In that fierce light that beats upon Kings, potentates, and Presidents, no detail of personal conduct is too trivial to escape public observation and comment. The habits of all our Presidents in respect to the use of spirituous liquors have been subjected to the keenest scrutiny, and the tide of gossip about the use and non-use of wine at the White House or by its occupant has often risen so high that all questions as to the policy of official conduct of the President seemed to be quite submerged.
“The President and the Wine Cup,” New York Times, 26 November 1899
Presidents have long recognized the value of feeding the voting public some occasional tidbits about the food they eat. Not only do their food habits humanize and personalize them, but they also give presidents the opportunity to show that they share things in common with average Americans. Presidents could achieve the exact same goals with beverages, but they are far more tight-lipped about their drinking habits. Why? Americans have historically had a very complicated relationship with one drink category—alcoholic beverages—and they want assurance that their president is not a drunk. In fact, one finds that for many Americans, alcohol should never pass a president’s lips. Besides the belief that the president should serve as an exemplar for moral behavior, there are practical concerns that one of the most powerful people on Earth—one with access to nuclear weapons and a powerful military—should not be an alcoholic.
Thus, the American public highly values sobriety from and sober judgment in its president, so much so that even presidents who only moderately drank alcohol couldn’t escape harsh judgment in the court of public opinion. Such intense public scrutiny has caused presidents to play a cat-and-mouse game with the press corps that is trying to inform the public. And time and time again, African Americans butlers, cooks, and stewards have also had to play this game because they are immersed in presidential drink culture, just as they are with food. African Americans once fit the expected social order by doing the work to produce alcoholic beverages, laboring in jobs where they served such beverages to whites and also drinking alcohol themselves, under certain controlled situations. The fear in the past was that inebriated blacks, particularly in interracial social settings, were primed to commit acts of moral depravity and racially motivated violence. In this chapter, we’ll sidle up to the presidential bar with William T. Crump, Howard Williams, Arthur Brooks, John Ficklin, Alonzo Fields, Henry Pinckney, Tom Bullock, and President Barack Obama to sip sequentially from five different presidential drinking glasses: wine, punch, eggnog, cocktails, and beer. But first, one needs to understand how social attitudes in the United States toward alcohol have changed over time.
Liquor lubricated social life during the federal period, and its elevated status was due in part to necessity and not solely to entertainment purposes. European colonists had problems with the indigenous American water supply from day one. To them, the water was just plain nasty. As an alternative, white colonists, young and old, consumed a number of wines and “small beers” (the latter had a lower alcohol content than what we typically consume today). In time, though everyone was drinking alcoholic beverages of some type, class differences emerged in consumption patterns. American elite whites drank gin, Madeira, rum, and wines, while working-class and poorer whites consumed harder stuff, namely alcohol made from grains, like whiskey and corn liquor. Few important decisions were made or social occasions happened without alcohol. Even Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson decided where to locate the nation’s capital while drinking wine.1
People of West African heritage living in the United States came from a drinking culture that featured low-alcohol beverages. For millennia, West Africans brewed mild alcoholic drinks from native grains and palm tree sap. In the Americas, slave owners purposefully hooked enslaved West Africans on drinks with a higher alcoholic content mainly as a matter of incentive and control. President Thomas Jefferson added alcoholic drinks to the food rations he issued to his White House slaves and free laborers to create the illusion that he was doing something really special for them. As a result, the enslaved would be pacified, and free workers would be more reluctant to ask for a raise.2 This was consistent with the southern plantation practice of rewarding the enslaved with jugs of cheap liquor (mainly corn liquor) for large projects involving lots of hard work. Though African American drinking habits were the most ridiculed in the press and popular culture, there was growing concern in America’s burgeoning faith community about the fact that everyone, not just blacks, drank to excess.
Contemporaneous to the rise in drinking culture, or perhaps because of it, young America experienced a religious and cultural phenomenon called the “Great Awakening.” The increased religiosity sparked in the 1730s, and the momentum kept growing with each passing decade. By the late 1800s, these religious change agents had grown a movement large enough that they could flex their political muscle and push for temperance—the prohibition of alcohol. The ascent of the temperance movement had consequences for political candidates, especially those running for president. It took time, but by the 1850s, serious presidential candidates felt obligated to declare their stand on temperance. If they favored temperance, they were described as “dry”; if they were against temperance, they were described as “wet.” The temperance movement set its sights on the president because participants believed that he should set the moral example. Temperance advocates were alarmed by the example William Henry Harrison set in 1840 with what historians call the “first national presidential election campaign.” President Martin Van Buren was portrayed by his political enemies as an elitist who sipped champagne. Harrison sharply contrasted himself for voters by projecting the humble image of himself living in a log cabin and drinking hard cider.3 Harrison cruised to victory that Election Day.
Lest you think that the question of a “wet” or “dry” White House went the way of the dodo once Prohibition ended, think again. There was much press about what the White House drinking policy would be after teetotaler and unabashed Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter was elected. A Washington Post writer described it this way: “Still unclear is the answer to the question of whether the White House of Jimmy Carter will be wet or dry, or somewhere in between with the low proof compromise of wine only. It has floated to the top of the current sea of speculation about the Carter style, like slices of fruit in a punch bowl, because of Mrs. Carter’s indication that she may serve only wine, as she did in the Georgia Statehouse.”4
When temperance advocates failed in getting “dry” candidates elected, they readjusted their strategy. If they couldn’t change a president’s private drinking habits, perhaps it was possible to keep presidents from serving alcohol when they entertained guests. Yet many temperance advocates begrudgingly eased their criticism of serving wine, since there are numerous biblical references that permit its use. The next target involved White House renovations, so to speak—getting rid of the White House wine cellar.
President Jefferson, a noted oenophile, created the White House wine cellar by purchasing “some bottled wine by the case, but more often it arrived in barrels. They were stored under lock and key, first in the White House basement and later in a wine cellar which Jefferson dug on the grounds. The first Presidential wine cellar also served as an icehouse and was usually referred to by that more democratic name. A contemporary report described it as round, about 16 feet deep, lined with bricks and topped with a wooden shed.”5 The first location for the wine cellar was under what is presently the West Wing, and it was stocked with Madeira and Spanish dessert wines, including Pacaret.6 After Jefferson vacated the White House, the wine cellar was on the move. In a modern article on wine in the White House, the New York Times reported, “By then [1834], the wine cellar had been brought into the White House. It was just beneath the State Dining Room. According to one report, racks for bottles and barrels were built along the walls behind heavy wooden doors and there was room for not only wine but hard liquor and beer.”7 Though there are periodic accounts of wine being served, we don’t really hear much about the wine cellar until the time of Rutherford B. Hayes, who was an alleged teetotaler.
