UPDATE 2: The final recipe I’ve settled on!

UPDATE: This blog post has tons of research and recipes, but I did not attempt to make any of them and drink them. However, I actually tried some recipes very recently and found one I loved. Click here to go to that post, but read on to look at my research and whole lot of recipes.

Halloween is upon us, and I thought it would be fitting to conduct a test to try out homemade Butterbeer, the drink that appears in the Harry Potter books. As a huge fan of HP and food tests and things with the word “beer” in it, I figured this would be a great experiment for today and this winter.

However, I was unable to actually conduct the taste test experiment for Butterbeer, for several reasons:

1. I am still unemployed and this would have been very expensive to do.

2. My friends find the idea of taste testing so many sugary drinks to be gross.

So, this post will contain my research on butterbeer in case YOU would like to try out one of these recipes. If there is enough demand for me to conduct this experiment, I’ll give it a try.

I scoured the internet for Butterbeer recipes, and I found many. The recurring theme centered around the attempt to recreate the Butterbeer found at the Universal Studios Harry Potter park, although there were a few recipes that simply tried to create their own wizardy concoction.

I will present to you the main recipes I have found and show you an ingredient matrix I made.

Recipes:

Note: This blogger already did a Butterbeer experiment, and we will be using some of the recipes she has tried: http://www.orlandoinformer.com/2012/harry-potter-butterbeer-recipe/

Recipe #1: Muggle.net

Recipe #2: Tablespoon.com (this is also the recipe I found on Huffington Post and Fox News)

Recipe #3: Chica and Jo

Recipe #4: Madam Rosmerta’s Butterbeer

Recipe #5: DesignDazzle

Recipe #6: Food Network: Sandra Lee

Recipe #7: Bakingdom

Recipe #8: Picturing Disney

Recipe #9: Dinners, Dishes and Desserts

Harry Potter Butterbeer Recipe Matrix:

EDIT: Here is a new recipe I came across which sounds interesting. It’s pumpkin beer + butterscotch sauce.

I appreciate the variety of recipes, although it seems all but one use Cream Soda (Note: the newer recipe in the paragraph above does not have cream soda). Like all good recipes, the better quality cream soda one uses, the better. Only 4 recipes use alcohol. Don’t be put off by recipe #7’s amounts; that recipe makes many servings.

Some of these ingredients look challenging to find: Butterscotch schnapps? Vanilla butter nut flavoring (very specific!)? I’ve never used meringue powder before, have you?

Without trying any of these, I’d have to guess that #6 is the sweetest. #4 looks very interesting since it uses two types of alcohol and very different ingredients from the rest.

Which one would you make?

Bonus College Recipe: Reddit

Bonus Video: A fun video of making three kinds of Harry Potter Butterbeer (hot, cold and smoothie) Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTn5SJLTnek

Real Butterbeer!

This may be news to some of you, but butterbeer is actually a real thing, not something simply made up by J.K. Rowling. Apparently it’s a drink from England back in the day (think 500 years ago). Below are three recipes, including the original, authentic recipe called Tudor Buttered Beere from 1588 (you know it’s real because there is an added letter “e” to the word beer. I bet people got this drink at the local shoppe).

Real Recipe #1: Tudor Bettered Beere

Real Recipe #2: Sujay Thomas

Real Recipe #3: Dairy Free

Real Buttered Beer Recipe Matrix:

Here is a great video of a guy actually trying the real Butterbeer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Jgq-VQE-o

Also, this blog does a great job with research of original butterbeer. This is what my blog would look like if I were a real food researcher. (His recipe is very similar to Real Recipe #1) http://drgateau.com/?p=1419

I hope you enjoyed this blog entry, even though there were no experiments actually conducted. Like I stated in the beginning, if there is enough desire for me to test this out, I’ll do it!

Happy Halloween.

UPDATE:

More resources on Butterbeer:

intoxicology.net/how-to-make-real-butter-beer-from-harry-potter/

http://www.ourshelflives.com/sweet-things-bring-your-own-butterbeer/

Note: None of these photos are mine.