White house beer

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RumRiverBrewer said:
When I heard this, there was no way I could imagine the president toiling over a kettle of wort somewhere in the White House... This is obviously a PR stunt and if we're lucky, some true brewer will be there the next time he whips out a bottle of the WH brew to ask some real questions... Someone has to find out who actually brews this stuff.
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Hmm, watch the video in the original post, and definitely read before you post. Good 'ol american fun.
 
Thanks for the heads-up DaBills... I didn't realize the PR folks did a YouTube video, very well done. I missed the president in the video though, I was expecting to see him and michelle brewing their own beers. :confused:
 
RumRiverBrewer said:
When I heard this, there was no way I could imagine the president toiling over a kettle of wort somewhere in the White House... This is obviously a PR stunt and if we're lucky, some true brewer will be there the next time he whips out a bottle of the WH brew to ask some real questions... Someone has to find out who actually brews this stuff.
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The White House cooks make it, and it isn't a secret. He originally bought them a homebrew kit and asked them to look into homebrewing a couple years back.

Of course the President isn't spending hours cleaning, sanitizing, brewing, cleaning, sanitizing, fermenting, cleaning, sanitizing, bottling, and cleaning every - or any - 5 gallon batch. And no reasonable person would think he does, or expect him to, while he's in office. Perhaps he'll take up the hobby himself when he's no longer in office in 2016 - though it's unlikely, there is more than merely a remote chance how - but until then, the White House cooks will keep brewing and learning and getting better, and hopefully continue it with the 45th president in 2016, and onward to become a White House tradition.

Unlike wine (and don't get me wrong, I love wine and make it as well), beer is truly the "people's" drink, and can be world-class with ingredients from even an average homebrew shop. "White House Wine" would have to be made from grapes grown at the White House for the concept to have any meaning - essentially, it's the growers that make the wine - and that's just not going to produce a truly great product in DC. But beer - while still benefiting from quality ingredients - relies on the skill and creativity of the brewer more than the geography and climate of where its ingredients are grown, and as such, it's more than possible for a true "White House Beer" to be world class, even good enough to share with the most important of foreign leaders and dignitaries.

They're obviously not there yet, but it's a definite possibility down the line!
 
Originally Posted by Yuri_Rage
This thread is about beer. If I have to babysit it one iota, it will get closed. If you post ANY political commentary in this technical forum, I will ban you for three days, no questions asked. Carry on.
 
bottlebomber said:
Originally Posted by Yuri_Rage
This thread is about beer. If I have to babysit it one iota, it will get closed. If you post ANY political commentary in this technical forum, I will ban you for three days, no questions asked. Carry on.
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Yes. This. This thread has been great so far... The reason? No politics. Just beer.
 
Twice, I've hosted parties or gatherings for non -brewers where we brewed a special batch together, around a theme or special occassion. This seems like a good opportunity to put out the invitation again. I think its cool that there is a White House beer and it seems to have drawn the attention of non brewers.
 
Pappers_ said:
Just had a random thought - in less than a person 's lifetime, we've gone from Prohibition to a White House making handmade beer. That is just remarkable!
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Historians claim that a majority of the congressmen who voted for the prohibition amendment were under the impression that it only restricted the sale and manufacture of hard liquors and would leave beer and wine out of it.

It was the Volstead Act which condemned the manufacture and sale of beer and wine. For some reason home winemaking was never criminalized.

I recommend the PBS miniseries on the subject. It turns out that the temperance movement wasn't in favor of prohibition, and both the temperance and prohibition movements were more concerned about all the rape and abuse of married women than about the booze itself. It was a different time. Hardly anybody with a Y chromosome could be convinced that such a thing as rape is possible within the bonds of marriage, for example. In the working class there was a lot of rampant drunkenness and associated mayhem when the drunks finally got home after drinking all night, and there was no law providing consequences for said mayhem.

That, and the majority of beer bars were owned and operated by breweries, with the effect that there were neighborhoods that were nothing but saloons.

In short, prohibition was the wrong solution to a number of very real problems they had at the time.
 
Hello,

I had an idea:
Could the WH work with kit seller to add reusable bottle labels to their WH beer kits that are similar to the official label or add another tangible item such as a glass. The 'deluxe' kit premium could be used to support a nonpartisan charity like childhood hunger, MS or cancer research, or something of the like. If you didn't want the extra or want to make your own version go for it, but I kind of like the idea of making a batch, adding some labels, and supporting a good cause.
 
dnl said:
Hello,
I had an idea:
... The 'deluxe' kit premium could be used to support a nonpartisan charity like childhood hunger, MS or cancer research...
Click to expand...