The high point for temperance advocates, and the low point for D.C. drunkards, came during the Hayes administration. At some point during his presidency, President Hayes entertained Wagon manufacturing magnate Clem Studebaker. Studebaker requested something to drink, and President Hayes directed White House steward William T. Crump to take Studebaker down to the White House cellar. Along the way, Studebaker daydreamed about what he might drink, his mind ultimately settling on presidential brandy. When they reached the wine cellar, Crump yelled out to an African American cook nearby, “‘Miranda? Miranda! Where’s that jug of buttermilk?’ ‘It broke me all up’ said the wagon-maker. ‘I fancy that I can taste that executive brandy yet.’”8 President Calvin Coolidge was the only other president to make a show of having no alcohol in the wine cellar, and he stocked it with “his cigars, fruit, raisins, candy, nuts, etc., which were sent to him from time to time by admirers. When he had among his guests at the White House personal friends of long standing, he had the habit of solemnly escorting them to the wine cellar, allowing the ponderous outer door to be opened by the colored porter, then with his own private key, opened the wine chamber, where he would select some little treat and hand it to his guests.”9
Despite the earlier anecdote, President Hayes was dodgy about his true commitment to temperance, and the advocates kept the pressure on him. As one newspaper editorial inquired, “But what is to be Mr. Hayes’s policy on the liquor question, now that his Southern policy may be considered settled? We think we have the key to it in that White House dinner and the Presidential apologies that have followed it. It will be one of attempted compromise, adopted in the expectation of winning the favor of both temperance and anti-temperance people. We do not think Mr. Hayes is capable of pursuing any other policy on any question.”10 The press did report several instances where President Hayes was known to either request or actually drink alcohol. By the end of his term, one newspaper even speculated that Hayes banned liquor in the White House only because he didn’t want to pay for it and enjoyed drinking at others’ expense.11
First Lady Lucy Hayes was not squishy at all on the temperance topic, and the first clue is that her nickname was “Lemonade Lucy.” Accordingly, the “within-the-White-House-temperance-movement” started off swimmingly. President Hayes banned all intoxicating beverages from official White House functions and declined to host any state dinners in order to “avoid the wine question.”12 Hayes diluted his stance because his secretary of state, William Evarts, persuaded him that foreign dignitaries were used to having wine with their meals. To deny them this pleasure would prove too difficult a hardship and make a poor impression internationally.13 In the end, President Hayes proved a lost cause to the temperance folks, and Mrs. Hayes could never do enough to please them. She eventually had her name stripped from a temperance society named in her honor merely because she and the president were passengers on a steamboat that served claret.14 As we’ll see later, the conflicting versions of the infamous state dinner where White House steward William Crump either served or did not serve alcohol certainly didn’t help the Hayeses’ case.
President Chester Arthur, however, was an unabashed wine enthusiast who took office and restored the wine cellar to its Jeffersonian glory. The Wheeling Register of Ohio reported:
This place has been enlarged and cleaned out, only to be filled up again however. Before the cellar was too damp to keep wine in long. It would be apt to become spoiled. This may account for the frequent calls General Arthur made upon it, probably not wishing to see any of the wine destroyed. The cellar has been refilled and in its present shape I am told by people who profess to be well posted about such things, that wine will keep there for years and the longer it is kept the better is will become. “There is one thing Arthur does understand,” said a Congressman this morning, “if he is faulty in statesmanship, and that is wine. You can’t fool him.”15
With the first wine aficionado living in the White House since Jefferson, President Arthur called upon Howard Williams, his African American steward, to choose the very best wines.
Williams took a familiar nineteenth-century path to the White House. He was born in Baltimore in 1837 and moved to the D.C. area shortly before the Civil War began.16 Williams would later be described as “a colored man of very fine personal appearance, well educated … [who] has made a triumph of his stewardship.”17 For his first professional job, he cooked for U.S. representative Samuel Hooper (R-Mass.).18 Williams supervised dinners that one newspaper reported “had never been equaled.”19 After Hooper died in 1875, Williams became the personal chef for U.S. senator Roscoe Conkling (R-N.Y.) and then filled the White House steward position after Crump resigned in May 1882.20 When hired as steward, Williams teamed up with a French chef named Alexander Fortin to make President Arthur’s meals world-famous—especially the state dinners. In a rare newspaper interview, Williams gave details on how he and Fortin dazzled guests with “architectural gastronomy” (“One of the rules is that no dish be served flat. It must be raised up in some way”), elaborate table decorations, and an endless variety of food (“Not a dish is brought to the table that appeared at the previous dinner”).21 Yet, as was often the case for presidential cooks, Williams’s excellence could not overcome a change in presidents. In May 1885, shortly after his election, President Cleveland relieved Williams and Chef Fortin of their duties.22
Though the Arthur administration represented a high tide for wine during the Gilded Age, the temperance movement crested to the point where a White House wine cellar seemed obsolete. One newspaper reported, “All presidents of the United States have at times set wine before their guests. Until Theodore Roosevelt became president the White House had a wine cellar and a dark room in the attic set aside as a storeroom for liquors. He did away with both of them. The cellar is now used for machinery and the dark room is a part of the quarters for the servants.”23 Despite this description of the White House wine cellar at its darkest hour, the African American influence on the White House wine scene began to wax. The key personalities involved were Arthur Brooks, John Ficklin, and Alonzo Fields.
The wine cellar’s last hurrah before Prohibition was enacted happened under the watchful eye of a highly regarded servant, “Major” Arthur Brooks. Brooks “guarded” the wine, may have been an informal sommelier, and certainly served wine in the White House. Brooks was born in Port Royal, Virginia, on 25 November 1861. While he was a boy, his family moved to Washington, D.C. Brooks made his mark as a national guardsman in what would eventually be called the First Separate Battalion of the District of Columbia National Guard and achieved the rank of major; he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Why he was nicknamed with a lesser rank is unknown. Brooks might have seen a military career as a means for black progress; according to an African American newspaper obituary, Brooks organized and instructed a “High School Cadet Organization, and is due much credit for the interest of our people in military affairs.”24
Brooks entered the orbit of elite men when he took a job as a messenger to Secretary of War George W. McCrary in the Hayes administration. He continued to serve in that position with succeeding secretaries of war until he got a custodian position in the Taft administration.25 Here, as one newspaper of the time observed, the term “custodian” was not meant in the janitorial sense but meant that he was the “bonded custodian of all furnishings and personal effects.”26 In addition, Brooks “directed the care of the President’s personal wardrobe and advised more than one President, it is said, in matters of personal attire.”27 Clearly, Brooks found multiple ways to become a valued member of the White House staff.
