you want a ton left over.

#13

Congrats on the Wedding. I like your beer choices, PBR not just for BMC drinkers, even some of us crazy craft brewers like to unwind to a tall boy on occasion. I would say you probably have more than enough beer, but better safe than sorry. Plus like you said with the Sanke connections you should be able to keep the beer around for a little while. Besides as a fellow Minneapolis resident, I’m sure you could find plenty of local Forum members more than willing to do a little post honeymoon finish off some kegs, wedding celebration.

#14

Congrats on the wedding.

I too just got married (8-18) and supplied beer for the reception. I’ll give you my numbers for another bit of perspective.

About 105-110 people at the wedding.

Only my beer and some wine (and bubbly). No liquor.

Ceremony at 4:30, reception following. The last people didn’t leave the campfire until 2:30am. Roughly 8 or 9 hours of people drinking, but it was really concentrated from 6pm-12 or 1am.

I made a 4 tap kegerator. 10 gallons each of 4 varieties. American Wheat, tea infused pale ale, IPA, Brown ale. We had a few cases of Yuengling cans available if all the beer kicked, but we didn’t need them.

The bottom line:

37 of the 40 gallons were consumed. I came home with 3 gallons of Brown ale and 7 empty kegs.

Wife loves the beer and was very supportive of the whole thing, and we got friends to man the taps during the busy hours (which was very helpful).

Have fun!

Cliff

#15

Thanks Cliff, here’s what I settled on:

15 gallons of PBR
15 gallons of Oberon
7.5 gallons of Summit EPA
10 gallons of Patersbier
5 gallons of Sasion

Based on what you said, we are a bit over. I might pickup a few cases (the liquor store is giving me 15% off cases since we bought three kegs) just to be sure. I am 31 and most of my friends are similar ages however they act like they are still in college not sure how that compares to your group.

We are also doing mixed varieties of the finest french wines: 2 Buck Chuck

#16

Thought of another question, any spare parts I should have on hand in the event something goes wrong with a keg or the plumbing involved with the distributor? As an absolute backup for the sanke kegs I’m going to rent a tapper from the liquor store but I don’t want to use it unless I have to.

#17

I had an extra CO2 tank on hand, and some extra beer line, but that is about it. That being said, I only had my kegging system with me-not commercial kegs. A few big plastic pitchers were helpful for carrying beer to tables and letting foam settle a bit after switching to a new keg.

I’m 30, but probably only 1/4 to 1/3 of of the crowd was in their mid 20’s through mid 30’s. We all had a great time and drank plenty, but as the night wore on, more and more went to their tents, etc… If you know you have a bunch of friends planning on really going for it, your settled numbers of beer are likely right on.

Very little wine was consumed, so your investment in 2 buck chuck was probably a great idea…

Good luck,
Cliff

#18

Everything went well with the wedding. I put the Boulevard Wheat, PBR, Patersbier and Sasion on tap first. My kegs were the first to be emptied and I had a lot of compliments on the beer (although no one could pronounce either of them :slight_smile: ). From there, the Boulevard was emptied, then a 1/6th barrel of Summit EPA was emptied. We almost finished the PBR and the Oberon had maybe 4 gallons left in it the next day. We had a make shift bar, I’ll try to remember to throw some photos up when we get them back from the photographer, but here’s our sign:

#19

Glad to hear, Average Joe. Thats a lot of drinking. Well done.

Cheers!

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