I can’t believe I typed that.
Julie got 10 kinds of excited about brewing the next batch of beer, and on Sunday we put together a special cask-strength edition of Butterbeer.
Now, fair disclosure, I have not read the Harry Potter books, though I have (mostly) enjoyed the films as well as two somewhat bad movie-tie-in video games. Thus, when you, the average Harry Potter Fan, rails at me that butterbeer is for the younger wizards and not an alcoholic drink for adults and other blathering, you can go Furnunculus yourself.
We’re making beer.
In the tradition of the venerable Fat Vern this beer was a modified homebrew kit from our friends at Fermentation Solutions which recently moved into the larger corner store in the shopping center and the JiuJitsu academy moved out (seemingly out towards a mall near us on Blossom Hill). We modified a plain-jane sounding wheat beer and removed the dominant flavor spices of orange peel and replaced them with a magical concoction of cinnamon, cloves, sarsaparilla, coriander, and (of course) butterscotch extract.
We’ll know how it turns out soon enough. Probably just in time for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (HP6), and we’ll keep you posted.
Boy, there were a lot of nasty-sounding recipes out there. I’m excited for this one, though, and its spices…I hope it will be tasty.
In all likelihood, the butterbeer of Harry Potter may have been meant to be more like one of the recipes below, given their Olde English-ness and the fact that they’re a hot beverage, which is what I vaguely recall from the books. Bonus points to the second one for being linked to Society for Creative Anachronism AND adding a superfluous “e” to “beere”.
http://blogs.channel4.com/food/2009/03/17/feasting-on-butterbeer/
http://www.florilegium.org/?http%3A//www.florilegium.org/files/BEVERAGES/wassail-msg.html