Here at the Hobbit Hold, we’re all about home, comfort food, warm drinks for winter, as well as the minor indulgences that make life magical.  We also realize that we hold a minor obligation to the fandom from which we take our domain name.  So, it behooves us every once and again to steer our content toward the fantastic, the magical, or even the downright medieval.  That’s why in this post we’re going to take a look at a Buttered Beere (not Butterbeer Potterheads), a warm drink that is considered a winter comfort beverage, from Tudor England. 

Published sometime around 1585, The Good Housewife’s Jewell by Thomas Dawson was among the first guides to homemaking and cooking to be written in modern English.  One of the more interesting recipes to be found in its pages is for “Buttered Beere”.  Wanting to try something a little more mature than the standard Butterbeer, my husband and I decided to give this a go. With winter soon upon us, we could think of no better warm drink to be had on a chilly evening were we to find ourselves in The Shire.

Pulling from the original text, the recipe for buttered beer is as follows:

To make Buttered Beere. Take three pintes of Beere, put five yolkes of Egges to it, straine them together, and set it in a pewter pot to the fyre, and put to it halfe a pound of Sugar, one penniworth of Nutmegs beaten, one penniworth of Cloves beaten, and a halfepenniworth of Ginger beaten, and when it is all in, take another pewter pot and brewe them together, and set it to the fire againe, and when it is readie to boyle, take it from the fire, and put a dish of sweet butter into it, and brewe them together out of one pot into an other.

                                                            Source [The Good Housewife’s Jewell, T. Dawson]

Ingredients To Make This Warm Winter Drink

To wit, we will require:

            1500 mL of Ale

            5 Egg Yolks

            200 grams of raw sugar (Demerara or some another variety such as Sugar in the Raw)

            2.5 grams of ground nutmeg

            2.5 grams of ground clove

            1.25 grams of ground ginger

            100 grams of unsalted butter

Selecting an Ale

When choosing a beer to use with this particular recipe, we highly recommend selecting a mild ale.  Naturally, we anticipate personal taste to win out in the end. Though if you’re keen to experience this warm drink as it was drunk during winters hundreds of years ago, an ale is best. 

Ales would have been more common in England at the time since they don’t require refrigeration the way lagers do. English, Brown, or Scottish style ales would be ideal for this recipe. Other lighter ales such as Belgian or certain German beers will do if you can’t find the others.  Those wanting a truly strong kick might even want to consider a Barley Wine.

Due to lack of availability in our area, we decided to go with a standard German Hefeweizen.

Buttering Up Your Beer

The original recipe seems to indicate dumping everything in together.

However, we opted to put the beer in first along with the spice to burn off some of the alcohol. We wanted to see if we could still make it a historically accurate Butterbeer for children.

Then we let the flavors stew for a bit. 

Our hope was that a stronger taste of spice would make our buttered beer a better quality of warm drink and comfort beverage for winter, akin to a mulled wine. 

Once the beer boiled up a bit, it cleared and we added a mixture of the egg and sugar. We kept stirring steadily.

That stirred and was allowed to simmer for another 5 to 10 minutes. 

It’s important during this time that your heat be low in order to melt the sugar. Avoid creating a boiled egg slurry. 

If your stove runs hot, you might want to consider removing it from the heat at this point.  Our goal is to create a cozy, warm winter drink, not a drinkable omelet.

Once the egg and sugar mixture had simmered in nicely, we added the butter and let it melt.

We continued to whisk, and once the butter had melted, we allowed the mixture to simmer for another 5 minutes. 

When we were content with the consistency and frothiness, we let our buttered beer cool down to a drinkable temperature.

Put down the glass Mr. Potter, you’re too young.

This is most definitely not the magnificent concoction that Harry Potter fans will remember from Hogsmeade.  Though we’d like to think that Shirefolk would be quite pleased if they ever find out that it can come in pints! 

Recipes for Butterbeer of the Harry Potter variety are easy enough to find online. While this likely progenitor of Rowling’s Butterbeer is incredibly sweet, we wouldn’t consider serving it to children unless a non-alcoholic beer was used.

Our Opinion After Making this Warm Winter Drink

We both enjoyed this tasty winter comfort beverage.  It’s not every day that you get to try out a recipe that is hundreds of years old.  Unless you have French Toast every morning for breakfast, then it truly is an everyday thing for you. 

This warm drink is something we would consider making again, especially if we had visitors over on a cold winter evening.  

If we had anything negative to say at all, it would be that the beverage is entirely too sweet. It could perhaps do with a wider array of spices. 

Despite our lack of sweet tooth, we are keeping in mind that this recipe comes from a period shortly after Europeans were introduced to sugar. 

At the time, using sugar in a recipe would be something of a display of wealth.  The Tudors themselves were notorious for their sugar intake, which would go a long way toward explaining the girth of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth’s blackened teeth.  People of the time had yet to learn the drawbacks of sugar. If you are one of those people looking to reduce sugar intake, read these guidelines to find out how.

Our particular experiment with this recipe may have turned out sweeter because of our beer choice too. 

If you’re looking for something unique to try on a cold evening, Buttered Beere gets our whole-hearted recommendation.  Potterheads who are of age might also get a kick out this “Adult Butterbeer” as well. Regardless of whether you’re a history enthusiast, a fantasy fan, or just curious; this warm drink is worth trying at least once this winter. 

We’ll be taking another look at Buttered Beere later on when we try to put our own twist on this 400-year-old recipe.

If you decide to make it this winter, do let us know how it turned out. Would love to hear your thoughts on this old comfort beverage.

Related Reads:

How To Practice the Hygge Lifestyle During Pandemic 

How to Make Your Home Feel Cozier This Winter With Hygge Décor

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