Fantastic Beasts Cocktail – Harry Potter Inspired Recipe

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Last Updated on October 14, 2024 by Leah Hall

This color changing Halloween Harry Potter Cocktail celebrates the movie The Crimes of Grindelwald, and the Harry Potter Universe!

 

We are big fans of Harry Potter books and the fantastic immersive world created in these stories and the movies! One thing we always liked about the Harry Potter universe was the way little details were fleshed out to create this incredibly rich detailed world. You can lose yourself in it for hours.

 

One of those little details that always stuck out with us was all the interesting drinks that the characters consumed. These were fictional food like pumpkin pasties and drinks like pumpkin juice, giggle water, fire whiskey or the most famous, boozy Butterbeer!

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Of course being people who write about cocktails all day it got us imagining the Harry Potter cocktails that might be consumed in the wizarding world! Would they be colorful or dark? Would the cocktail fit the character? One thing we definitely knew is that they would have some element of “magic” since after all this is a wizard cocktail we are talking about!

So, put on the sorting hat and make some Harry Potter drinks for the next time you are watching the movies! If you want some other Halloween cocktails, try our Bathtub cocktail, Green Blood Bags or Eye Candy, too!

Harry Potter Cocktail

In the Wizarding world of Harry Potter, the character that came to mind when we were imaging magical cocktails was the famous dark wizard, Gellert Grindelwald. He was known as one of the most powerful and evil of wizards in the history of the Harry Potter books, and focus of the movie, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

 

What kind of drink would a powerful dark wizard drink? It definitely would be something complex and a unique color and maybe contain an ingredient that might cause mere mortals to go mad!

Obviously we don’t have much magic as we are but lowly muggles, but we do have ways to make a Harry Potter cocktail feel a little magical! We also just happened to have an ingredient known as the Green Fairy (seems appropriate for a wizard’s drink!) Absinthe! With a little time behind the bar, we came up with this fun cocktail, Grindelwald’s Goblet!

 

We have some other fun Harry Potter drink recipes – Unicorn Blood with its’ fun silver color and Polyjuice Potion cocktail, too! Any of these is perfect for a Harry Potter-themed party, or for the newer characters like Queenie Goldstein or Newt Scamander in the world of magic.

 

How to Make the Fantastic Beasts Cocktail

We wanted something that would be appropriately strong from the first sip (after all, we want a powerful potion!) and in season, so we started out with combination of rum and apple brandy. We love fall cocktails that use aged rums, as the hints of caramel and vanilla in the rum tends to go really well with lots of fall flavors.

 

The apple brandy brings that hint of fall, which is perfect since we were thinking the Grindelwald’s Goblet would be a perfect Halloween cocktail! Simply combine all the ingredients except the blue curacao in a cocktail shaker with ice, shake and strain, and you have a drink that would amaze the muggle world!

Next, an important ingredient is where we start to delve into the wizarding world by adding a little bit of the Green Fairy, Absinthe! Try some of our other Absinthe cocktails like Death in the Afternoon, Absinthe Frappe or St Patrick’s Irish Whiskey cocktail. 

 

Absinthe in Cocktails

Absinthe has long been one of those ingredients that has had all kinds of myths about it. Myths from possibly causing you to hallucinate, to being the drink of choice of all sorts of famous artists (some of who went mad, Vincent Van Gogh would like a word with you!), or being made with a toxic ingredient (wormwood)!

In fact many of these myths were part of the reason that Absinthe was illegal until 2007!

 

In reality, absinthe is a great spirit that can really make a cocktail shine. It has an intriguing combination of botanical flavors and savory elements useful for adding a real complexity to a drink. Add in the really unique green color and that mythical background and absinthe definitely had to have a spot in our Fantastic Beasts cocktail! Make some Spooky Cocktails or Blood Bags with some more Halloween drinks.

What Ingredients are Needed for the Fantastic Beasts Cocktail?

To start bringing everything into balance, we turned to a little citrus to brighten things up and add fruitiness to the wizard cocktail! A hit of fresh squeezed lime juice adds just the right bit of sour, while fresh orange juice adds sweetness. Using two kinds of citrus also adds layers of flavor that adds to the complexity of this Halloween cocktail.

