Cooking For a Crowd

Lesson 4: Beverages, Help & Food Safety

Beverages

The selection of appropriate beverages is driven by three factors:

• The time of day for the party
• The makeup of the guest list
• The budget

Considering these parameters, the first decision to make is whether to serve alcohol. The host can usually judge from their invitation list whether guests would prefer to have an alcoholic option, although for business and cocktail parties, a full bar is usually expected.

It is perfectly reasonable, especially for daytime events, to limit alcohol. If you don’t want to eliminate alcohol entirely, one option is to serve a punch in both an alcoholic and non-alcoholic form. Alternatively, you can pass trays of a premixed drink with a limited alcoholic content, e.g. as sangria or frozen daiquiris.

A very popular choice is also to serve only beer and wine. The advantage of this choice, as opposed to offering a full bar, is limiting the variety of beverages you have to buy. Believe it or not, however, it can be more cost effective to serve a full bar if you’re serving over 20 people.

Many people drink mixed drinks more slowly than wine or beer. For this reason, also, you cannot assume that a beer and wine party will limit the liability and danger of an inebriated guest driving away.

Having made the choice about alcohol, there are some standard guidelines as to amounts to serve. Caterers use the assumption that there are 16 drinks in a 750ML bottle of liquor and that there are 5 drinks in a bottle of wine.

Given these figures, the following is a basic shopping list for a party of 30 that is expected to last about 3 hours. For a longer party or particularly festive event, add 25% to this calculation. For a wedding, you will need to almost double the amount and add enough champagne for every guest to have some to toast the happy couple.

Beer and Wine only:

- 12 bottles of white wine

- 12 bottles of red wine

- 12 quarts of water, half of which are sparkling

- 10 quarts of soft drinks

Full Bar:

- 1 bottle rum or tequila (based on geographic or personal preference)

- 2 bottles gin

- 3 bottles vodka

- 1 bottle Scotch

- 1 bottle Bourbon

- 9 bottles white wine

- 6 bottles red wine

- 6 quarts of soft drinks and mixers

- 12 bottles of water, half of which are sparkling

- 12 bottles of beer

- lemons and limes

- green olives

Some tips:

• It is more cost effective to buy wine in cases. If you drink wine normally and don’t mind extra, I would almost always suggest buying a full case of white wine and red.
• If you’re serving a full bar, buy brands that you like or would want to give away as a gift.
• Remember that different parts of the country have different beverage preferences. Tequila is more popular in California than Massachusetts; bourbon is likely to be more popular in the South than in other regions.

One comment about chilling beverages. Bottles chill more quickly on ice than in the refrigerator. By chilling them in a tub or a cooler with ice, they won’t take up needed space in the refrigerator. I would suggest buying at least 40 pounds of ice for both serving and chilling beverages.

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