Brooks prided himself on his ability to keep secrets and earned a sterling reputation for trustworthiness and military acumen. For the latter, President Woodrow Wilson even brought Brooks with him to Paris to advise him as he negotiated the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919. President Calvin Coolidge described Brooks posthumously as “‘one of the finest men in Washington,’ not as one of the finest Negroes,” and also as “a cherished friend.”28 It’s no surprise that Coolidge gave Brooks the keys to the White House cellar. White House housekeeper Elizabeth Jaffray remembers, “Brooks it was who always looked after the White House wines. When President Taft came in he had sent from Europe a cellar of fine wines. There were two keys for the wine cabinets—one that I kept and one that I gave Brooks. Before any big dinner I would give Brooks a list of the wines wanted and instructions as to just how they were to be served.”29 It is unclear how much discretion Brooks had in choosing wines, but he was integral to its service. On 9 January 1917, under the direction of Jaffray, Brooks served “18 quarts of Champagne, 2 quarts of Claret, 5 quarts of Hock, 2 quarts of Sherry, 2 quarts of Scotch, and a quart of Brandy.”30
Around 1924, Brooks developed heart trouble, and the problem persisted. In 1926, the Coolidges were so concerned for Brooks’s health that they made an extraordinarily heartfelt gesture, given the racial climate of the time. According to the Chicago Defender, “When President and Mrs. Coolidge left Washington for their summer White House at Paul Smiths, N.Y., Major Brooks was their house guest.” Coolidge hoped “the mountain air and complete rest would help him to regain his health.”31 But the attempted remedy didn’t work, and Brooks returned to Washington for constant care by his wife until his death in 1926. Ever mindful of his duties, when Brooks felt death was near, he summoned someone from the White House to his home so he could reveal the combinations for the locks to the silver vaults.32 To punctuate the friendship between the president and the trusted servant, Coolidge was described as “deeply aggrieved” upon hearing of Brooks’s death.33
The wine cellar was mothballed during the Prohibition years, though presidents kept a private stash or drank once they got outside of the White House grounds. It wasn’t until the Eisenhower administration that the White House wine cellar was again fully stocked, and that was due to outside contributions. “The wine industry helped set up an American wine cellar for Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Kennedys served American wines proudly, as well as their excellent French labels. At present the White House has no wine cellar. Like many American homes, when a party is in the offing a quick order is simply put in at a nearby liquor store in downtown Washington,” the New York Times noted.34 Now that drinking wine was less of a concern, the public focused on what kind of wine was served, where it came from, and how much it cost.
By the time of the Kennedy administration, the American wine industry had recovered from the lost years caused by Prohibition and was producing fine wines on a regular basis. If the nineteenth century was fueled by a rivalry of French cooks versus American cooks, the twentieth century was about American wines versus French wines. The Kennedys’ Camelot image definitely spoke with a foreign accent, which translated into White House dining menus written in French and French cooking served at meals accompanied by French wines. Though the American public devoured the Camelot image, they soured on all of the Frenchness, asking, “Can’t American culture be classy and celebrated as well?” As the criticism mounted, the Kennedys went on the offensive, especially with the press, which did a lot to propagate the Camelot image. Ben Bradlee, a Kennedy family friend who would go on to edit the Washington Post, remembered getting personal calls from Jacqueline Kennedy to correct stories that appeared in Newsweek, the publication he edited at the time. Jackie wanted to clarify that domestic, not foreign, wines were served at certain meals and that dishes were no longer being referred to by their French names.35 President Kennedy also took the extra, and somewhat unusual, step of taking American sparkling wine abroad with him on state visits in an effort to introduce Europeans to American wines.36
The Johnson administration decided to be bullish on American wines from the start. From 1964 on, the Johnsons exclusively served American wines whenever they entertained, and the same directive went to all U.S. embassy staffs.37 The French seemed amused by the entire situation, with one French wine official blithely stating, “America produces some honest wines but only the great ones come from France.”38
Public interest in the White House’s wine policy continued during the 1970s, but it wasn’t at the same fever pitch as in the 1960s. That doesn’t mean critics missed opportunities to needle presidential wine selections. One such opportunity came when President Nixon hosted one of his iconic summit meetings with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. At one of the summit meals, a cabernet wine was served with beef. French newspapers published scorching editorials claiming that the wine pairing “would make a gourmet faint in France.” Nixon ordered an investigation into the matter, and unidentified sources blamed it on “backstairs personnel ‘whose zeal exceeded their judgment.’”39 Though President Nixon didn’t call him out by name, the “backstairs personnel” was probably White House maître d’ John Ficklin Sr.—an African American man who had become the de facto White House sommelier.
John Ficklin started working in the White House in 1940, following in the footsteps of his older brother Charles Ficklin, who also ended up working there for decades. Ficklin was born in Amissville, Virginia, in 1919. He moved to the Washington, D.C., area in the 1930s, and after a short stint in the army he started working in the White House as a part-time butler to help out when there was an extra workload. No doubt his brother helped him get that gig. By 1946, Ficklin had done so well at his job that he was brought on full-time. In 1965, he succeeded his brother Charles and became the White House maître d’. It is unclear how it started, but by the 1970s John Ficklin was in charge of selecting the wines.40
The “People Who Know Wine” were satisfied when California wines were served at White House functions, but the grapes of wrath fomented when Ficklin started choosing wines from other parts of the United States. Newspaper food sections ran headlines like “White House Serves Second Rate Wines” or “White House Wine Leaves Much to Be Desired.” Given the torrent of criticism over his wine selections, the American Wine Society sent him an encouraging letter on 9 April 1975:
Dear Mr. Ficklin,
You are to be congratulated for your recommendations of American, particularly Eastern United States, wines to the President for service at official functions. Recent newspaper criticisms of your actions are uninformed and ill-advised. I am told several of the people quoted have not even tasted the wines they criticized. As chairman of the Society’s 1975 Annual Conference, I would like to invite you to address our group on November 8. The conference will be held at the Carrousel Inn, Cincinnati. Our members will be very interested in learning of your experience and receiving your judgments of American wines. We sincerely hope you will be able to accept our invitation.
