Harry Potter’s ButterBeer

I know I don’t normally publish during the week, but I couldn’t let this recipe wait until next year. Well, I spent a lot of time doing it, but due to overwork I had to slow down the pace of the weekly publications. I hope to be able to resume them as I was doing them at some point. Although with this crazy life, I don’t know, hahaha. In any case, I had to leave you this Harry Potter ButterBeer for this Halloween.

It is an absolute and complete delicious recipe, promise. You can’t miss your favorite movie (in my case, “Hocus Pocus“, there is no Halloween that I don’t watch it) with your blanket, your choice of snacks and this wonderful and comforting refreshment. It’s actually a warm drink, at least this format I’m going to share with you. So that makes it doubly recommendable for this time of year, which is colder.

Wizard’s drink?

Butterbeer is the preferred drink of young magicians. It can be served either hot or cold and, in both cases, will have a comforting effect and make us feel warm. Although it is true that members of the house can become intoxicated with Butterbeer, the amount of alcohol it contains has a negligible effect on witches and wizards.

The amount of alcohol, much or little, that butterbeer possesses is open to debate among scholars and amateurs of this drink, but most agree that it contains some alcohol. Not too much. In fact, we are more likely to have a reaction due to the amount of sugar, before the alcohol exerts any effect on the body.

But, is there a non-alcoholic variant of butterbeer?

Yes, there is.

In fact, it was created especially for the Harry Potter theme parks (there are currently 4) and reviewed by the author herself, J.K. Rowling. Before creating it, the author herself was asked how she would describe the taste of butterbeer, to which she responded that it would be sweet.

Thus, they created the famous Butterbeer that can be consumed in all their parks and whose recipe is secret. It is only known that it does not contain alcohol or dairy ingredients. It can be found in two formats; frozen and normal. People define it as a mixture between cream soda (a soda drink with a vanilla flavor) and butterscotch (a sugar candy with butter), although there are also opinions that define it as a mixture of shortbread and butterscotch.

Maybe we should go one day to try it to find out for sure…

Ok, we will need sound music for this post…

All opinions agree that it is a very sweet drink, with a toasted color and a thick layer of foam on top.

For those who want to make the recipe without alcohol, they can use cream soda. I thought of making a variant with ice cream or vanilla and soda shake, to give it a gaseous feeling. And, in this case, we’ll omit the egg.

To create the “foam” in the non-alcoholic butterbeer, we can crown it with whipped cream or even an Italian meringue.

What is the real origin of butterbeer?

Surely many of us link its origin to the Harry Potter film. And one thing we all agree on is that if it weren’t for the movie, many of us (most likely, almost certainly) would never have met it. This is a reality.

But its origin dates back much further than J.K. Rowling’s films.

Butterbeer, or “Buttered beere” as it was described in 1594, has existed for many centuries. At the time of the Tudors, beer was already a typical and commonly consumed drink. In fact, there was a very mild ale known as “small beer” that was consumed by everyone, even children. The reason was that the water was not considered very safe for consumption, since the river waters were contaminated and made people sick.

This was done by mixing the beer with butter, sugar, spices and eggs. The recipe can be seen in the book “The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin“.

The recipe was detailed as follows:

To make Buttered Beere: Take three pintes of Beere, put five yolkes of Egges to it, straine them together, and set it in a pewter pot to the fyre, and put to it halfe a pound of sugar, one penniworth of Nutmegs beaten, one penniworth of Cloves beaten, and a halfepenniworth of Ginger beaten, and when it is all in, take another pewter pot and brewe them together, and set it to the fire againe, and when it is readie to boyle, take it from the fire, and put a dish of sweet butter into it, and brewe them together out of one pot into an other.

There is another later recipe, published in 1664 by Robert May in his recipe book “The Accomplisht Cook“, in which liquorice root and aniseed are also added.

What does this drink consist of?

Butterbeer has a fairly simple composition and only one of its ingredients has an alcohol content.

• Black lager beer: They are made of roasted malt, which gives them their characteristic dark color. Their flavor is reminiscent of coffee or chocolate. Normally black beer is lager type. This classification indicates that the beer ferments at low temperatures (between 0º and 4ºC) and is usually light, sparkling, smooth, amber or black in color. Its name means “warehouse” in German, a place where they were formerly kept to keep them fresh. These are some types:· Porter: Probably the most popular black beer in the world, thanks to its malty taste and strong color. Its main ingredient is barley and its fermentation is typical of ale beers
  · Imperial Stout: It corresponds to the strongest black beers, with an intense flavor and an alcoholic percentage of approximately 10%.
  · Cream Stout: In this variety the barley is not malted, but caramelized. The result is a beer with a slightly sweet taste and a slightly lighter color than porter
  · Bock: Brewed with malt, resulting in a full-bodied, mild-flavored beer
  · Schwarzbier: It is a German beer of low fermentation, with an alcohol content that can reach 5%
• Black beer type ale: This denomination includes all the beers of high fermentation, what differentiates them from the lager that are of low fermentation. This means that the fermentation process occurs on the surface of the liquid, while in lager beers it occurs near the bottom. In other words, the yeast that completes the fermentation process floats on the surface of the liquid for several days before descending to the bottom. For this purpose, mainly yeasts of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae type are used. The ales ferment rapidly at temperatures between 15 and 25 °C and are usually served at a temperature of 12 °C or higher.
• Muscovado or dark mascabado sugar: This is an unrefined or partially refined sugar. In order to elaborate it, the juice of the sugar cane is extracted and it is left to evaporate until obtaining a dry residue that, later, will be milled. Its flavor is reminiscent of liquorice, coffee and caramel.
• Butter: Dairy product made from cow’s milk. It is the fatty part of the milk in which protein and carbohydrates have been isolated. It is composed of 80% fat and the rest is mainly water.
• Egg yolk: Central part of the egg that is yellow in color and is characterized by more fat. It was the preferred emulsifier since ancient times and until the middle of the 19th century for making tempera paints.
• Spices: Thanks to them we aromatize the drink. In our case we use cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves.
• Butterscotch extract: Originally it is a candy elaborated, mainly, with brown sugar and butter. Other ingredients used are corn syrup, cream, vanilla and salt. Its flavor or appearance can remind us a lot of toffee. In this case we will use it in extract format to further enhance the flavor in butter beer.