Updated Sep 5, 2012 - 4:12 pm
Presidential Homebrew
This past Friday I received an email in my Life By the Pint inbox from a very unlikely source. I get a lot of beer related emails from breweries around the country, as well as various press releases regarding 
events, seasonal brews and other general public information. But this email was not from Elysian, Bold Hat Productions or the Washington Beer Commission. This email came from the top, the tip top, as in the White House.
A couple weeks ago I, being a lover of homebrew, America and Aaron Sorkin's thinking man's drama, The West Wing, signed a petition to have the White House kitchen release the homebrew recipes that are being fermented and consumed on the White House grounds by the Commander in Chief and his staff. I love the idea of ol' Barry Obama tilting a tap handle and pouring a homebrew for Hills, as Joey B puffs on a fine Dominican (Biden abstains, and Cuban cigars are illegal, right Joey B? *wink*).
Does Obama have secrets that the great home brewers Charlie Papazian, Randy Mosher or Dick Cantwell don't have? Well..yes, Area 51, lizard people, Klingons, weather control technology, Martian travel, just to name a few. But does he have brewing secrets they don't know about? Certainly not. But it is inspiring that on the orders of the most powerful man in the world, the First Kitchen is boiling, hopping and fermenting their own beer, right now.
Below are the recipes that were released. They are basic recipes and use foreign hops, rather than ones from the Pacific Northwest, which disappointed me a bit. Think global, buy local, President Obama.
Regardless, here are the White House recipe's brewed with honey produced in the White House gardens.
For more information you can find the press release here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/09/01/ale-chief-white-house-beer-recipe
Cheers!
(Beer photo courtesy of Drinkdrank1.blogspot.com, Cheers photo courtesy of Freebeermovement.blogspot.com)
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Writing from the heart of beautiful Ballard, Washington, my name is Dean Westling, and I am here to talk all things beer. It is my goal with this blog to cover microbrew, brewpub, and homebrew cultures in order to help you gain the tools necessary to get the most from every sip of the world's most popular beverage, beer.