The White House Doesn't Stock Foreign Beers

This Thursday at 6 p.m., President Obama will be hosting Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the officer who arrested him, Cambridge (Mass.) Police Sergeant James Crowley, for a beer at the White House. “I look forward to meeting Sgt. Crowley under more pleasant circumstances, and having that beer,’’ Gates told the Boston Globe this week in an email. And just what kind of beer will "that beer" be? While Gates has mentioned that he likes Red Stripe and Beck’s, he won't be offered either of those choices at the White House, as both those brews are made in other countries and the White House only stocks domestic beers following a tradition that dates back to the Johnson administration. Sgt. Crowley will be drinking Blue Moon, which is made in Colorado by the Coors Brewing Company. And for the president? At baseball's All-Star Game two weeks ago, he downed a Bud, but maybe he'll swap out the King of Beers for something different this time.