Do you mean childhood hunger, MS as in Mississippi, or cancer research?

I vote for Mississippi. We need the money to help fight for home brew legalization.
 
Pappers_ said:
Twice, I've hosted parties or gatherings for non -brewers where we brewed a special batch together, around a theme or special occassion. This seems like a good opportunity to put out the invitation again.
Click to expand...

Let me know what time to be there, and what to bring....................:D
 
TimpanogosSlim said:
Historians claim that a majority of the congressmen who voted for the prohibition amendment were under the impression that it only restricted the sale and manufacture of hard liquors and would leave beer and wine out of it.

It was the Volstead Act which condemned the manufacture and sale of beer and wine. For some reason home winemaking was never criminalized.

I recommend the PBS miniseries on the subject. It turns out that the temperance movement wasn't in favor of prohibition, and both the temperance and prohibition movements were more concerned about all the rape and abuse of married women than about the booze itself. It was a different time. Hardly anybody with a Y chromosome could be convinced that such a thing as rape is possible within the bonds of marriage, for example. In the working class there was a lot of rampant drunkenness and associated mayhem when the drunks finally got home after drinking all night, and there was no law providing consequences for said mayhem.

That, and the majority of beer bars were owned and operated by breweries, with the effect that there were neighborhoods that were nothing but saloons.

In short, prohibition was the wrong solution to a number of very real problems they had at the time.
Click to expand...

I'd recommend that anyone read Daniel Okrent's "Last Call" for the full story (the PBS doc was partly based on it). So much of it had to do with how to manage political coalitions. The 'drys' included everything from progressive urban socialist reformers to the KKK (concerned about drunken blacks and immigrants). It was a tightly defined single issue cause that attracted strange bedfellows.

On the other side, the breweries and distilleries were throwing each other under the bus. The breweries were OK with making booze illegal, just not beer.
 
Did anyone convert these to a full boil extract recipe? I've never done that, I'm not sure how the hop additions change.
 
Northern Brewer has the Ale for $44.99, and the Porter for $36.99. I was going to order a simple kit the other day (19.99) but the shipping was $9. Decided to wait.
 
This is how they do it in the White House, right?

a%20ghetto.jpg
 
Colorado's governor, John Hickenlooper, founded the state's first brewpub, Wynkoop Brewing, according to the Wall Street Journal. Here is his reaction to the White House Ale recipes:

When Gov. John Hickenlooper's around, it's only natural that sometimes the talk turns to his second career. Not politics -- that's his third career -- but beer.
Hickenlooper, who was a geologist before founding Denver's first brewpub, the Wynkoop Brewing Co., was sought out by The Atlantic magazine for his opinion on the home brews President Obama has been drinking at the White House.

The governor hasn't tasted the beers himself, but he looked at the recipes released by the White House and pronounced the presidential beers to be a little too heavy on the honey.

"It's none of my business and I don't want to criticize the White House chef, but I think maybe they could use a little less honey," Hickenlooper told the magazine. "One recipe I'm pretty sure would be better without the honey and the other one I think would be. A little bit less honey would be nice.
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How cool is this?!?!? Again, less than a lifetime after Prohibition, we have homebrew being made in the White House and a state governor who was a professional brewer at some level. Outstanding.
 
Here's Wynkoop's website http://www.wynkoop.com/ and a quote from their 'history' page:

Colorado'’s first brewpub, Wynkoop Brewing Company was founded in 1988 by a group of young entrepreneurs and urban pioneers led by former Denver mayor and current Governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper.

Our brewpub’s hallmarks -- highly acclaimed small-batch beers, high quality food & service, the city’s best pool hall and our glorious 1888 building -- helped make us a major catalyst for the revival of Lower Downtown Denver.

Today Wynkoop Brewing Company is a beer-blessed Denver institution, a must-visit Colorado landmark and one of the nation’s most revered craft breweries.

We’re also one of the city’s best places for private and corporate events. We’ve hosted everything from Democratic National Convention parties to beer festivals, weddings and company conferences. (All with great beer and food.)

Today we'’re expanding our brewing efforts to better carry on our pioneering place in Denver and Colorado's microbrewing history. In 2010 we began hand-canning our craft beers (on a wiz-bang, table-top machine) so that we could deliver more of our ambitious, artisan-style craft beer to Denver area beer lovers. Look for our Rail Yard Ale, B3K Black Lager and Silverback Pale Ale in local stores and the area’s top bars and restaurants.

