Anyone who’s read the Harry Potter books (it’s okay, you can admit to it, you’re among friends here…) will probably remember that the beverage-of-choice for trainee wizards is something called “butterbeer”. And, like me, you’ll probably have assumed that this was an invention on Ms Rowling’s part: innocuously kiddie-friendly but vaguely mystical-sounding; a little weird, a little off-the-wall.

A quick Google search would seem to confirm that impression, but it turns out that the author may actually have been inspired by an actual, historical drink that was widely enjoyed in Tudor times.

I know this, because I watched the latest episode of Heston’s Feasts (a highly-recommended show in which that mad genius Heston Blumenthal creates weird and utterly wonderful dishes from historical inspiration and serves them up to unsuspecting and almost unilaterally delighted celebrity guests) last night, and he actually made some of the stuff. And apparently it tasted really nice.

So, what we need now is a couple of intrepid, inventive souls (Boak and Bailey, I’m looking at you, for obvious reasons) to check out the programme on Channel 4′s Watch Online (it’s the Tuesday 17th March Tudor episode and the first segment of the programme), or make note of the helpfully-posted recipe on the Channel 4 Food Blog, then get cracking in the kitchen and report your findings to the beerblogosphere. Is it just a beery variant of egg-nog? Is it little more than mulled beer with added fat content? Does it in fact taste any better than it looks?

We await the results with baited breath…