You can type in “butterbeer recipes” into Google and you’ll find no shortage of strange concoctions inspired by J.K. Rowling’s (rather quite brilliant) series about an angst-ridden adolescent boy with a strange scar on his forehead. However, sometime in May/June 2009, a mate and I were discussing these recipes that were online and in our humble opinions none of them were quite right. Almost all of them called for the use of cream/club club soda and there were differing versions for hot and cold butterbeer. If you know anything about butterbeer then you’ll immediately recognise that this is utterly ludicrous. If not, then simply take into account the following and hopefully you’ll see why: 

Butterbeer has three essential properties. First, it is a drink with an alcoholic content that is low enough not to get students drunk, but still it is capable of getting a house elf drunk. Second, it is a drink that tastes good cold and warm. And finally, it is British!

When you bear in mind these three qualities I can quite confidently say that all the recipes currently on the web can be dismissed because they fail to observe these essential characteristics. Cream/club soda fails on all three accounts. For this reason some recipes call for the use of Root Beer which satisfies the first two characteristics, but fails on the third. There is only one liquid that could be used as a base from which to build butterbeer that satisfies all three characteristics. This mysterious liquid is Apple Cider! Apple Cider comes in both hard and soft forms so if you mix the two together, you have your base.

Our first attempts at making butterbeer by using Apple Cider were a success. The one thing we continued to fail at was getting the drink to have a head as it is described in the books, and as is depicted in the movies. However, one evening on Dec 22nd 2009 we finally cracked it. To figure out the secret, check out the recipe!

The old Butterbeer (Done Right) recipe can be found here