I'm sorry, I don't drink.
"President Obama’s campaign bus stocks beer brewed at White House" by Callum Borchers | Globe Correspondent, August 15, 2012
It’s not a party bus, but the Obama campaign’s rolling coach does stock White House-brewed beer for the road.
While the president chatted with a man Tuesday at a Knoxville, Iowa coffee shop, the conversation drifted to beer and Obama made a surprising offer, according to the Des Moines Register. He offered the man a bottle of White House brew from the campaign bus.
According to reports, White House spokesman Jay Carney fielded questions about the beer later in the day, telling reporters that the White House brews light and dark beers. Carney said he has tried the light beer and that “it is superb.”
ABC News reported last February that the Obamas served a home brew called White House Honey Ale, made with honey from the first lady’s hive, at a Super Bowl party.
The president shared the same beer last September with Former Marine Sergeant Dakota Meyer, a Medal of Honor recipient who had requested to have a beer with the president.
Obama is believed to be the first president to brew beer at the White House, though George Washington also made homemade beer, and Thomas Jefferson brewed beer at Monticello.
Obama bought a round from the Bud Tent at the Iowa State Fair on Monday, but the tent’s owner told the Des Moines Register that the president actually cost him $25,000 in sales because security measures prevented other other customers from buying beer.
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"White House releases recipe in beer brouhaha; Obama concocts his Pennsylvania Ave. home brew" by Gary Dzen | Globe Staff, September 01, 2012
On a recent campaign stop at a coffee shop in Knoxville, Iowa, President Obama chatted with a salesman for a beer distributor and found a common interest. The salesman, Bradley Magerkurth, brews his own beer, something the Obama White House has been doing. Magerkurth introduced himself to the president, then told him his friends and business clients call him “The Beer Guy.”
“It’s a little speech I’ve been giving for 15 years,” said Magerkurth, who has been trying to expand his portfolio of craft beer sales across the Midwest. “Beer is like bread. It’s a staple. And I’ve found that even in a tough economy, people aren’t going to give it up.”
As the White House recently learned, beer can also stir up deep and sometimes angry passions. After weeks of refusing to release the administration’s official home-brewed beer recipe, even as a petition for it gained momentum and reporters repeatedly asked for it, beer enthusiasts got their wish Saturday. The recipe for White House Honey Ale, believed to be the first beer brewed on the grounds of the White House, was released. (Aficionados will note that it is a fairly standard concoction of light malt extract, amber crystal malt, honey, gypsum, yeast, and corn sugar.)
The brouhaha started when Magerkurth met Obama and offered to send the president beer he had made. Obama turned the offer around.
“He said, ‘You know Michelle and I brew a beer at the White House, we brew a honey beer,’” Magerkurth said. “And then he said, ‘You know what? I should get a beer for you.’”
Obama shook a few more hands, then came back to Magerkurth and handed him a bottle, which an aide had retrieved from Ground Force One.
“I want you to review this,” Magerkurth recalls Obama saying. Obama’s aide, Eugene Kang, gave Magerkurth a business card. “Tell me what you think.”
The president’s home-brewed beer instantly became a topic of conversation. Then another homebrewer, Dan Wieringa, filed a Freedom of Information request with the White House seeking the recipe for the beer, then posted what he had done on Reddit.com. The White House is not subject to Freedom of Information requests, but his request got the attention of other brewing fans, who filed a formal petition on the Obama administration’s “We the People” website....
Home-brewing beer has been legal in the United States since 1978, and is legal in the District of Columbia. George Washington was known to brew beer at Mount Vernon, but Schultz said Obama is the first president to brew beer at the White House.
Beer has played a role several times in Obama’s presidency. When Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested outside his home by Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley in July of 2009, Obama invited the two men to the White House for a beer summit. The beers consumed that day on the White House patio: Bud Light for Obama, Sam Adams Light for Gates, Blue Moon for Crowley, and nonalcoholic Buckler for Vice President Biden.
Related: Boston Globe Admits Bush Lied
Now that is something worth toasting.
Home-brewed beer at the White House, however, is a relatively new development. The first time home-brewed beer is known to have been served at the White House was at a Super Bowl party in February 2011. Schultz said about 100 bottles of the home-brewed beer were served that day.
The president’s enthusiasm for the beverage has been evident, and it coincides with a national trend. There are more than 2,000 breweries in the United States today, the highest number since the end of Prohibition....
The White House is being cautious with the image of Obama The Homebrewer....
Northeastern University political science professor Bill Crotty, author of a book on the Obama administration, said, “They are using the beer bit as a campaign tool, to get aficionados and the curious to ‘Vote for the Beer Candidate,’” said Crotty. “I see it as completely within the context of micro-targeting in the presidential race by the Obama election team.”
Except drunks don't vote.
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"President Obama celebrated his 51st birthday Saturday with a round of golf and plans for a quiet weekend at Camp David -- in short, just a typical presidential birthday in an election year. He returns to campaign mode soon enough, with fundraisers in Connecticut on Monday and rallies in Colorado on Wednesday and Thursday."
Think he had a beer?
