A (not so) long, long time ago in a galaxy (not so) far away, a quaint little watering hole named Oga’s Cantina opened up in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disneyland.
We’ve tried every drink this spot has to offer! But there’s ONE DRINK guests — including us — keep coming back to time and time again. The Fuzzy Tauntaun. It’s easily the most unique drink on the menu for good reason: IT MAKES YOUR MOUTH NUMB! 🤯 So what are you to do if the craving for one strikes “off-world” (AKA, your home)? Make it yourself! Not only that, but we have a BONUS recipe too. Put on your lab coats and bust out the pocket protectors — it’s about to get sciencey up in here.
Oh Fuzzy Tauntaun, how we love thee. You make our mouth feel MEGA weird (it’s a bizarre hot/cold/tingly/numb sensation you need to feel to believe!). If you’ve never had this drink, it’s basically Oga’s take on a Fuzzy Navel. It’s VERY sweet (like most drinks at Oga’s) but that foam is what sets it on another level!
So you’ve decided to take on the challenging endeavor of making Oga’s infamous Fuzzy Tauntaun yourself, eh? Forewarning: it takes a bit of work. And prep. And time. And possibly some extra tools you don’t have in your kitchen. It’s all cool. Deep calming breaths — we’re gonna get through this together.
Note, Disney hasn’t shared the recipe for this drink but the ingredients are known from the menu. We did our best to replicate it in our kitchen, but your experience may differ from ours a bit. Don’t hesitate to hit us up with questions in the comments section and we’ll do our best to help you out!
Fuzzy Tauntaun Copycat Recipe
Makes: 1 drink
- 3.5 oz Simply Orange with Tangerine (see notes below if unavailable)
- 1.5 oz Ciroc Peach Vodka
- .5 oz Bols Peach Schnapps (any peach Schnapps will do!)
- .5 oz Monin Cane Syrup (and cane syrup/simple syrup with work!)
- Buzz Button Foam (recipe below)
Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shave vigorously and strain into a glass with ice. Top with Buzz Button Foam.
Can’t find Simply Orange with Tangerine? Neither could we. If you live near a Trader Joe’s they sell bottles of tangerine juice that could be mixed with regular OJ. Other stores occasionally sell orange/tangerine juice blend. BUT, in a pinch just make your own. Get some mandarin oranges from the store (Cuties type ones work just fine) and juice one into a measuring cup. Top with OJ til you get as much as you need.
Buzz Button Foam
- 1 cup Everclear/close to 100% grain alcohol
- About 50 Buzz Button flowers (we used these dried ones)
- Soy Lecithin (1-2% by weight)
- Water
Combine Everclear and flowers in a sealable container. Crush flowers with the back of a big spoon best you can. Leave in a dark place to extract for 3 weeks (or longer!)
Strain liquid then measure out as much as desired (we used 1.5 oz). Weigh and record weight. In a separate vessel measure out the same amount of water by weight. Add those 2 numbers together.
To the water, add 1-2%, by weight, of soy lecithin. Microwave for short bursts watching so it doesn’t foam over. Completely dissolve the lecithin by stirring or blending. Combine with buzz button tincture. Pop in the fridge til cool.
When ready to use, add a fish tank pump with and air stone (they’re cheap — we used this one!) to the liquid and watch as it bubbles! Alternatively, you can use an immersion blender but it might take a bit longer and make a slightly denser foam. Ideally, give the foam a minute to “set” before scooping on your drink. Mixture can be saved and refoamed as needed.
Step By Step Breakdown
First, we make our foam. This is THE thing that sets this drink apart. You can’t find the ingredients for this at your local mega-mart, so advanced planning is key. What makes Buzz foam go crazy in your mouth is the use of Buzz Buttons, sometimes called Electric Daisies or Toothache plant. This has been used for a long time to treat (you guessed it) toothaches. They’re not particularly easy to source out though. We bought a pack of about 50 dried buttons on Amazon, but have noticed the listings change often, so just keep your eyes peeled.
We exhausted every option trying to find the fastest, easiest way you could make this at home so we’re gonna share our failures with you along with successes so you don’t try them like we did. That led us to Spilanthes. Spiwhathies??? This is a tincture of Buzz Buttons and alcohol or oil. So essentially, a premade version of what we’re about to do.
We bought some to try and can tell you, after 3 weeks of soaking the flowers in alcohol, it doesn’t come close to the potency of the homemade mixture. So basically — no shortcuts (sorry guys!).
Back to our DIY mixture. Dump your flowers in a jar. You want to measure out a cup of Everclear and pour it in the jar.
Everclear is the strongest proof alcohol you can purchase. If you can’t get your hands on it, any unflavored vodka will do but the stronger the alcohol, the more efficient it will be at extracting the flowers.
After adding them, we decided to crush these bad boys up with the back of a big wooden spoon to help things along. Seal up your jar and pop it in the pantry for a few weeks. We did three, but the effect was decent after even a few days. Longer is better so if you’ve got the time, wait. After those weeks go by…
…you’ll be rewarded with…green liquid. It’s cool, we’re going to strain out the flowers and that greenish liquid is going to be the key to the foamy magic. Dip your finger in it and try it on your tongue. Crazy! Time to gather the rest of the party. Say hello to your mystery ingredient number 2: Lecithin.
(We’re entering the Science Nerd portion of the post. Don’t get scared.)
This stuff has a myriad of uses, most notably in making emulsions. For our purpose, it will be what gives the liquid enough oomph to form bubbles and HOLD the bubbles. MOST grocery stores sell this, but if you can’t find it, Amazon got you. It comes in powdered, liquid, or granule form. Some are made from sunflower as well. All should work fine here, but we used granules since it’s what we had.
