Earlier in the week, a friend emailed me a link to a recipe for real, Tudor-style butterbeer. Apparently butterbeer is not just the stuff of Harry Potter culinary lore, but a real drink imbibed by real people with a real recipe to boot.
This brought to mind my high school days, when I would make faux butterbeer for my friends using homemade hot buttered rum mix and root beer. I would warm up the root beer on the stove and whisk in the hot buttered rum mix, and serve to friends dressed in festive hats and robes. We always saw Harry Potter on opening night, and we always dressed in costume (we did the same thing for Lord of the Rings). We were were (and sometimes still are) those kids!
When I discovered the root beer/hot buttered rum mix drink I was ecstatic, because it brought an additional air of authenticity to our festivities. When my friend emailed me the REAL butterbeer recipe, the memories came back and that, coupled with the fact that the newest Harry Potter movie has recently been released, inspired me to devote this blog entirely to butterbeer.
And so begins DinnerLove’s two-week Butterbeer extravaganza! This week I am bringing you the non-alcoholic root beer variety, and next week I’ll feature the tudor-style alcoholic recipe. Woohoo!
Butterbeer
Root beer, at least 16 oz
Hot buttered rum mix:
1/2 stick of butter
1 C brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
Leave the 1/2 stick of butter on the counter for a bit to soften it up. Alternatively, you can soften it in the microwave but I always manage to screw that up somehow and end up with a big liquid mess.
So, all you do is cream your ingredients together. Put the butter, sugar and spices into a bowl and stir until they are all combined.
Use 1 TB mix per 8 oz of root beer. I’m only making enough for one person (this stuff is really sweet!) so I heated 8 oz of root beer. When the root beer is warm and bubbly, add the buttered rum mix.
Whisk the mix into the root beer until it is dissolved. Watch the root beer, it will foam up if you’re not careful!
Pour into a big mug and enjoy!
In my opinion, the non-alcoholic variety is probably more true to the Harry Potter books than the tudor-style alcoholic beer recipe. I know that the drinking age in the UK is 18, but Harry Potter and Co have been drinking butterbeer since they were at least 12 and I seriously doubt that Madame Rosemerta would stand for a gaggle of drunk pre-teens in The Three Broomsticks, especially when they have Voldemort to fight off. Could you imagine? Harry wasn’t exactly an A student when it came to magic. If he were drunk he would have been dead!
Until next week, my fellow muggles. Enjoy!
❤ Stef
Dinner Love. 
Actually, Harry wonders what the affect of a few butterbeers will be on Luna at Slughorn’s party, and Winky the house-elf gets quite drunk off of butterbeer. So I’d bet the butterbeer of Harry Potter has some small amount of booze in it.
Actually, Harry’s version wouldnt have alcohol because students drink it and dont get get in trouble. Also Winky happens to be a house elf and they are quite small, so butterbeer is going to have a much different effect on her body.
I’m going to go on a limb here and say the wizard world rules are a wee bit different than the muggle world.
Well I stand corrected! I don’t remember any of that! I read them all very, very fast, though.
Great recipe! Are you going to post the tudor-style soon? I’m curious to sse how that goes!
Yes, I’ll post the tudor-style this week! I’ve been really busy these past few weeks.
Aww, you still haven’t posted the tudor one! Hope you’re able to get to it soon — looking forward to it and thanks for posting this one.
Is the tudor butterbeer recipe in the offing any time soon?
Would love to have it.
Thanks
The tudor butterbeer recipe will be up next week, by Friday March 5th!
The recipe shown must be an authentic reipe but I have to notice it looks nothing like the ones in the Harry Potter movies. The ones they show are a lot lighter in color (a yelow/golden look) and have a white frothy top that fills the top 1/4 of the mug and is overflowing the top.
What I am looking for is this particular recipe as I have found a close approximation of the mugs they use.
We are soon to have a childrens birthday party and you can gues the theme?
Any suggestions?
The kids only know what it looked like.
Oh, no, it’s not authentic by any means. I have a truly authentic Tudor butterbeer recipe posted elsewhere on ze blog. I found this one in an old cookbook of my Mom’s (an older version of the Better Homes and Gardens red checkered tome, actually!) years ago. YEARS. I think, maybe, 15 years ago. It was listed alongside their buttered rum mix recipe as a non-alcoholic alternative. When the Harry Potter movies first started emerging 10 or so years ago, I remembered the recipe and my friends and I used to make it when we went out to see the movies. At that time we only had Rowling’s written description of the beverage, as the movies hadn’t yet caught up to the books.
There are tons of other, probably more authentic to the movie versions out there. A quick google search came up with this one: http://www.mybakingdom.com/?p=1009 which looks very easy, as it is just soda with a thick whipped topping to give it the same “look” that the movie does.
Good luck!
I am going to try this!
It’s really good, but SUPER sweet! I loved it when I was 16. Heck, I liked it when I made it a few years ago. It’s definitely a sometimes treat though, haha.