Cordially,
Gerald M. Bell
1975 Conference Chairman41
Ficklin didn’t speak at this particular event, but he was grateful for the note. Apparently, Ficklin’s White House bosses were fine with his wine selections, for he retained his sommelier duties for almost another decade.
In 1981, Ficklin agreed to a newspaper interview with the Washington Post that gave readers remarkable insight into how White House wine service worked:
Resting below the State dining room is the White House wine cellar. Behind a locked but otherwise unassuming blue door, just across a passageway from the downstairs kitchen, this one-time pantry is now the temperature-controlled repository (at 58°F) for all the president’s wine. According to long-time White House maître d’ and de facto sommelier John Ficklin, Sr., the cellar was begun in the Franklin Roosevelt administration and completed under President Eisenhower. Although only four feet wide and 16 feet long, the respectable if not imposing cellar contains individual wooden bins for almost 1,000 bottles of wine. The fact is, however, it is stocked largely with booze, including bourbon, gin and vodka.42
He also answered the question of what is done with leftover White House wine: “Also stored in the cellar and in a separate walk-in cooler (41°F) are re-corked bottles of previously opened wine which are used by the White House chef in cooking. Such are the economies of a deficit-ridden administration.”43
Ficklin’s long reign as sommelier ended with the Reagan administration, thanks to the assertiveness of one of Reagan’s senior staffers.
In the past, Ficklin—who prefers rosé wines and sparkling cider—coordinated the selection of White House wines with advice and assistance from local wholesalers and retailers. [Deputy chief of staff and assistant to the president Michael K.] Deaver has preempted this process by making the wine recommendations himself…. Aware that the Carter administration “had left some wines,” Deaver instructed Ficklin to use them “for large receptions.” Although Ficklin says that the storekeeper has a complete list of the wines in the White House wine cellar and that Deaver “was supposed to have an inventory,” it appears the list has been slow in arriving to the West Wing. Not to worry. The resourceful Deaver has his own cellar at the White House. Tucked away in a small closet below a television set in the corner of his office—not far from the Cabinet Room—Deaver keeps a stash of California wines.44
Though Deaver had usurped the sommelier duties, Ficklin had plenty to do as the White House maître d’, a position he held until his retirement in 1983.
Ficklin was loved by many White House staffers, guests, and the First Families themselves, so much so that he was given a very rare honor. As Jet magazine reported, President and Mrs. Reagan made Ficklin and his wife, Nancy, their guests of honor at an August 1983 state dinner for His Highness Shaikh Isa Bin Salman Al-Khalifa, emir of Bahrain, an island kingdom near Saudi Arabia. In addition, “Mrs. Reagan put in front of his table a special gift—a pair of gold cuff links, generally reserved for heads of state.”45 The very next year, Ficklin died of cancer, and Eugene Allen, another African American, succeeded him as maître d’. Allen would also go on to a decades-long career at the White House, and a fictionalized account of Allen’s life would form the basis of the 2013 movie The Butler.
Though wine has dominated over the years, what is served out of the White House punch bowl makes a decent showing in presidential drinking culture. Andrew Jackson served a whiskey-laced orange punch at his 1829 inauguration party, where thousands of well-wishers swamped the White House to consume said punch, ice cream, and a wedge of cheese. The Virginians who occupied the White House were also known for their punches, particularly Presidents Monroe and Tyler. For the most controversial punch episode before Prohibition, we must return to the Hayes administration.
The Hayeses eagerly took a hardcore stance because they were still suffering a bad publicity hangover from one of the earliest state dinners they had hosted for the Russian grand dukes, Alexis and Constantin, on 19 April 1877. From the Hayeses’ perspective, the alcohol-free event went well, and, as Secretary Evarts would later reportedly describe, “the water flowed like champagne” that night.46 Yet there seemed to be quite a buzz over the frozen Roman punch (a concoction of rum, tea, lemon, and orange juice) in orange skins created and served by steward William Crump. The punch tasted strongly of Saint Croix rum, and the grateful attendees deemed it “the life saving station” of the entertainment, thinking that the Hayeses were none the wiser.47 One can hardly imagine the snickering that took place that such a fast one could be pulled off right under the noses of the First Couple.
Perhaps the Hayeses were the ones to have the last laugh. Writing in his diary on 10 January 1887, nearly a decade after the event, Hayes stated, “The joke of the Roman punch oranges was not on us, but on the drinking people. My orders were to flavor them rather strongly with the same flavor that is found in Jamaican rum. This took! There was not a drop of spirits in them!”48 Crump was the only other person who knew the absolute truth. Over time, Crump would coyly suggest what happened that night, but he never confirmed or outright denied that he had spiked the drinks. One thing that we know for certain is that he basked in the attention.
As noted earlier, members of the general public frequently sent food to our presidents. The same went for drinks, especially alcoholic beverages. Obviously, such gifts were reduced to a trickle during the Prohibition years, but after repeal, the floodgates opened. Gifts were coming not only from the public but also from liquor manufacturers eager to tout the White House seal of approval. White House butler and maître d’ Alonzo Fields became the point person for figuring out what to do with all of that liquor. Punch, it seems, was the only viable solution to the mounting potable problem:
In no time at all gifts from wine manufacturers poured into the White House—even Japanese saki. Very little of it was palatable for the table, but we would serve a spiked punch and a fruit punch at receptions, so I experimented with combinations of wine to develop a punch to use up the gift wines. The spiked punch always went over big. Even with the most sedate groups, when we served 35 to 45 gallons of fruit punch we would need an average of 110 gallons of spiked punch for a crowd of 1,200, and most likely I would have to draw on a reserve supply. I first thought that, because of the newness of lifting the prohibition law, this consumption of spiked punch would wear off, but in the years to follow the averages kept steady.49
Looking back on it now, it’s quite astonishing how much liquor was actually being consumed in the White House without the public ever finding out.