• Apple Brandy – apples are fermented and distilled into brandy, some popular kinds are Calvados, applejack or Eau de Vie de Pomme.
• Gold Rum – can also be amber rum. This rum is aged in casks for color and flavor. It usually has a shorter aging time. Brands that we usually use are Bacardi Gold, Mount Gay Rum Eclipse, or Flor de Cana 4 Year Anejo Oro.
• Lime Juice – as always, fresh squeezed citrus juice is best!
• Orgeat – orgeat is an almond syrup. But, it has a little different flavor from orange flower water or rose water that helps to flavor it. If you don’t have orgeat syrup or want to make our homemade orgeat, you can use almond syrup as a sub.
• Absinthe – we have more info about this liquor above, but it is an overproof alcohol that gets flavor from medicinal and culinary herbs, plants and flowers. There is a prominent anise flavor on your taste buds from fennel or wormwood. And no, it will not make you hallucinate! Read more above.
• Orange Juice – again, fresh squeezed is best!
• Mango Nectar – nectar is a bit thicker than juice, as it has some pulp. But, if you can only get mango juice, that will work, too. This mango nectar adds a bit of tropical flavor to the drink, as well as helping the orange color for the beginning cocktail before adding the blue curacao.
• Blue Curacao – this syrupy blue liqueur is a super bright color. This helps make the drink green, as well as adds some flavor. Blue curacao has the flavor of oranges. Another color changing green cocktail is the Blue Hawaii! Read all about this bright blue liqueur in our What is Blue Curacao post.

 

But what about the magic you ask? Well, so far we have a bunch of pretty tame colors in this cocktail, and if we are going to make a cocktail fit to be sipped on by a dark wizard, it better be something kind of magical looking. Plus, we did promise you a bit of magic. Well how about a bit of color changing action?

We have experimented with butterfly pea tea in some of our other cocktails, like our Galaxy Mule, but for the Fantastic Beasts cocktail, we wanted something green. We started with an orange colored cocktail, and as you mix in the blue curacao, the Fantastic Beasts cocktail starts to transform into a bright green cocktail that definitely fits something magical!

 

If you remember your color mixing chart from kindergarten, mixing blue and yellow (or in our case orange juice & Mango nectar) makes green! Adding just the right amount of blue curacao to the orange juice transformed this cocktail recipe into a green potion worthy of a wizard! If you want another fun green cocktail, try the Incredible Hulk drink from A Nerd Cooks!

 

If You Are Looking for More Orgeat Cocktails, Try These!

• Rambler’s Ruby
• Nene Bird

Tips & Tricks

• Dry Ice – Everyone knows that a wizard needs a little more flair, so as a finishing touch, we added a chip of dry ice to make the Fantastic Beasts cocktail start to smoke and bubble like a mini cauldron! One note of caution, if you do use the dry ice to finish your Harry Potter cocktail, don’t drink the cocktail until the drink stops bubbling and the dry ice is completely gone so that you don’t get frostbite from the extreme cold of the dry ice! NOTE: drinking dry ice is not safe! If you add it to a drink, make sure it is completely dissolved before drinking the cocktail. This may mean waiting several minutes for it to do so. It is a safer option to use a larger chunk of dry ice in a bowl with warm water to give the effect of the dry ice in the area you are serving. Use caution and always use gloves and tongs when handling dry ice. Just skip it altogether if safety precautions can’t be followed.
• Mocktail – you can make this a mocktail by simply taking out all the alcohol. Combine the mango nectar, orange juice, orgeat, lime juice and then a blue curacao syrup. It will be sweeter than the cocktail, but will be the same fun color and effect. Add a little more lime juice to cut the sweetness.
• Garnish – we used dry ice for the pictures, but again, like we said above, that can be a dangerous choice. Another great garnish option could be a lime peel, lime wedge, orange wedge or orange peel. These magical cocktails can be fun just like themselves and with a little color changing, so don’t feel you have to have a garnish. Especially if you have a fun skeleton glass!
• Edible Glitter – to add a little extra oomph to your Harry Potter party, feel free to add some edible shimmer to the drink. We would recommend gold, silver or white or even green to make sure the colors are extra shiny and sparkly.
• Glassware – the skeleton glasses we used are super fun, but they aren’t cheap and are hard to find. We suggest some fun clear glassware to show off the color of the drink.

 

If You Are Looking for More Halloween Recipes, Try These!

• Professor’s Poisoned Apple
• Vampire Cynar Negroni
• Hocus Pocus Cocktail
• Halloween Oreo Monster Brownies
• Halloween Punch
• Halloween Charcuterie
• Zombie Blood Bags
• Green Halloween Punch
• Hocus Pocus Drink
• Halloween Pumpkin Cocktail
• Sanderson Sisters Potion
• Specimen Cocktails

Cheers to this Crimes of Grindelwald cocktail!

 

Also, don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and tag #gastronomcocktails so we can see all the wonderful recipes YOU recreate from this site!

 

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Like this recipe? Try these below, too!

Galaxy Magic Moscow Mule

 

Cynar Negroni

 

Other Harry Potter Universe Cocktails

• Gigglewater – Spiffy Eats
• Unicorn Blood – The Flavor Bender
• Fizzing Whizbees – My Recipes
• Patronus Punch – The Drunken Fandom
• Harry Potter Amortentia – Sugar and Soul

Other Halloween Cocktails

• Beetlejuice Cocktail – Bread Booze Bacon
• The Grave Digger – Confetti and Bliss

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