Most corporate communicators would steer clear of a news event involving charged racial tensions and the police.

But President Obama’s use of a “beer summit” to calm the war of words between Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley opened the door slightly for gutsy PR pros who might want to latch onto the wave of media coverage surrounding the issue.

The new owners of my hometown beer, Genesee, in Rochester, NY, timed their pitch to perfectly, landing a nice item in Jennifer Rossa’s Private Equity Beat Wall Street Journal blog and a bunch of other TV, radio, newspaper and social media coverage.  Genesee brewed up a controversy over Obama’s choice of Bud Light as the beer he will be drinking tonight.  Bud’s parent, Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, is based in Belgium.

“We think it’s great that the President is getting together over beers to have an important discussion. A lot of good solutions have surfaced when people can relax and talk over a couple cold ones,” said Rich Lozyniak, CEO of The Genesee Brewing Company. “We just hope the next time the President has a beer, he chooses an American beer, made by American workers, at an American-owned brewery like Genesee.”

The lesson here is that every big news story — in social media as well as mainstream print and broadcast — creates demand for sidebar material.  Cheers to the Genesee beer team for understanding the news cycle and pouncing.