Magical Butterbeer Cocktail: A Taste of Wizardry!
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I’ve never been truly happy with most (read any) commercially available Butter Beers, nor have I been a fan of most available recipes online. That’s not to say I think they’re bad by any stretch but I find a Lot of them lean way to heavily on cream soda, and usually add more sweetness, or have so many extra steps or components in order to achieve that movie accurate and eye catching “beer” head achieved in The Prisoner of Azkaban.
Over the years, without much consistent effort, I’ve been trying a lot of these trying to find the one that fits just right. I can’t say that I ever really succeeded (again, for me personally) so I finally took it upon myself to make something that fit my requirements.
I don’t mean for any of that build up to lead you to think I’m claiming my version is the perfect, end all be all, cream of the crop Butterbeer recipe, but for me currently it is. My rules for making this were: No cream soda, No separate foam component to be slopped on top, while I know the books describe it as such, Not so sickeningly sweet you struggle to drink it past a few sips, and last but not least, Easy enough to whip up on short notice. For last minute HP marathons of course!
The rules I set out to follow in my attempting to create this recipe were: Tastes like butterscotch, as already mentioned be relatively easy to make, low ABV as described in the books…I could be crazy but I remember it being described at home point as strong enough to get a House Elf drunk but obviously served to children…Beer like, and last but not least, Cold as opposed to hot which is how it’s served in mugs in the books.
The last one is simple personal preference as I’m not a huge fan of hot beverages regardless of the season. If you want to try it hot I would suggest building it along the same lines as a Hot Butter Rum cocktail. Rambling aside, I’m pretty happy with how this turned out and I hope you’ll give it a shot.
As for the drink itself, it hits the right butterscotch notes, using the NA beer is fun, keeps the ABV down, obviously gives it a beer feel, and all comes together to make a pretty solid head that holds up for a solid couple minutes before starting to deflate.
Ingredients:
1.5 oz Butter Washed Whiskey*
1.5 oz Homemade Butterscotch Syrup**
4 – 5 oz Erdinger Weissbrau NA Beer
*Butter Washed Whiskey
1 c Whiskey/Bourbon of choice (I recommend your favorite mid range whiskey/bourbon)
8 Tbs Butter
**Butterscotch Syrup
4 Tbs Butter, Unsalted
1 c Brown Sugar
¾ c Heavy Whipping Cream
1 Tbs Vanilla
Pinch of Kosher Salt
¾ c Water
¼ tsp Xanthan Gum
Directions
* Butter Washed Whiskey
- In a small pan over medium low heat gently brown your butter.
- Transfer the now browned butter to a sealable container and add your whiskey of choice.
- Seal the container, give it a good shake, and pop it in the freezer (upside down if possible), and leave overnight.
- Pull that container out of the freezer and strain off the whiskey into a fresh airtight container. Reserve the frozen butter for cookies or some shit.
** Butterscotch Syrup
- In a small saucepan, melt the butter and brown sugar, stirring continuously.
- Once melted, cut the heat, and vigorously whisk in the cream, vanilla, and salt. At this stage you will have traditional butterscotch. However, we want it to be a little thinner for our cocktail. Which means from here we just want to whisk in the water.
- Allow to cool. As, or once, it cools if you notice any separation you can use a stick blender, or regular to mix in the xanthan gum to recombine everything.
Cocktail:
- Either in your glass or a larger mixing vessel (my preferred choice) stir together the butter washed whiskey and butterscotch syrup. Pour into your glass if not already.
- Slowly top off with the Erdinger. It will foam A LOT, but in our tests it was a pretty sturdy foam that kept its shape even as it came a bit over the rim of our glass. So don’t be afraid to pour a nice head on this one!
A few notes to close this out:
- My butter wash recipe is very heavy on the butter compared to a typical butter wash. This is intentional as I was trying to up the butteriness of the cocktail.
- If you don’t want to make your own butterscotch syrup, even though it was dead easy and only took like 15 minutes, you can sub either store bought coffee style syrup or butter schnapps.
- If you want more of a kick either up the whiskey ratio or replace the NA beer with a proper British Ale.
