This post was contributed by Urban Oyster co-founder Dave Naczycz.
I was recently married to a wonderful woman that I had been dating for three years. She had been behind me 100% through the start up of Urban Oyster and into the creation of our very first tours. She had endured my growing fascination with the world of craft beer as we launched our Brewed in Brooklyn Tour. Fortunately for both her and me, she also has had a life-long love affair with beer. So when we decided to get married, it only made sense that beer would play a prominent role in our nuptials. The world of wedding planning can be a soul-crushing experience for even a veteran planner, and most of the typical wedding stuff is about as creative and original as Superman 4. The options you see in most wedding magazines for dresses, flowers, cakes, and food all seem designed to create the same cookie cutter wedding – and you have to pay the equivalent of an Ivy League tuition for the privilege of doing so. My future wife and I were not so enamored with this style of wedding, so we opted for the do-it-yourself variety where we, or a close friend or relative, personally designed most of our wedding. The bar component at a wedding has wonderful potential for creative ideas and personalization, so I took charge of that aspect of the preparations. "Do what you love" is my motto.
I was recently married to a wonderful woman that I had been dating for three years. She had been behind me 100% through the start up of Urban Oyster and into the creation of our very first tours. She had endured my growing fascination with the world of craft beer as we launched our Brewed in Brooklyn Tour. Fortunately for both her and me, she also has had a life-long love affair with beer. So when we decided to get married, it only made sense that beer would play a prominent role in our nuptials. The world of wedding planning can be a soul-crushing experience for even a veteran planner, and most of the typical wedding stuff is about as creative and original as Superman 4. The options you see in most wedding magazines for dresses, flowers, cakes, and food all seem designed to create the same cookie cutter wedding – and you have to pay the equivalent of an Ivy League tuition for the privilege of doing so. My future wife and I were not so enamored with this style of wedding, so we opted for the do-it-yourself variety where we, or a close friend or relative, personally designed most of our wedding. The bar component at a wedding has wonderful potential for creative ideas and personalization, so I took charge of that aspect of the preparations. "Do what you love" is my motto.
Toasting the newlyweds with German Weiss
The first decision we made about the bar was to limit it to beer and wine – for simplicity mostly, but also to avoid any raging drunk relatives or friends. A futile effort, we were later to learn. A good friend of ours is a wine distributor, so he took care of that end, supplying us with excellent Italian and French wines. That left the beer. My first objective was to have some of my favorite beers from right here in Brooklyn at the wedding. We have wonderful relationships with all three breweries here in Brooklyn, and we also love their beer. I came up with what I thought was a nice spread of beer options: six cases of Brooklyn Brewery Beer in bottles – two of their Pennant Ale, two of their Lager, and two of the Black Chocolate Stout. The first four cases are both pretty accessible beer and would be served at our rehearsal dinner. I knew they would be loved by craft and macro beer drinkers alike. The Black Chocolate Stout, which is an imperial stout coming in at 10.5% ABV, was my special gift to my wife, who loves dark, sweet beers like that one.
I then turned my attention to kegs. Two of my absolute favorite beers are not bottled: Brooklyn Blast, which is the Brooklyn Brewery's double IPA, and Kelso Pilsner, which is, simply put, the best craft pilsner in the U.S. in my humble opinion. I also knew that the average beer drinker, who probably wasn’t ready for Blast or Black Chocolate Stout, would find Kelso Pilsner a lot friendlier. Now the challenge with the kegged beer was this: our wedding was taking place at the beach where we had rented a house for the entire week. The wedding was at the start of the week, and we would be hanging out with friends and family for the rest of the week, so I knew that we’d need beer not just for the wedding but for the balance of the time we were there.
I then turned my attention to kegs. Two of my absolute favorite beers are not bottled: Brooklyn Blast, which is the Brooklyn Brewery's double IPA, and Kelso Pilsner, which is, simply put, the best craft pilsner in the U.S. in my humble opinion. I also knew that the average beer drinker, who probably wasn’t ready for Blast or Black Chocolate Stout, would find Kelso Pilsner a lot friendlier. Now the challenge with the kegged beer was this: our wedding was taking place at the beach where we had rented a house for the entire week. The wedding was at the start of the week, and we would be hanging out with friends and family for the rest of the week, so I knew that we’d need beer not just for the wedding but for the balance of the time we were there.
If I got regular pump picnic taps, the beer would probably only last a day or two at the most. That meant we needed a CO2 system for the beer. Strangely enough my fiancé did not want to lay out the $500+ it would have cost us to buy even the cheapest CO2 taps. So that left me looking for a way to rent a jockey box (a tap system made out of a cooler) for the week. Now, if you live on the west coast it seems that it is not a problem to rent a jockey box. However on the east coast, for whatever reason, they are simply not available. Luckily for me my friend Will Stephens at Beer Menus had a friend willing to loan me one for the weekend so we did indeed have fresh, cold, well carbonated beer for the entire week.
The last piece of beer creativity I injected into the wedding was to brew our own beer. I can’t recommend this enough to anyone planning to get married. Even if you don’t homebrew yet, homebrewing is so easy and turns out such great beer and there is nothing like the feeling of serving your own beer at your wedding. Not to mention your guests are very impressed. We took it one step further by eliminating the champagne toast and instead doing a homebrew toast.
Elwood the dog was not invited to the wedding, but he got to contribute to making the wedding beer.
The style we ended up making was a German Weiss, which I simply called our Wedding Wheat. We made three 5-gallon batches, which lent a little variety to our beer as no batch is exactly alike. It was also insurance, as our third batch ended up going bad for reasons I have still not been able to determine. It may have been the result of an overheated mash, but I’m not certain. However, the two good batches we had were more than enough, and they were absolutely delicious with that wonderful banana and clove quality of all German Weiss beers, and a sweet maltiness resulting from my own love of stronger beers using more malt.
We were so excited about the beer for the wedding we made little signs for each beer with descriptions and alcohol content on there so people would know what they were drinking. Unfortunately, one of the relatives at the party took a liking to the Black Chocolate Stout and downed three bottles before we even served appetizers. Needless to say, that guest made an early exit as that beer packs a wallop. So much for not having liquor. Other than that one mishap though, everyone loved the beers, and we converted a number of people to the beers we brought.
We were so excited about the beer for the wedding we made little signs for each beer with descriptions and alcohol content on there so people would know what they were drinking. Unfortunately, one of the relatives at the party took a liking to the Black Chocolate Stout and downed three bottles before we even served appetizers. Needless to say, that guest made an early exit as that beer packs a wallop. So much for not having liquor. Other than that one mishap though, everyone loved the beers, and we converted a number of people to the beers we brought.
So overall, choosing local beers and making our own beer made wedding planning more fun, it certainly made the wedding better as we enjoyed quality brew all night – and weren’t subjected to Miller or Bud Light – and it provided one more memory for me and my new wife to take away from what was a wonderful day.
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If you would like to follow this blog, subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for updates via email in the box above on the right (this is separate from the Urban Oyster email newsletter). For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Dave Naczycz or post a comment.