FOR a guy who works with beer, Jeff Gorlechen was having a hard time getting his hands around one on Tuesday night. Mr. Gorlechen, 39, handles promotion for Sixpoint Craft Ales, a small brewer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and he was at Sixpoint’s fourth-anniversary party at Barcade, in Williamsburg, where the crowd at the bar was three deep.

Mr. Gorlechen and Sixpoint’s president and brewmaster, Shane Welch, who had not yet arrived, were coming off a strange week: Days earlier, their names had been splashed across blogs and newspapers in New York and Washington after the federal government ordered them to stop making a beer named for Barack Obama. Mr. Gorlechen said he would be happy to talk about it, as soon as he got a beer for himself.

“Here’s the deal,” he said 15 minutes later, retiring to a back corner of the bar. “It was a really good beer. It was really good. I really liked how it tasted.”

It all started almost a year ago, when Mr. Welch dreamed up the recipe for a brew to be produced during the seven-week lull between Democratic primaries. He named it Hop Obama, after the three strains of Pacific Northwest hops that gave the beer its floral, citrusy flavor. And, of course, after the candidate whom many people still considered an underdog. It sold out in six days.