Butterbeer is pouring in Lawrenceville
For its epic Harry Potter Film & Culture Festival this week and next, Lawrenceville’s Row House Cinema had to serve Butterbeer.
Especially because the connected business of Bierport was being transformed into a tavern in the fictional village of Hogsmeade. The beer store and taproom carries nearly 1,000 different kinds of brew, but it didn’t have Butterbeer, a quaff enjoyed by Harry and other characters in the series.
So owner Brian Mendelssohn set about concocting one with the help of friends who, as he puts it, “are brave souls.”
They tried many of the recipes that are on the internet. Some aim to re-create the nonalcoholic versions that are wildly popular (especially the cold and frozen ones) at Universal’s The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme parks and the Warner Bros. “The Making of Harry Potter” studio tour near London. There’s even a commercial Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer soda. The home alcoholic recipes are mostly made with spirits, even though there are 500-year-old English recipes for “buttered beere” with spices.
Mr. Mendelssohn definitely wanted this one to be warm and made with beer. So they experimented at the stove of his apartment, with everything from cider to cloves, narrowing it down last week to a half dozen. Even some of those were “pretty disgusting,” he says with a laugh.
But they came up with a keeper that tastes just like they imagine it would — warm and slightly alcoholic and sweet. The specific recipe is “top secret,” but he said the drink is about one-third of their cooked “base sauce” — with butter
as well as milk and other ingredients — with about twothirds beer added to it. For the beer, they’re using both Yards Brawler English mild and Bell’s Winter White wheat ale.
He describes the result as tasting like — “This is going to sound disgusting,” he says — an “egg cream beer,” with the sweet balanced by the beer. He adds, “I assure you it works,” just as root beer works with ice cream and orange juice works with the dairy in an Orange Julius.
It’s so labor intensive that they’re only serving the warm version during the fest’s special events, such as tonight’s Three Broomsticks Tavern Night. The ticketed British pie-and-beer tasting part sold out, but you still can pop in and order a Butterbeer for $5 for about 10 ounces in a foam cup. You’ll also be able to order Butterbeers during trivia nights next Tuesday and Wednesday. Mr. Mendelssohn said they planned to tweak the recipe a bit after the debut, which was “a pretty decent batch. ... This is hard to get right in the scale we made it tonight.”
Meanwhile, a nonalcoholic, egg cream-like warm Butterbeer ($4) will be served during Family Days on Saturday and Sunday.
But get it while it’s hot, because this Butterbeer stuff is popular. Bierport also has been serving an easier-to-make cold version that’s basically a pint of the Brawler or the Bell’s with some butterscotch syrup (for $6.50). They sold out on Friday in less than three hours — “definitely a record for us,” he says — and almost sold out Saturday. “People love it.”
Customers also loved the Harry Potter Butterbeer sugar cookies made by Yummyholic that almost immediately sold out last weekend (at $4 each). Baker Jasmine Cho planned to restock Bierport today and later this week with more of the beautifully decorated cookies, which aren’t flavored with beer, but rather brown sugar, melted butterscotch chips and vanilla bean paste.
Bierport also sold out of, and has had to restock, a Butterbeer ice cream made by Millie’s Homemade Ice Cream.
Mr. Mendelssohn says he wasn’t sure how this first fest would evolve, but he wanted to have things for adults as well as young people, and it’s proven to be a hit, just like the Butterbeer — “much more than we thought.”
Could the cold Butterbeer stay on the menu? Maybe both Brawler and Winter White versions?
He’s thinking about it.