Recipe for White House honey ale

Makes about 4½ gallons

Besides the malt extracts and other unusual ingredients, all available at a homebrewer shop, you need a stock pot, hop bag, thermometer, two 6-gallon jugs,
a boiling bucket, a siphon (all part of a home-brewing kit), 2 cases of bottles
(48 12-ounce beer bottles) and something to cap them. Mark the outside of the jug at the 5-gallon point. You need to sterilize everything that touches the beer, including the bottles. Sterilize by rinsing with boiling water or use Easy Clean powder from a home-brewing shop.

12 ounces crushed amber crystal malt
8 ounces biscuit malt
gallons bottled water, or more as needed
2 cans (3.3 pounds) light malt extract
1 pound light dried malt extract
ounces Kent Goldings hop pellets
2 teaspoons gypsum
ounces Fuggle hop pellets
1 pound honey
1 package Windsor dry ale yeast
¾ cup corn sugar
1 quart boiling water

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1. Wrap the crystal malt and biscuit malt in a hop bag. In a 12-quart stock pot, combine the hop bag with 1½ gallons water. Heat to 155 degrees. Let it sit for 30 minutes. Remove the hop bag.

2. Add the light malt extract and dried malt extract. Bring to a boil.

3. Add the Kent Goldings pellets and gypsum. Boil for 45 minutes. Add the Fuggle pellets during the last minute of the boil.

4. Add the honey and boil 5 minutes more. This is the “wort.”

5. Pour 2 gallons of the water into the jug. Add the boiling mixture (no need to strain it), and enough additional water to total 5 gallons.

6. Let the wort cool to 70 to 80 degrees. Add the yeast.

7. Add enough additional water to come halfway up the empty airspace at the top of the jug. Cover with a clean kitchen towel. Let the mixture ferment at 68 to 72 degrees for 5 days. Pour the mixture into another jug and set aside for 14 more days. Total fermenting time is 19 days.

8. To bottle: In a saucepan, dissolve the corn sugar in the boiling water and simmer for 15 minutes. Pour the mixture into an empty bottling bucket. Siphon the beer from the fermenter into the bucket. Distribute the corn sugar mixture evenly over the mixture in the bucket. Siphon into bottles and cap each one.

9. Let the bottles sit for 2 to 3 weeks at 75 degrees. Adapted from The White House