Though spiking the punch seemed like a brilliant solution, Fields eventually acknowledged how stress-inducing it was to constantly stay one step ahead of potential disaster:
These are the punch combinations that always gave me sleepless nights after having served them at a White House party. In my days the White House budget was a very tight one and if a President indulged in heavy entertaining he would be forced to spend his own money. President Hoover always spent his own money, he did not even take home his pay. President Roosevelt wasn’t about to do that so I was ordered to use up all gift wines for spike punch. There was sherry, sweet, dry and just sherry, sauterne, claret, muscatel, scuppernong, blackberry, concord, apple jack, white wines and Japanese saki…. One thing for sure—I did a lot of stirring and mixing and hoping some poor soul who might take in just a little too much wouldn’t blow his top. I worked these recipes days before a party, for it required tasting and more tasting. Even just rolling the mixtures around in your mouth took courage, but my orders were: use up that gift wine…. Don’t you wonder why these mixtures did not cause a tragic ending … [?] I could always see the headline “President’s party has tragic end. Guests go besmirched after drinking spike punch at the White House. Chief Butler being held for investigation.”50
Fortunately for Fields and several presidents, that day never came.
In addition to public entertaining, the White House punch bowl is always present for various winter holiday parties thrown for White House staffers. During my tenure there, we staffers eagerly anticipated these parties because it was our one and only chance to drink the famous White House eggnog. One sip of this elixir had me humming “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” Eggnog is the most enduring party drink in White House history. It traces its roots to our first president and has several connections to African American servants.
Eggnog has British lineage as it is derived from a drink called “posset”: “In England posset was a hot drink in which the white and yolk of eggs were whipped with ale, cider, or wine. Americans adapted English recipes to produce a variety of milk-based drinks that combined rum, brandy, or whiskey with cream.”51 As a good Virginian, George Washington kept up the custom of consuming eggnog between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. Harnett T. Kane, in his history of Christmas traditions in the South, describes Washington’s eggnog as a “virile drink; the first President not only used both rye and Jamaica or New England rum, but he also added a liberal dollop of mellow sherry for good measure and good fumes.” Again as a testament to Washington’s enduring influence, Kane states, “the men of Richmond, of Roanoke, of Charlottesville, and of other Virginia cities still emulate him.”52
In the big houses of the antebellum South, the appearance of the eggnog bowl heralded gift time for the enslaved servants. The Chicago Daily Inter Ocean reported on a continuance of the tradition in the Executive Residence:
From Jackson’s time to Tyler’s there were no festivities [in the White House] at Christmas time, for there were no children there. With the advent of the Tyler family the Virginian idea of Christmas celebration came back, and the day’s duties began with the preparation of a great bowl of eggnog. Then presents were distributed, the servants one and all, being specifically remembered. A midday dinner and a family gathering, followed by a quiet evening, were the custom. The latter was almost compulsory, for it was considered a duty to the colored servants that they should have a holiday after the dinner hour.53
Thus, our slave-owning presidents were merely transplanting a family tradition in their home away from home.
Even northern-based presidents embraced the White House eggnog tradition; chief among them was President Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Roosevelt’s housekeeper Henrietta Nesbitt observed, “Speaking of liquids, I’m going to give once more the recipe of one other drink that came under my department. Cocktails and highballs were served upstairs and I had nothing to do with them, but the New Year’s eggnog was traditional, and the entire White House was concerned with its making. The creamy mixture was prepared in the same way, and the great punch bowl was carried before the President. And each time, lifting his cup, President Roosevelt gave the same toast: ‘To the United States!’”54 Lillian Rogers Parks, a White House maid, declared after tasting some of the eggnog that President Eisenhower made in the upstairs kitchen, “That was some kind of strong.”55 Looks like President Eisenhower’s recipe would have kept good company with our first president’s version.
By the Kennedy administration, eggnog had a starring role at the press parties. Unsurprisingly, the Kennedy White House was secretive about what exactly was in that eggnog. The rebuffed press inquiries eventually led to a playful “scandal” with John Ficklin right in the middle of it. The Washington Post’s investigative team reported, “Every Christmas the rumor about the White House eggnog surfaces again. According to the story—from the usual, reliable, but anonymous, sources—John Ficklin, the White House maître d’ for 36 years, saves eggnog from one year to the next and uses it as ‘mother of nog,’ adding the old to the new batch. As is customary in these rumors that shake the fate of a nation, Ficklin issued a denial: He said he never mixed the old with the new.”56 When faced with leaked eyewitness “testimony,” Ficklin didn’t confess to using an eggnog starter but merely to serving the press old eggnog in new glasses.57 The White House eventually relented, and the eggnog recipe was ultimately revealed: “Ficklin uses a gallon and a half of bourbon, a gallon of brandy and a gallon of rum to 10 gallons of commercial eggnog mix. He serves it with a quart of eggnog ice cream for each punchbowl to make it richer and keep it cold, and tops it all with nutmeg.”58
That White House eggnog recipe had a complex evolution. “The development of the White House eggnog has been a bipartisan effort,” Ficklin said. “When we first worked it out, we had a lot of tasters until we got it just right. For a while, we used to put in whipped cream, but people complained that it was too rich. We found we had a lot more empty glasses when we didn’t use egg white or cream. They don’t seem to mind the ice cream.”59 Due to foot surgery, Ficklin later passed the baton to fellow butler Eugene Allen. Nancy Reagan approved of Allen’s effort to replicate Ficklin’s recipe and even emphasized to the press that “eggnog is a tradition in our house.”60 As anyone in the food industry would understand, Ficklin and Allen said that they served so much eggnog during the season that they were not enthusiastic about making it at home. Allen punctuated the point by saying, “I’m not a drinking man.”61
While the White House put wine, punch, and eggnog on public display, its cocktail culture remained discreet. The earliest mention of the word “cocktail” in the English language happened in 1803, but cocktails didn’t surface in campaign rhetoric until the late 1800s.62 When steward Henry Pinckney served cocktails to President Theodore Roosevelt, it fit right in line with what his predecessors had done. Yet the public didn’t see it that way. Perhaps no president has been haunted more by alcohol rumors than Theodore Roosevelt, who got guff as a candidate, as a sitting president, and even after his presidency.
Roosevelt had thought that his successor, William Howard Taft, was such a horrible chief executive that he decided to run against him as a third party candidate. After Roosevelt’s political enemies floated rumors of his excessive drinking habits in order to torpedo his election chances, he filed a libel suit in order to clear his name. When it came his time to testify, Roosevelt dutifully recounted each drink he had imbibed in recent years: brandy and whiskey by a doctor’s prescription, Madeira, champagne, sherry or white wine, and Poland water (in the summer). While on the witness stand, Roosevelt elaborated on one particular drink:
At the White House we had a mint bed, and I should think that on the average I have drunk half a dozen mint juleps a year. Since I left the White House four years ago, to the best of my memory, I have drunk mint juleps twice—on occasion at the Country Club at St. Louis, where I drank a part of a glass of mint julep, and on another occasion at a big luncheon given me at Little Rock, Ark., where they passed round the table a loving cup with the mint julep in it, and I drank when the cup was passed to me.63
The fact that Roosevelt could remember almost every alcoholic drink he’d taken impressed many, but not everyone.
