Trying not to screw up The Bride's Ale, and other related matters

A friend and I are brewing up The Bride's Ale for my upcoming wedding, which was dry hopped and bottled last weekend. In case you didn't know, the word "bridal" comes from "The Bride's Ale", an old English tradition where a special beer was brewed for the bride in celebration of the wedding. Linda, my wife to be, always enjoyed the hoppier beers, so it seemed appropriate the her Brides Ale would be a dry hopped IPA.

We think it's going to be a good one from the samples we took going into the bottles. There's a nice caramel note to the malt, a smooth bitterness, and a nice floral hop bitterness that matches with the brew's aroma. So all we have to do is make sure the bottles are clean, store them in a cool place with little temperature variation, stand back and let the residual yeast do its thing with priming sugar inside the bottles.

If only marriage were that simple. Linda and I have over eighteen year combined marriage experience, so we can no longer claim we had no idea what we were getting into. We've been living together for a couple years now, and she's great for me and my kids.

I'm pretty damn lucky. She's smart, attractive, funny, and does a reasonably good job putting up with all of my crap. But while you can control the brewing process, you can't control what life might throw at you, and yes, this could turn into another train wreck. But hey, part of taking the marriage leap is saying "I love you so much, I want to take this relationship to the next level, even that might result in complete disaster."

Just like brewing and running, all you can do is your best effort to make it turn out for the best. I've survived bad beers, plenty of bad races, and even my last marriage. So I really have nothing to fear, and have pretty good feeling about this one. And at least there should be some good beer at the wedding.