"Now that the White House has revealed its recipe for Honey Brown Ale, brewed by cooks in the White House kitchen using honey from its own hives (along with releasing a nifty video of the beer-making process), I thought it would be worth assessing the recipe and methods, and conjecturing on how the beer would taste. This required a beer-making professional, so I called on Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery and editor of the encyclopedic 'Oxford Companion to Beer.'


Most interesting to Mr. Oliver was the White House’s use of honey from its own hives, an ingredient often used by home brewers. 'This honey will give its own distinct flavor to the beer, but the sugars in honey will ferment completely, so the honey adds no sweetness,’' he said.

How does he think it would taste, extrapolating as a professional who is familiar with the ingredients and the methods?

'Light, crisp and dry, with some bready flavors from the malts, floral notes from the honey, and fruitiness from the British ale yeast,' Mr. Oliver said. 'Altogether pleasant, great with seafood and salads, goat cheeses, or hanging out in the sunshine in the Rose Garden.'’’


White House Beer: A Brewer Weighs In
By ERIC ASIMOV

"Living things are like water to the third power: your honeybees are not only pollinators and progenitors, they are constant explorers of the surrounding ecosystem, looking for forage and future home places and water sources and, sometimes, other bees of whom to take advantage. They are dynamic, intelligent in ways of which we continue to learn more each year, and dedicated to the pursuit of that ecological niche that will help their family grow and prosper. This means they may be tempted to swarm in your neighbor's yard, and then move into her/his attic. They might be prefer the water fountain at a park on your block. If they get into a robbing frenzy, the pheromone in the air can lead them to sting unsuspecting creatures. It is your absolute responsibility as a beekeeper to work against any such possibility, and to remediate any situation that develops, whether its your bees or not. In fact, one reason to have urban beekeepers is to make sure that some of them are around to address situations like this that do happen with feral colonies."

Beige, I think I'll Paint It Beige...
by Phang