President Roosevelt’s court testimony created two pesky problems. First, the press had published conflicting accounts by White House employees as to the existence of the presidential mint bed. One staffer claimed that if a mint bed did exist, it was “never drawn upon except by the cook of the Executive Mansion when she was preparing mint sauce for a Presidential dinner.”64 The other troubling aspect of Roosevelt’s claim was that he drank only “part” of the famous mint juleps at the St. Louis Country Club, concocted by its renowned African American bartender, Tom Bullock. For those times, this was the equivalent of candidate Bill Clinton’s “I didn’t inhale” denial. On 28 May 1913, the St. Louis Times-Dispatch skeptically editorialized the following in midtrial:
Colonel Roosevelt’s fatal admission that he drank just a part of one julep at the St. Louis Country Club will come very near losing his case. Who was ever known to drink just part of one of Tom’s? Tom, than whom there is no greater mixologist of any race, color or condition of servitude, was taught the art of the julep by no less than Marse Lilburn G. McNair, the father of the julep. In fact, the very cup that Col. Roosevelt drank it from belonged to Governor McNair, the first Governor of Missouri, the great-grandfather of Marse Lilburn and the great-great-grandfather of the julep. As is well know [sic], the Country Club mint originally sprang on the slopes of Parnassus and was transplanted thence to bosky banks of Culpepper Creek, Gaines County, Ky., and thence to our own environs; while the classic distillation with which Tom mingles it to produce his chief d’oeuvre is the oft-quoted liquefied soul of a Southern moonbeam falling aslant the dewy slopes of the Cumberland Mountains. To believe that a red-blooded man, and a true Colonel at that, ever stopped with just a part of one of those refreshments which have made St. Louis hospitality proverbial and become one of our most distinctive genre institutions, is to strain credulity too far. Are the Colonel’s powers of self-restraint altogether transcendent? Have we found the living superman at last? When the Colonel says that he consumed just a part of one he doubtless meant that he did not swallow the mint itself, munch the ice and devour the very cup.65
Despite the newspaper’s dire prediction, the former president won the lawsuit, procured an apology from the newspaper editor who slandered him, and pocketed six cents in court-awarded damages. As for the elite bartender Tom Bullock, he continued to mix drinks, and stay out of the headlines, until he died in 1964 at the age of ninety-one.
In sharp contrast to his presidential cousin, Franklin Roosevelt fully embraced cocktail culture when he became president and even flaunted that he drank cocktails in the White House. FDR imbibed different drinks with different companions, and according to longtime butler Alonzo Fields, “Scotch would evaporate” when Winston Churchill made a visit, but at heart, this Roosevelt was a martini man.66 In fact, FDR may be the only president to claim the title “bartender in chief.” White House maid Lillian Rogers Parks reminisced,
FDR claimed he didn’t know the exact formula of his martinis because they had been worked out by a family committee. Son Jimmy, he said, liked a mild martini, but not as mild as Anna’s. Then son Franklin got old enough to speak up and argue for a still stronger martini. Then Johnny shot up so tall, he demanded to be heard and insisted on a martini so dry it could be mistaken for sand—a formula of seven-to-one. All this time the President would be mysteriously mixing vermouth and gin so that no one could see what his formula was. When he was finished he would say that as chairman of the committee, he had the power to decide the ultimate taste of a martini, and he would ostentatiously add Pernod to his concoction. At this point, some people—aghast at this addition—weren’t sure they wanted a martini after all…. Missy would sip her favorite Haig & Haig while FDR mixed his own martini, or sometimes an old-fashioned. When they had guests, FDR would insist on mixing the martinis for everyone, and he would brag that he was the best martini mixer in the East.67
Consuming cocktails was not a complete family affair, and reminiscent of the Hayeses, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was more temperate than her husband. Again, Parks gives us valuable insight in her memoirs: “Eleanor said she hated to see all the trays of liquor around when she was there, and FDR was once quoted as saying after Churchill left that he hoped he wouldn’t have to look at another drink for a week. For a day or so, he didn’t.”68 Parks added that as much as Eleanor hated all of the drinking, she didn’t interfere because what FDR did with guests “was his business.”69
The Trumans were quite the opposite; they liked to drink together. Since the Trumans didn’t mix their own drinks, that task fell upon White House maître d’ Alonzo Fields. In his memoirs, White House chief usher J. B. West shares this anecdote about how Fields’s first attempts to make an old-fashioned made him feel that his job was “on the rocks”:
At the end of the work day, the Trumans had cocktails in the West Hall, which is the family sitting room. One drink each, before dinner. But it took a while to learn their tastes. Shortly after they moved in, the First Lady rang for the butler. Fields came up, tray in hand. “We’d like two old-fashioneds, please,” she requested. Fields, who often moonlighted at Washington’s most elegant parties, prided himself on being an excellent bartender. “Yes, Ma’am,” he answered. In no time flat, he was back with the order, in chilled glasses, with appetizing fruit slices and a dash of bitters. Mrs. Truman tasted the drink, thanked him, but made no other comment. The next evening she rang for Fields. “Can you make the old-fashioneds a little drier?” she said. “We don’t like them so sweet.” Fields tried a new recipe, and again she said nothing. But the next morning she told me, “They make the worst old-fashioneds here I’ve ever tasted! They’re like fruit punch.” The next evening, Fields, his pride hurt, dumped two big splashes of bourbon over the ice and served it to Mrs. Truman. She tasted the drink. Then she beamed. “Now that’s the way we like our old-fashioneds!”70
Being away from the White House afforded the president a chance to drink in almost complete privacy, and that’s when cocktails flowed freely. In the railroad days, according to the testimony of Chef Delefosse Green—an African American man who often cooked on presidential railcars—few took advantage of the opportunity. In contrast, temperance apparently has not been so highly valued among our jet age presidents. Recall that of the three-person crew detailed to serve Air Force One passengers, one person is a dedicated bartender. In addition to comforting the passengers, cocktails were served on the plane to calm unruly guests—some of them surprising: “Kennedy allowed the black Labrador of his brother, Robert, to romp unimpeded throughout the plane until the crew came up with a novel way to control the animal: They mixed a couple of martinis and served them to the dog on a plate, whereupon it promptly fell asleep. That was the tactic they used from then on whenever the canine started to bother passengers.”71
At times, the president himself would be the most troublesome passenger on the plane; this was sometimes the case with President Lyndon Johnson. According to Kenneth Walsh in his history of presidents and their planes,
Robert MacMillan, a steward, says Johnson made ridiculous demands. Once he ordered a root beer on the way back to Washington from Texas and his staff followed his lead, quickly exhausting the supply of a dozen cans. When Johnson asked for seconds, he flew into a rage when told there was none left and ordered the chief steward to keep several thousand cans on board. The staff ignored him and kept eight cases on hand, but Johnson never mentioned the incident again. Johnson would also throw his glass of Scotch and soda on the floor when stewards didn’t mix it the way he liked—strong, with the glass three-quarters full of liquor.72
Fortunately, such temper tantrums were isolated incidents, and the serving of drinks on Air Force One usually went off without a ripple of controversy.
