White House beer fetches $1200 at auction for charity

Beer took center stage in the presidential election this summer when beer fans found out the White House brews it own recipes and was handing out bottles on the campaign trail.

One lucky recipient of a bottle of the White House Honey Ale, beer salesman from Minnesota who lucked into a bottle at a change encounter with the president's motorcade in August, decided to turn his boon into charitable donation.

Brad Magerkurth auctioned off a single bottle of the ale for a remarkable $1,200, a price usually reserved for rare bottles of wine, reported Obama Foodorama, a blog about White House food initiatives.

Magerkurth, a traveling beer salesman for Artisan Beer Company in the Twin Cities, stopped by chance at Coffee Connection in Knoxville, Iowa on during a work trip on August 14th. Obama and the reelection campaign juggernaut made an off-the-record, unplanned stop at the cafe, and met Magerkurth while chatting with patrons.

The conversation turned to beer, and "Brad the Beer Guy" ended up with a bottle of the ale for his very own.

"Try it out--and we want a review," the president told him.

After weeks of deliberation, Magerkurth, 42, decided to auction the bottle off for his favorite charity, University of Minnesota's Amplatz Children's Hospital at the university's Taste! event in September.

Ten people paid a total of $1,200 to share the bottle, and they broke open the bottle of "presidentiale" right there on stage. Magerkurth said the bottle was unlabeled, since it was from the president's personal collection.

"I thought it was very good," Magerkurth told Obama Foodorama. "And everyone else thought so too."

"We were expecting it to be a little more cloyingly sweet," because of the honey from the White House beehives that was in the recipe, Magerkurth said. "No. It was hoppy and dry, really good."

The White House agreed to release the recipe for the honey ale in response to a petition on the "We the People" site, even though the petition did not reach the minimum required threshold for a response.