While much has changed since George Washington was in the White House — wooden dentures and powdered wigs are not so trendy now — some things remain the same. Beer, for example — people still love it, and it still pairs well with a healthy political debate. Here’s where Washington’s 260-year-old beer recipe comes in.

Blue Point Brewery brewmasters made 30 barrels of a new beer called Colonial Ale, following along with instructions Washington wrote down in 1757 when he was a 25-year-old colonel in the Virginia Regiment militia, the company said.

“We found a hand penned recipe of George Washington in a military journal for a small beer,” Dan Jansen, Blue Point’s brew master, told FOX 5. “We tried to utilize the ingredients that they would’ve used at the time,” he added.

There’s a copy of the recipe in the archives of the New York City Public Library, and Jansen said he followed those instructions very carefully.

“We used some corn and some oats, some wheat, as well as some white molasses syrup,” Jansen told CBS New York (warning: link contains autoplay video), adding in an interview with Newsday that the process was “a little bit of a challenge” due to the difference in ingredients. “For that reason, we absolutely did not try to brew an exact replica,” he said.

Colonial Ale will debut next Monday at Hofstra University’s hospitality tent before the presidential debate. Blue Point also has plans to offer samples at the brewery’s tasting room, “as soon as we can,” brewery co-founder Mark Burford told Newsday. “I’m sure there’s going to be some interest from other locations as well.”

If it proves popular, Colonial Ale could find its way to the retail big time, though a spokeswoman for the brewery tells Consumerist the beer is “a small batch limited edition with no distribution plans yet.” Key word: yet.

Long Island beer from George Washington recipe honors presidential debate [FOX 5]
Long Island Brewery Uses George Washington’s 260-Year-Old Recipe To Create New Beer [CBS New York]
Blue Point Brewing unveils ‘debate beer’ [Newsday]

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