In past election cycles pundits and pollsters have asked us, “Who’s the candidate you’d like to have a beer with?”

This year Obama has been buying beers for voters on the campaign trail, but the Administration seems to be taking the premise to a whole new level by asking, Who’s the candidate whose secret recipe for home-brewed beer you’d like to try yourselves?

After tapping into an American passion for beer with his own home-brew operation, Obama responded to an online petition to release the White House Honey Porter recipe with a perfectly-timed Labor Day present yesterday: he released not only the recipe, but a video taking viewers inside the White House home-brew process.

It’s actually pretty brilliant: A holiday weekend, a down-time for the news cycle, and all of America getting ready to fire up the grill and drink beer. With this video Obama is telling beer aficionados (which is basically all of America), Hey guys, I’m just like you (except I have a totally badass home-brew setup and a staff who will brew it for me).

Press Secretary Jay Carney first said they’d only release the recipe if the petition on the Administration’s site wethepeople reached 50,000, turning the petition into a popularity contest. In the end they released the recipe even though the petition only got halfway there—clearly an act of calculated goodwill, and probably an effective one.

Check out the White House home brew video below.