White House Homebrew

[Howiedw]

Now, on to something somewhat relivant............

I plan to do batches of both White House Homebrews which the recipies for are posted at Whitehouse.gov. My questions are:

Both recipies use "Whitehouse Honey" Any clue on whice variety of honey would closely approximate the honey from the whitehouse beehives(Clover, Wildflower, alfalfa, Ect)?

2) The Honey Porter recipie references 10HBU's bittering hops. Any suggestions?

Thank you for your assistance.:rockin:

 

[jmm888]

2) The Honey Porter recipie references 10HBU's bittering hops. Any suggestions?

Northern Brewer uses 0.5oz of Nugget at 45 and 30 min and 0.5oz of Hallertau at flame out. Not sure if that's what the Whitehouse uses but...

http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/WhiteHouseHoneyPorter.pdf

 

[jonmohno]

Im not shure what kind of honey the whitehouse uses but,go with a good honey that you like that smells and tastes good. Honey is not going to shine through strongly,it can(maybe not strongly) when young a bit or if used in larger amounts though (would dry it out alot more too) but clover is lighter than wildflower.Orange blossom or about any fruit blossom honey is known to be pretty good as well and seems more preferred or popular with honey lovers, although Im shure there are better ones. I would say go with a stronger tasting honey or your good tasting local honey but its just a matter of opinion.

 

[bdh]

I think the whitehouse said the honey came from the beehives on the south lawn (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/09/01/ale-chief-white-house-beer-recipe), so probably more of a flowery/clovery honey than fruit blossom.

 

[Qhrumphf]

http://georgetown-honeybee-company-store.myshopify.com/

They're currently sold out. But that's sourced from hives in Washington DC. When a friend and I brewed the White House Honey Ale, we used their honey. I forget if we used Shaw or Georgetown honey, but in either case it' maybe 2 miles from the White House. There's a lot of flora in the vicinity of the White House that you won't find many other places, e.g. Japanese Cherry trees. Wildflower honey would probably be a good bet, but if you can source DC, MD, or VA honey that'd be even better.

As far as the hops, I'd probably use something noble or English. I'd probably go Target or Challenger myself, but I looked at both recipes as being English in interpretation. For the bittering hop it probably won't matter too much, but I'd probably steer clear of the potently citrusy/tropical hops.

 

[k_mcarthur]

I would like to try this brew but I have a couple of questions. 1) I want to do an all grain version, anyone seen a recipe or have advice on how to convert from extract to all grain? 2) what yeast is used, I culture my own wl001 Cali ale, would that be appropriate for this brew?

 

[daksin]

For light/gold LME, divide the pounds given by 0.75 to get the # of pounds of 2-row to use. That gives you 6.3/0.75 = 8.4 lbs of 2-row. All the other grains stay the same. If you want to get super technical, because you're now mashing your crystal malts and other things with a base malt, their sugars will be broken down more by the enzymes in the 2-row, which will necessarily make the wort more fermentable, so you may need to play with mash temp and other parameters to get a beer with similar body and residual sweetness.

 

[k_mcarthur]

Awesome, thank you. I will try to make this soon. Is that a pretty standard formula to go from extract to all grain, multiply pounds of DME by 4/3?

 

[Qhrumphf]

It's assuming about a 75% mash efficiency, which while common for a lot of brewers, is not what everyone gets. Some brewers get 65% (or less), others get 85% (or more). Assuming a roughly 75% efficiency, 0.75 pounds of extract per pound of base malt is for LME, not DME. For DME it's more like .6 lbs of extract per pound of base malt. If you're switching from extract to all grain, I would use your own mash efficiency, and add as much base malt as it takes you on YOUR system to reach the same OG.