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

I think making sure you have some cans or bottles as backup is a good plan.aybe cut back a bit on the barrels then. at our wedding btw we had bloody loads of red wine left. the white was gone quite early on
 
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R.O.S.S.I said:
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.
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Hahaha nice, where is my invite?
 
BUDFORCE said:
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?
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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 said:
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.
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Yeah good choices actually.
 
Orangeade said:
For the OP can you not do sale or return and then buy a **** ton?
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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!
 

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?
 
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
 
I'd probably go with about 600 pints, maybe 500 is there's a backup. Most women won't drink any/many then amongst lads there'll be drivers and those that don't drink. Say ~100 beer drinkers and that gives you enough for some to have 1-2 and some who'll have 8-10.
I vastly overestimated how much people would drink at our wedding - we were drinking wedding wine and champagne for a year or two after :)
 
R.O.S.S.I said:
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.
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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.
 
GaryTheSnail said:
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?
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that - hows many are driving ... and teetolling is rising in under 30s'
I'd be think about the interesting non alcoholic provision ... squashes ....
 
GaryTheSnail said:

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?
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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.

mattyg said:
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
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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.

dowie said:
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.
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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.
 
jpaul said:
that - hows many are driving ... and teetolling is rising in under 30s'
I'd be think about the interesting non alcoholic provision ... squashes ....
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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.
 
I don't know how much was drunk at our wedding because our venue never got round to charging us. But, roughly, they drunk their way through a keg of pilsner, at least four cases of ale, a case or two of cider, four bottles of good single malt whisky, some amount of other spirits, and about 20 bottles of wine. That was with a touch under a hundred guests.

But for kegs, we were able to return them if unopened. Can you find somewhere that does that? Then you can just get extra.
 
Scougar said:
Pfft. I had a non-alcoholic wedding. lol
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i hate weddings at the best of time........ the booze is generally the only highlight.

the mrs is not impressed with me on this but to me a good friend is someone who only invites me to the evening doo :D

our wedding was centred around the booze... top tip tho. the thank you presents........... maybe not put bottles of vodka in the thankyou bags on some of the tables......... a few of my mates didnt make it past 9pm :D (some of the wives were not happy at all)
 
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