In late 2011 we expanded our brewery for the first time in nearly 15 years, by adding two 20-barrel fermenters to our brewhouse and creating a special new room for our famed open fermenters. In July of 2012 we'll add two more of these fermenters. With this new capacity we are creating a flood of rule-breaking new beers -- from barrel-aged treats to sour beers and new styles - that help us honor the work of our original brewer, the late and very great Russell Schehrer. (The Brewers Association's annual Innovation Award is named after our beloved Russell.)

Our pioneering brewpub is housed in the glorious J. S. Brown Mercantile Building, built in 1899. The Mercantile Company was a cornerstone of the young Denver economy and one of the city’s most impressive early buildings. Its hardwood floors, thick timber pillars and pressed-tin ceilings are still in place today. Miners, ranchers and city folks walked this building looking for goods to furnish their Western adventures and frontier homes.

In 1899 our main floor served as the Mercantile’s original showroom. Today it’s home to our main bar, restaurant, brewery and kitchen. On the south side of our main floor is our Mercantile Room, now a renovated banquet room replete with high ceilings and expansive arched windows. The giant metal door you see by the main bar? It was once the door to the building’s main vault. Today it holds a different sort of valuables: our brewers and their office. The second floor is the home of Wynkoop Billiards, arguably the city's most elegant pool hall. We have 22 pool tables, two private pool rooms, dart lanes and a bar serving most of the same acclaimed beers you find downstairs.

This floor also houses some of our most popular banquet rooms, and the entire floor and pool hall are available for private functions. The backbar on this floor was rescued from the original tasting room of the old Tivoli Brewery, a famed Denver brewery located at what is now the Auraria college campus. In our basement you’ll find the serving tanks for all of our beers, and we now hand can our beers down there, too. The Impulse Theater is also on our basement level and welcomes grinning crowds to its hugely popular improv-comedy shows.
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Starting gravity 1.07

I can see this finishing at ~7% abv

Hopville says 7.1%

Wort tastes malty sweet with a strong hops flavor.

Edited because I forg0t to add the dme in hopville, and have been drinking since this is edit 3 or 4 now :drunk:
 
Walked into my LHBS this evening to buy the ingredients for this and the owner was busy pre-packaging PM grain bills for the Honey Wheat recipe. Says he's been inundated with requests for both recipes since they were released.
 
tchamber said:
Walked into my LHBS this evening to buy the ingredients for this and the owner was busy pre-packaging PM grain bills for the Honey Wheat recipe. Says he's been inundated with requests for both recipes since they were released.
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Sounds like this is some sort of Home Brew focused stimulus plan!
 
oh, i picked up my grain for an AG ale batch yesterday. Gonna see about honey tomorrow. There's a beekeeper across my back fence but i dunno if he'll like the idea of me using his honey to make beer since he's a mormon. gonna go to the farmer's market and see if there is any local honey for sale there before giving up and going to the health food store for the darkest, murkiest wildflower honey i can find.
 
Zuljin said:
Say what? And I'm just asking here.

I can see them going to only one type of flower in a trip. Maybe in their little bee brains they figure if a red rose worked this time, a red rose will work next time too.

But when you say, "...bees will keep the honey for different flowers separate. ", what does that mean? Are honey, nectar and pollen interchangeable words? I figured once it got to the hive to be honey, it was all one mish mash of bee vomit.
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They will tend to fill the cells and keep honey and pollen separate. For the most part been in a single hive will work a single species of flower. They will not mix different nectars unless they are out of space, and that's when the colony usually divides. They rotate their stock, and will consume all the 2011 honey before starting to work on this years. Then, females with specific roles will move in, clean out the cell, repair it, and the next batch of nectar is processed.
 
kappclark said:
Has anyone finished this recipe ?? What does it taste like ??
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I'll be keggin' mine on Monday. Pics soon!

Also, my OG was 7.1 as well. Should come in just under 7%.

To whoever was wondering, I did an all grain version, and did the math myself. That's how I came up with 7%.
 
Don't blame him. If I were president, I would hire my own professional beer servants to provide my ale. I would even roll up my sleeves for the image while I drink it. I would also add a shooting range, but at some point taxpayers will get a little ticked. Again, I don't blame the man for living up what he can.

I'd love to try the beer. I just don't know if I like it enough to brew it myself. I'll have to keep mooching off others until I con someone into brewing it. lol
 
i doubt they developed the recipes themselves, they purchased them as kits from somewhere (and added there own honey)
 

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