While you might immediately connect "Butter Beer" to Harry Potter, the Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin beats the wizard's drink by about 400 years. The warm, spiced beverage with a dollop of butter feels like a good way to warm your hands as the winter starts to wane. Not only that, but the recipe gives you plenty of opportunity to experiment and research for an Arts & Sciences (or even a brewing championship) entry!
To make Buttered Beere
Take three pintes of Beere, put fiue yolkes of Egges to it, straine them together, and set it in a pewter pot to the fyre, and put to it halfe a pound of Sugar, one penniworth of Nutmegs beaten, one penniworth of Cloues beaten, and a halfepenniworth of Ginger beaten, and when it is all in, take another pewter pot and brewe them together, and set it to the fire againe, and when it is readie to boyle, take it from the fire, and put a dish of sweet butter into it, and brewe them together out of one pot into an other.