Organizing potential cocktails for a (Harry Potter Christmas) Party

What do I serve at my upcoming (second annual) Harry Potter Christmas Party?!

Here is my Google excel sheet to organize my ideas!

There are so many good ideas, but I NEED to narrow some drinks down. This is how I organize all of my thoughts together. The ones in yellow I have already decided I will make.

I already know I’ll be making Butterbeer, with a new and improved recipe which I will share soon.

My roommates have vodka they want to be used, so I’ve been researching how to use this liquor for the first time, since I never use it. I’m currently infusing pear, ginger, cinnamon sticks and cloves in a mason jar now. I also added some syrup I made using Pumpking beer and Amaretto, shook that on ice with vodka and lemon juice, and it was great!

Things to consider for providing cocktails at a party:

• What booze do I already have on hand?
• What ingredients do I already have on hand?
• Can something be made into a punch? If it’ not a punch, then that means I will need to bar-tend (which I already need to do for the Butterbeer, since that is heated and should be drunk after I serve it).
• If I buy a special ingredient for one drink (for example, Champagne) can I use it for a second drink, or a third drink? In other words, how can I be economical with what I am buying?
• Will the drinks be diverse? I can’t have four whisky-based drinks that are all super sweet and have similar flavors (cinnamon, wintery spices, etc).
• Will the drinks be unique enough to leave an impression, off-kilter a bit so they fit with the “magical” theme of Harry Potter, yet universally liked/tested so people will enjoy them?

Starbucks Rolls Out Harry Potter Butterbeer. Nope.

Here is an announcement that Starbucks is starting to serve a Harry Potter themed Butterbeer. The title enthusiastically states “Starbucks Is Now Serving Butterbeer! Get the Harry Potter-Inspired Recipe Here!!!!!!” [Extra exclamation marks added].

This sounds just as sugary and gross as I expected it to be. Also pretty uninspiring.

If you want a breakdown of Harry Potter Butterbeer recipes out there on the internet, feel free to go to Obedient Ingredient’s most-viewed post: homemade Butterbeer recipes. You can also read about actual experiments I tried, including an authentic Butterbeer recipe with, you know, butter and beer.

Here is the Starbucks recipe:

• A Crème Frappuccino base, made with whole milk (not skim or 2%, which will mess up the consistency)
• 3 pumps of caramel syrup
• 3 pumps of toffee nut syrup
• Top with caramel drizzle

Here is the hot recipe:

• Whole milk steamer
• Caramel syrup (2 pumps for a tall, 3 for grande, 4 for venti)
• Toffee nut syrup (2 pumps for a tall, 3 for grande, 4 for venti)
• Cinnamon Dolce syrup (2 pumps for a tall, 3 for grande, 4 for venti)
• Top with whipped cream and salted caramel bits
• Optional: 1 shot of espresso (2 for a grande or venti)

According to the E! author, if you hate Harry Potter, you are a sugar/health snob:

‘Non-Potterheads might describe it as “pretty nerdy and HOLY HAGRID! That is way too much sugar for one drink! You are going to get diabetes if you drink that!” To each their own.’

Ten points from Starbucks. Go to detention in Snape’s office.

The Best, Most Delicious, Most Authentic, Actual Homemade Butterbeer Recipe!

This blog’s most popular post, by far, is about Homemade Harry Potter Butterbeer. It was exciting to compile my research and compare/contrast the different homemade concoctions on the internet. Initially, I intended to make a few of the recipes myself, but there was one big thing standing in my way:

All of the homemade Butterbeer recipes looked gross!

Too sugary. Wayyyy too sweet. Sugar upon fructose upon sweetener upon chemical sweetness. Imitation butter flavoring? Cream soda AND sugar AND syrup? No thanks.

I’m definitely not a great practitioner of healthy eating, even though I try to be conscious of a healthy diet. And if I could give up one “bad” thing in my diet, it would be sugar.

Yet homemade Harry Potter Butterbeer remains a fun recipe to try out, especially if one is throwing a Harry Potter Christmas party (like my roommates and I did, and it was awesome, see end of post for some pics).

So I decided to try some recipes myself, and was pleasantly surprised by the results of the recipe that has been around the longest. A recipe that dates all the way back to the 16th Century.

And yes, the recipe that turned out to be awesome has both BUTTER and BEER, and is very easy to make without crazy ingredients.

Homemade Harry Potter Butterbeer

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.