We end our exploration of presidential drinkways with a beverage that hasn’t drawn as much scrutiny as the other drinks, even though presidential beer drinking dates back to President Washington, who “usually drank either beer or cider at every meal.”73 President William McKinley also liked the suds, but he was careful to frame its consumption as a stress reliever, as one newspaper reported: “Like most of his predecessors in office, whenever Mr. McKinley gave a state dinner at the White House wine was served to guests. The president himself usually, if not invariably, abstained from drinking it, for the only beverage he seemed to enjoy was a glass of beer, and this he drank but seldom and only after a strenuous day, usually in a campaign.”74
Once again, President Theodore Roosevelt was right in the middle of another controversy, but unlike the mint julep matter, this controversy happened during his presidency:
The last time beer was served publicly at the White House was under another Roosevelt’s administration—T.R.’s—when Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of Kaiser William, was entertained. The day before the Prince’s arrival, somebody suggested that it would be a good idea to serve the beer in steins. T.R. approved the idea with several “Bullys” and “By George” exclamations, but it was discovered that the White House was shy on steins; so Jimmy Sloan, the Secret Service man, was commissioned to secure a supply. He dropped into Gunsenberg’s, an old-fashioned German restaurant on Pennsylvania av [sic], [and] interviewed the proprietor, who loaned two barrels of steins which had never been unpacked. When T.R. [hosted] the Kaiser, a member of the White House staff noticed that the bottoms of the borrowed steins bore the words: “Stolen from Gunsenberg’s, Pennsylvania av, Washington, D C,” but he kept it to himself until after the Prince left and then told the President, who laughed heartily.75
Usually, it’s the White House guests who “borrow” things, not vice versa. Fortunately, President Roosevelt did not suffer too much political fallout from this incident.
When Prohibition ended, beer started to get more attention than it had previously. President and Eleanor Roosevelt soon found this out after the First Lady held a press conference to announce that beer would be served in the White House:
When it is legal to serve beer in any government house, it will naturally be proper to do so for any one who desires it at the White House. I hope very much that any change in legislation may tend to improve the present conditions and lead to greater temperance. There has been a great deal of bootlegging in beer, and, once it was legal, this will be unprofitable, and I hope that a great many people who have used stronger things will be content with legal beer, so that the cause of temperance will be really served. No matter what the legislation, I myself do not drink anything with alcoholic content, but that is a purely individual thing. I should not dream of imposing my own convictions on other people as long as they live up to the law of our land.76
Though Eleanor Roosevelt acknowledged that she had a minority opinion, she still used her platform to express her convictions on drinking fewer or no alcoholic beverages.
Beer was still a presidential favorite. President Kennedy liked Heineken, and “during Gerald Ford’s era, presidential aides arranged for much-coveted Coors beer to be transported on the presidential backup plane, since it was then a rare treat on the East Coast.”77 At that time, and it may seem ridiculous now, Coors wasn’t available east of the Mississippi. In fact, a key plot line of the cult classic film Smokey and the Bandit was about smuggling some Coors beer to the East Coast. There is rumored to be a photograph of some Coors beer actually being loaded onto Air Force One during one of President Ford’s visits to Colorado, but that potentially embarrassing photograph is difficult to find. Rivaling the embarrassment caused by President Ford’s covetousness of Coors beer was the unabashed self-promotion of “Billy Beer” by Billy Carter during his older brother Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Billy Beer lasted less than a year as a commercial venture, but Billy Carter milked as much publicity out of it as he could—much to the chagrin of President Carter.
Beer wasn’t overtly linked to the presidency from the 1970s until the 2004 presidential election, when an unusual question started to be asked in polls to determine a candidate’s “likeability.” That question was, “With which candidate would you like to have a beer?” Beer, not unsurprisingly, has long been the official beverage of the common man. During that election, President George W. Bush easily beat John Kerry. In 2008, beer companies got in on the fun. The Half Moon Bay Brewing Company in Northern California created ale that was bottled and labeled separately as “McCain” and “Obama.” In the mock “Alection,” Obama steadily outperformed the McCain brew.78 In 2012, it really wasn’t a fair question since Obama’s rival, Mitt Romney, didn’t drink alcohol.79
With respect to presidential drinkways, beer comes with a twist, because our first African American president is also a home-brewed beer enthusiast, and beer has marked his presidency more than any other food or drink item. The first was a highly publicized “Beer Summit” that he convened to reconcile the tensions that erupted between Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., African American scholar, and Sergeant James Crowley of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police department. Crowley arrested and detained Gates after a neighbor reported a strange man breaking into the home next door. It turned out to be Gates’s own home, and he was trying to get in because he had lost his keys. The false arrest made national news, and given the intersection of race, notoriety, and crime, President Obama was asked to comment on what seemed to be a local police matter. Obama made the remark that Sergeant Crowley had “acted stupidly,” and all political hell broke loose. Obama proposed that Crowley and Gates come to the White House to have beer with him and Vice President Joe Biden to talk it out. That 30 July 2009 gathering has been christened the “Beer Summit.” As for their drink selections? “The four drank out of beer mugs,” the New York Times reported. “Mr. Obama had a Bud Lite, Sergeant Crowley had Blue Moon, Professor Gates drank Sam Adams Light and Mr. Biden, who does not drink, had a Buckler nonalcoholic beer.” Mr. Biden put a lime slice in his beer. Sergeant Crowley, for his part, kept with Blue Moon tradition and had a slice of orange in his drink.80
Obama’s next big beer splash came in September 2012, a few months before his second presidential election, when his White House announced that beer was being brewed in the kitchen. After an online campaign, public pressure nudged Obama and his private chef Sam Kass to release recipes for White House Honey Ale and White House Honey Porter. The honey used in the recipes was cultivated from a beehive kept on the grounds. Helpfully, the White House also released a short video of the brewers in action, and it is interesting to note that White House sous chef Tafari Campbell, an African American, is prominently featured. I immediately thought of the African Americans who brewed beer for Washington and Jefferson and was pleased to see the historical arc played out through the suds. As noted earlier, Washington loved ales and porters, and in my imagination I picture those early slaveholding presidents bonding over beer with the first African American president.
