Butterbeer — Adagio Teas

The sweet taste of Butterbeer, which is a mildly alcoholic drink served throughout the wizarding world.

Ingredients: black tea, natural caramel flavour, natural creme flavour, natural vanilla flavour

The teas used to create this blend are: caramel, cream and vanilla.

Butterbeer is one of the blends in the Magic Potions sampler box by Adagio Teas and has, unsurprisingly considering its contents, a creamy flavour even on its own and is relatively sweet although personally, I’m not keen on it without sugar as it’s definitely a classic black tea.

I think it’s actually quite a subtle blend so it doesn’t really smell of much, apart from some creaminess, and while I enjoyed drinking it I didn’t really pick up on the butterscotch flavour it’s supposed to impart so to me it bears about as much resemblance to Butterbeer as the one sold at the Harry Potter Studio Tour does to the one sold at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter — i.e. not much — although it is very pleasant and is what I would call a good, solid cuppa.

I have tried it several ways now, and my favourite is with a teaspoon of demerara sugar and a little milk, as this gives the tea an extra boost of creaminess without going too far — I found that cream adds an extra layer to the tea, which is good when I’m in the mood but a bit too creamy when I’m not (sometimes too much cream can be a bad thing).

Overall, I would say that it’s pleasant enough but is quite obviously extremely high in caffeine so not one for those who like a milder cup of tea or get a headache from caffeine. I like it for an occasional cup but it’s not something I would drink a lot of in one sitting nor would I would I drink it late in the afternoon because of the high caffeine content.

Interestingly, it actually still tastes quite nice when it’s cold because of that creamy flavour, which I can’t say about most normal teas, particularly when they have milk in them. I’m not recommending drinking it cold, just saying that it doesn’t necessarily mean chucking the drink away because you forgot about it.

Adagio recommend brewing this tea for 3 minutes and I would agree with that, or maybe just a little longer. If you leave it for too long it can make it quite bitter, but I’ve found that adding milk diminishes the bitterness considerably.