The Wedding Recap

After the fun of brewing and kegging the beer for my wedding, the day came for our guests to experience it.  We used forced carbonation for the kegs, thinking it was more reliable than natural carbonation.  More reliable as in easier to control. 

When we woke up on Saturday morning, took the kegs to the reception hall and picked up a couple of jockey boxes (one for the homebrew kegs, one for the Yuengling), we found that the homebrew tasted a bit under carbonated.  The beer tasted good, but the lower carbonation didn't make it as drinkable as we were hoping.  My brother called his homebrew buddies, seeing if they had a quick fix.  With no solution in sight, we just went with it, ordered a macro light lager to make sure we had drinkable beer, and continued our set up.

The jockey boxes came set up for macro half kegs.  Not being the same as our homebrew connections, we tried multiple fixes, but had to settle on one jockey box, and the homebrew being poured from our simple taps.  The gas on the Yuengling and Bud Light was screwy all day, but we settled on filling pitchers and pouring (which probably made it go faster for the guests) and the homebrew from the tap.  All in all, it was very successful.

The homebrew Oktoberfest Ale was tapped first.  We had multiple people come up to us to say how well it tasted.  Once the beer was on ice, the carbonation really showed up.  It became the super-drinkable beer that we knew it would be.  After the Oktoberfest kicked, the Wheat (with coriander) came on tap.  This beer was also very drinkable, and it was enjoyed by those who favor Blue Moon.

I was extremely happy that the wedding and reception went so well, and couldn't be happier.  I feel we turned a lot of people's head with our homebrew.  I think they came into the reception thinking it would be some "cooking lager", but came away knowing that people can brew great beer out of there home (this is something that beer geeks know, but I feel the general public doesn't believe).

I rate my beer an A+.

I didn't take any pictures of the bar (full bar, two friends were bartenders), but here is our favor (chocolate/caramel apples) and the room all set up (we had to do everything, way too much work).