Our national obsession with alcoholic drinks gives presidential beverages a moral and political dimension that doesn’t exist with food. Where food is arguably a window on the president’s soul, intoxicating drinks represent a struggle for the presidential soul itself. The African American butlers and stewards who have helped satiate the presidential thirst play a singular role. Given all of the pressures that come with the job, they help create an escape, a retreat, a safe place for the president to unwind and relax. In essence, they provide the ultimate comfort and liquid courage.
This recipe for a punch cocktail was inspired by President Obama and created by Brooklyn bartender extraordinaire Shannon Mustipher. It’s modeled after the Roman Punch No. 2 recipe in The White House Cookbook, published in 1887, and it has sparked a number of variations. Tom Bullock, the first African American to publish a book on mixology, included one in The Ideal Bartender. The original recipe used a blend of rum and cognac and was topped with sparkling wine. This rendition uses applejack, an American spirit that is more affordable than cognac—and one of the most consumed spirits in colonial America. The citrus beer replaces the sparkling wine, which is a nod to President Obama’s passion for brews and makes the punch easy to enjoy in any season.
Makes 12 servings
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
3 whole cloves
250 milliliters grapefruit juice
1.5 liters aged white rum (try Denizen Aged White, Angostura White, or Plantation 3Star)
500 milliliters Laird’s applejack
500 milliliters lemon juice
100 milliliters Angostura bitters
100 milliliters Peychaud’s bitters
1. Combine the sugar, water, and cloves in a small saucepan and bring to a low boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
2. Add the grapefruit juice and bring to a boil; reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
3. Combine the grapefruit mixture with the remaining ingredients and chill overnight to marry and integrate the flavors.
4. Fill a 16- to 20-ounce rectangular plastic container with water and freeze overnight.
5. To serve, place the block of ice in a punch bowl and pour the punch over it. Add 500 milliliters of cold water and stir.
6. Garnish the punch with grapefruit and lemon slices.
7. Serve in tumblers over ice and top with a saison or other light beer with strong grapefruit or citrus notes. Another option is to add a bottle of your favorite hard cider.
The recipe for eggnog used for many years by White House butlers called for “a gallon of commercial eggnog mix.” I thought that might be hard to find, so we have here the recipe for eggnog that I drank at the holiday parties that I attended while I served in the White House. This version comes from the recipe files of the late White House executive chef Walter Scheib.
Makes about 1/2 gallon
6–7 eggs (pasteurized if possible), separated
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup bourbon
3/4 cup Cognac
3/4 cup dark rum (Scheib recommended Meyers)
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 quart milk (or more if a thinner consistency is desired)
Freshly grated nutmeg, for serving
1. Combine the egg yolks and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment and whip to ribbon stage (lemon yellow in color), 5–7 minutes.
2. Add the alcohol, and mix well; scrape sides of the bowl and mix again.
3. Pour the mix into a 1 1/2-gallon bowl and set aside.
4. In a separate clean mixer bowl using a clean beater, whip the egg whites and salt into very stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture in the bowl.
5. Wipe out the mixer bowl, pour in the cream and vanilla, and whip until very stiff peaks form. Fold this into the eggnog mixture.
6. Add the milk and whisk until smooth. This may take 3–5 minutes, as the meringue and cream must be mixed completely.
7. Transfer the mixture to a sealable container and refrigerate for 3–5 days. If the foam rises from the eggnog mixture during refrigeration, reincorporate it by whisking right before serving.
8. Serve very cold topped with a sprinkle of nutmeg.
This ale is a shout-out to President Thomas Jefferson, who loved ale. Martha Wayles Jefferson used to make small batches of ale early in their marriage. Though there isn’t much evidence that Jefferson brewed beer while he was in the White House, he certainly brewed beer back at Monticello after his presidency. He often charged Peter Hemings to oversee all brewing activities, and evidently Hemings was quite good at it. Jefferson offered Hemings’s tutoring services to other planters desiring to kickstart their brewing activities. I thank Tom Schurmann and his team at Tom’s Brew Shop in Lakewood, Colorado, for brewing this beer, and taste-testing it with their customers. Tom also offered some very helpful tweaks to the recipe that appeared on the WhiteHouse.gov website should be of use to home brewers. Note that you’ll need a 28-inch mesh bag for steeping malts.
Makes 53 twelve-ounce glasses of beer
12 ounces crushed amber crystal malt
8 ounces Biscuit Malt
2 (3.3-pound) cans light malt extract
1 pound light dried malt extract
1 1/2 ounces Kent Goldings hop pellets
2 teaspoons gypsum
1 1/2 ounces Fuggles hop pellets
1 pound honey
1 package Windsor dry ale yeast
3/4 cup corn sugar, for priming
1. In a 12-quart pot, steep all of the malts in the mesh bag in 1 1/2 gallons of sterile water at 155°F for half an hour. Remove the grains and set aside.
2. Add the liquid and dried malt extracts and bring to a boil.
3. For the first flavoring, add the Kent Goldings hop pellets and the gypsum. Boil for 45 minutes.
4. At the last minute of the boil, for the second flavoring, add the Fuggles hop pellets.
5. Add the honey and boil for 5 more minutes.
6. Add 2 gallons of chilled sterile water into the primary fermenter and add the hot wort. Top with more water to total 5 gallons. There is no need to strain.
7. Pitch the yeast when the wort temperature is between 70° and 80°F. Fill the airlock halfway with water or vodka or a sanitizer.
8. Ferment at 68°–72°F for about 7 days.
9. Rack to a secondary fermenter after 5 days and ferment for 14 more days.
10. To bottle, dissolve the corn sugar into 2 pints of boiling water for 15 minutes. Pour the mixture into an empty bottling bucket. Siphon the beer from the fermenter over it. Distribute the priming sugar evenly. Siphon into bottles and cap. Let sit for 2–3 weeks at 75°F.