Most hot buttered bourbon recipes start by asking you to make a batter: a stick of butter creamed with brown sugar and spices, then chilled, then scooped. It is a fine project if you are serving twelve. For one or two mugs on a cold evening, it is a lot of washing up, and the brown sugar tends to sit gritty at the bottom. The simpler route is to let a syrup do the sweetening. A half ounce of Traditional Proof Syrup dissolves on contact, brings its own bitters, and leaves the butter with one job, which is to be butter.
What Makes a Great Hot Buttered Bourbon
The drink has four parts: bourbon, butter, hot water and a sweetener. Three of them are fixed. The sweetener slot is where the drink is decided.
Brown sugar is the traditional choice, borrowed from hot buttered rum. It tastes good, but it has to be worked into the butter in advance or it will not dissolve evenly. Skip that step and you get a thin, weakly sweet drink with sludge under it. Use too much and the mug turns into dessert.
A syrup fills the slot differently. It is already liquid, so it blends with the hot water at once and helps the melted butter spread through the drink. And because the aromatic bitters are cooked into the syrup, you get the spice and the faint bitterness that keep a rich drink from being cloying. The result drinks like a warm Old Fashioned with a soft, round finish.
Hot Buttered Bourbon Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 oz bourbon
- 1/2 oz Traditional Proof Syrup
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
- 4 to 5 oz hot water, just off the boil
- Small pinch of salt
- Pinch of ground cinnamon or freshly grated nutmeg
- Cinnamon stick, for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Fill a heatproof mug with hot water and let it stand for a minute, then pour the water out.
- Add the butter, syrup, salt and spice to the warm mug.
- Pour in about 1 oz of the hot water and stir until the butter has melted completely.
- Add the bourbon.
- Top with the remaining hot water and stir again.
- Garnish with a cinnamon stick and let it cool for a minute before drinking.
The bourbon goes into the mug and never into the kettle or a pan on the stove. Boiling the spirit drives off the aromas you paid for and leaves the drink harsh.
Why the Sweetener Matters
Heat changes how sweetness reads. A hot drink can taste flat with the same amount of sugar that would be plenty in a cold one, and butter adds richness without adding any flavor of its own to speak of. So the sweetener has to bring some character with it.
Proof Syrup is made in small batches with raw cane sugar, which has more depth than white sugar and gives the drink body. That body matters here, because hot water thins everything out. The bitters in the syrup add the clove-and-spice notes that a batter recipe gets from a jar of ground spices. You can still add a pinch of cinnamon, but the drink no longer depends on it.
The standard measure is the same as for a cold drink: 1/2 oz of syrup to 2 oz of whiskey. If you like a sweeter mug, go to 3/4 oz and stop there.
Variations
Black Walnut Hot Buttered Bourbon
Ingredients
- 2 oz bourbon
- 1/2 oz Black Walnut Proof Syrup
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 4 to 5 oz hot water
- Pinch of salt and grated nutmeg
Nut and butter are an obvious pair. This is the version closest to a baked good, in a good way.
Best for: after dinner, in place of dessert.
Maple Bacon Hot Buttered Bourbon
Ingredients
- 2 oz bourbon
- 1/2 oz Maple Bacon Proof Syrup
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 4 to 5 oz hot water
- Pinch of salt
Maple, smoke and butter. Leave out the cinnamon and let the syrup carry it. This one is not vegan, though the butter had already settled that.
Best for: a slow weekend afternoon, or the hour after shoveling snow.
Orange Hot Buttered Bourbon
Ingredients
- 2 oz bourbon
- 1/2 oz Orange Proof Syrup
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 4 to 5 oz hot water
- Pinch of salt, and a strip of orange peel
The citrus cuts the richness and makes the drink feel lighter than it is. Express the peel over the mug before dropping it in.
Best for: people who find the classic version too heavy.
Technique Tips
Warm the mug first
A cold mug takes the heat out of the drink before the butter has finished melting. A minute of hot water in the mug beforehand keeps the drink hot for longer and costs nothing.
Soften the butter, and use unsalted
Butter straight from the fridge melts slowly and in lumps. Leave it out for half an hour, or cut it into small pieces. Unsalted butter with a pinch of salt added gives you control; salted butter varies a good deal between brands.
Melt before you top up
Stirring the butter into a small amount of hot water and syrup first gives a smoother drink than dropping a pat on top of a full mug. A slick of butter on the surface is normal and part of the appeal. A solid lump is not.
Mind the water temperature
Water just off the boil is right. Let the kettle sit for 30 seconds after it clicks off. The finished drink should be hot enough to sip slowly and no hotter.
A Winter Drink Worth Keeping Simple
Hot buttered bourbon needs a kettle, a mug, a spoon and about three minutes. If you like it, the hot toddy is the next one to try, and it uses the same mug. For the syrup, start with Traditional or pick a flavor from the full Proof Syrup lineup. If you are not sure which, our guide to which flavor to buy first will narrow it down.
