Weddings Tap Craft Beer Craze

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Toasting the bride and groom with Champagne is de rigueur. But recently, couples hip to craft beers are shaking up the wedding reception scene by insisting on serving the brews they love on their big day, everything from local ales to home brews concocted by the bride and groom.It's not unusual for stouts and pilsners to flow at receptions or for rehearsal dinners to feature "beer flight" tastings of different craft brews. The high-end Baltimore caterer Chef's Expressions offers hors d'oeuvres consisting of a shot glass of beer and a burger slider.

"A lot of weddings with beer you have your Coors Lights and your Bud Lights out," said Ho, who hired Chef's Expressions for the wedding at Johns Hopkins' stately Peabody Library. "We definitely wanted to have good beers out because we do enjoy drinking good beer cheap prom dresses 2012. And then we also wanted to make sure we included what we like."

There's little danger Champagne will get knocked off its bridal throne, but the craft brew buzz running through the wedding scene is yet another sign that beer — once a workingman's ...
... beverage sold in pop-top cans — has successfully transformed into a respectable artisanal beverage suitable for nuptial toasts.

Americans have warmed up to hoppier, tangier brews, and the volume of craft beer produced nationwide has jumped 83 percent since 2005, according to the Brewers Association, a trade group. Crucially, craft beers also have proven more female friendly. While craft beer has been making inroads for years, wedding industry people have really noticed its presence increasing in the last year or two. Winikka explained that the tradition-bound wedding industry tends to be slow to latch on to trends. She also noted that more couples are paying for their own weddings, dresses to wear to a wedding and thus are less bound to expectations of what others want.

Plus, beer is really fun.

"What you're seeing is that instead of the signature cocktail — like the fruity, weird martini thing that a lot of people were doing five, 10 years ago — couples are saying,'That's not really our style, so were going to do a beer flight at our cocktail hour,"' Winikka said.

Winikka, who is getting married in May, plans to have a beer flight at her own rehearsal dinner. Like Ho and Rinn, she and her fiance chose local beers that reflect their lives cheap bridesmaid dresses. Beers will represent where she grew up in Arizona, went she met her fiance in Kansas and where the couple lives in Brooklyn.

The brides and grooms demanding local brews are no different from the growing number of Americans scouting farmers market for local corn and grass-fed beef. And just as it has become easier to source food locally, it has become easier to find a local brewery. Jerry Edwards of Chef's Expressions points out that unlike wine, good beer can be made anywhere.

In Chicago, that means couples asking for beverages from hometown brewers like Metropolitan Brewing and Goose Island, said Dan Scheuring, event service manager of Blue Plate catering.

"When talking to the clients they want to bring in that one Chicago'wow factor' for their out-of-town guests," Scheuring said.
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