Working out how many kegs to buy for a wedding bar...

[R.O.S.S.I]

Tying the knot this summer and we've decided we want to run the bar for our wedding and its my task in figuring out how much booze to buy so that we don't run out.

We're hitting a stumbling point however when it comes to figuring out how many kegs to buy.

Were getting all of the equipment from a supplier and he gave me a rough estimation to work out drinks, saying if you had 200 guests you will need an average of 400 drinks per hour as everyone will drink 2 drinks per hour, but I think that is a bit keen given people will already have consumed a fair bit of wine with the meals, fizz for toasts and then bottle beers and fizz earlier on.

We were planning on having a lager, a session/pale ale and a cask ale on tap and my gut instinct is to go 2:1:1 as lager tends to be the clear fav at weddings imo.

But if it were your event, how would you work out how many kegs you need? I'm not averse to running out of something later on as we can have a backup supply of bottles and there will still be spirits and mixers left plus any surplus wines.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

It's a bit of a minefield isn't it.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

Whatever you think, double it, then double it again, if it's free, it goes quick. We did free drinks across our 3 day wedding in Poland and had to do a lot of top ups.

Yeh, i'm half inclined to just make a guess and have some bottles as back up if anything runs out.
I also think as its a free bar, once something runs out people will just move onto something else.

No lager? Pale ale it is.
No Pale ale? G&T me up.

I find people tend not to be too picky when its free and just take what they want.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

How long is the event for, or how many hours the bar open?

We were thinking of opening the bar after the wedding breakfast, between 5pm and 6pm, for the day guests.

Evening guests arrive from 7pm (of which there is only likely to be around a max of 30).

Last orders at 11pm with booting out time at midnight, so a good 5-6 hours of open bar time.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

I can drink though, at a party, probably the equivalent of 3 pints an hour, very much depends what type of beer, it was some Carlsberg (insert any generic light mass produced **** lager) then probably.

I wouldnt drink a stronger IPA like that I'd be completely ******, but even then I could go through, hmmmmm, at a party, 6 pints of stronger beer?

Was thinking of having something like the following:

• Madri 4.6%, Estrella Damm 4.6% or Estrella Galicia 4.7% for the lager
• Beavertown Neck Oil 4.3% for the Session IPA
• and not decided on cask ale, maybe Doom Bar, Tribute or something local to South Wales.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

For the OP can you not do sale or return and then buy a **** ton?

We can do on the wine, but obviously not on kegs.
If we were going to do a full bottle bar we would just buy a shed load of bottles and return what we don't use, so could do this on the backups I guess!

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

Working out how many kegs to buy for a wedding bar...​

saying if you had 200 guests you will need an average of 400 drinks per hour

Wrong..... not all 200 guests will be drinkers. Gaurenteed.
Out of them all do you know who will actually be drinking? Have you done an audit?

Agree, and once we have all RSVP's in we will have a quick scout through as there will be a large number of older guests who I know won't drink that much, then some guests who don't drink at all for various reasons.

What system do they have there. If its something like draughmaster or similar then the kegs are smaller and you should be able to return them if unused

We will be having a proper beer system installed with stillage and gas, so similar to what you'd see in a proper venue, albeit on a smaller scale. We're looking at 50l kegs for these generally.

Obvs he is trying to sell to you but I'd err on the side of caution here and go with his advice in so far as it's far better to have too much and simply take some home after than it is to run out of beer or wine at a wedding, that would be pretty shambolic.

We had plenty of drinks left over after my sister's wedding, you don't necessarily know what everyone and their +1 is going to want to drink. Ditto to if you have some evening guests - if you've hired your own venue/are doing your own planning (which would seem to be the case if you're sourcing alcohol yourself) then, save for any fire regs putting a hard ceiling on the number of people you're kinda free to throw out an open invite for evening guests to anyone at work etc.. who fancies coming along too.

I'd plan to expect to end up having to take a load of drinks home with you the next day but what precisely you end up taking home is going to be a bit uncertain.

Yeh he was saying it more along the lines of if he was running the bar that someone had hired him to provide for he would estimate for X amount as it would be extremely unprofessional for him to run out. Whereas with us, it doesn't really matter if we run out of some things later into the night and in my view isn't really much of a faux pas, considering its been free all day anyway.

The only thing with using kegs is i'd be a bit miffed if we ended up opening a keg and it not getting drunk. I'm not sure how long they stay "fresh" for but I imagine the supplier will be coming to collect his equipment the following day and doing clean down so it will end up being wasted, unless we extended the hire on it and kept it at our house for it to be supped the next day.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

that - hows many are driving ... and teetolling is rising in under 30s'
I'd be think about the interesting non alcoholic provision ... squashes ....

There wont be too many driving. The wedding isn't in a remote place per se but the majority of guests will be driving in for the day and staying locally within the town, and of the handful of people who live locally to the venue they will all be getting taxis. So shouldn't be too many drivers. We will have some Schloer and squash type drinkers for the non drinkers and few children in attendance.