We DID look into alternatives — of which there are many — but settled on lecithin after lots of testing. Interestingly, one of the top recommendations for making a culinary foam (or “air,” as were actually trying to make) is a product called Foam Magic.
It’s supposed to work on just about anything to make a stable foam. In all of our tests…this was a total dud. We tried it with a variety of liquids from juice to water to alcohol. This just didn’t work for us.
It makes stable bubbles but they were almost slimy and didn’t last near as long as we wanted them to. Plus the bubbles were just too big. Oga’s foam is full of tiny bubbles and a notably drier foam. This might be a molecular gastronomy favorite product, but didn’t pass muster for us.
Back to our mixture. The key to success here is simple and necessary: a kitchen scale.
The ratios for the foam are based on WEIGHT. You want to ideally add 1% (2% worked too) of lecithin to the total weight of liquid. That means we’re going to weigh our liquids and find what 1-2% is and add just that much. First, let’s gather everything.
You can scale this up or down as you like, but for our tests we did 1.5oz of buzz button liquid and 1.5oz water.
You want to WEIGH the buzz button liquid. Record this number.
Set the green stuff aside. Make sure you have the same weight of water. To that add that 1% (ish) of Lecithin. So if your liquid weighed 38 grams, like ours did for instance, add 0.38 grams of lecitin. It’ll look kinda like an Orbitz drink from the 90s (anyone else remember those? Gross but was so fun to drink!).
Pop this sucker in the microwave and cook until it foams up. WATCH THIS LIKE A HAWK. It only takes a second or two and it foams up like a rocket! We definitely had to clean our microwave at one point! The foam will subside fast. You’ll be left with a thick yellowish sludge.
You want to fully dissolve the lecithin in the water. If you have the patience (we didn’t) you could stir with a spoon. We whizzed it up with one of those little milk frothers like this one.
Whiz it up good!
Now dump in your green buzz button liquid and whiz it up again. Pop it in the fridge til cool. Then you’re ready to rock!
So how are we actually gonna foam this? Well…if you’ve ever looked at Oga’s where the foam is kept behind the bar, it’s a large vessel. The foam is continually coming out the top, meaning it’s ALWAYS making more.
This only means one thing in the world of foam — they’re using an air pump to continually produce those bubbles. This is a common technique with foams! Seems tough to pull off? Nah — get a cheap fish tank air pump! You can usually get one for about 10 bucks and they should come with an air stone. This is basically an aerated rock that, when air pushes into it, makes a zillion tiny bubbles. Just what we need.
Wanna know how easy this is? Ready? Wait for it…drop the stone in the liquid. Boom. You got foam.
Fluffy, stable, tongue-zapping foam. If you let the bubbles sit for about a minute they’ll have time to”set” but scooping them up right away works too. Plus you can KEEP MAKING MORE because the power for endless bubbles is at your fingertips now. MUAHAHA!
Oh wait. What’s that? You didn’t buy a fish tank pump? That’s cool. You can still do this, but we’d recommend using an Immersion Blender. Pop it in and give it a bit to foam.
It takes longer this way and the foam might be a slightly different texture, but it works!
Set all this foamy magic aside and now, FINALLY, it’s time to make some DRANKS.
Gather the troops:
Wait, what’s that orange doing there?? So we know from the menu this drink uses Simply Orange with Tangerine. She real tough to find in stores, y’all. If you do, props. We couldn’t. And not wanting to venture to Trader Joe’s (where they sell fresh tangerine juice — yum!) we made our own. Enter a Cutie orange! 😂
Tangerine, to us, is one of the flavors we find we catch most in this drink so going without it works fine if you just want to use OJ and call it a day, but we wanted that tangeriney taste. We juiced a mandarin (tangerines are types of mandarines, so the flavor is similar) and topped it off with regular OJ. We got about 1.5 oz of mandarin juice. You need 3.5 oz for one drink, so add Oj accordingly.
OK, so NOW we’re ready. 1.5 oz Circoc Peach vodka, .5 oz Peach Schnapps, .5 oz cane syrup, and that 3.5 oz juice.
Grab your trusty cocktail shaker full of ice…
…and dump it all in. Shake it up til it’s ice cold.
OK, time to assemble. BUT THE GLASSES?! Yeah. We know. Trust us, being purists, we wanted to show this to you in THE GLASS you get at Oga’s.
But we can’t. We tried, y’all. Turns out the glass used in the bar is REALLY tough to come by. It’s sold under a few names, and you can find it in a smaller shot glass size still, but full size is sold out everywhere and has been for a LONG time. (If anyone finds any, holler!) We suspect that’s why it’s not always served it that glass on more recent visits.
So we dug in our cabinet for the “weirdest” glasses we had. Space cups. Well…we didn’t have a ton. But we did have cider glasses. And those are real fun to hold and drink out of. So we used that. 🙂
All that’s left is to turn on the air pump, scoop some bubbles on top…
…and BOOM. A Fuzzy Tauntaun AT HOME!
How does it taste? Like the real deal!
The foam is just as zippy and numbing and that drink is just as sah-weet as we remember.
BUT WAIT, There’s MORE!
So. About that “it’s SUPER sweet” thing. It’s a sugar bomb. Most of Oga’s drinks are. A crazy sugary sweet drink here and there in Disney World is OK but, at home, we don’t always want to feel like we’re drinking straight sugar. So we made our own variation! Introducing, the Fuzzy Tauntini!
Fuzzy Tauntini
Makes: 1 drink
- 2 oz Ciroc Peach Vodka
- .5 oz orange juice
- .5 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice
- .5 oz cane syrup
- edible glitter (optional, but way more fun with it! This is the kind we have, but it comes in LOTS of colors)
Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously and strain into a martini glass. Top with Buzz Button Foam.
THIS drink has all the flavors of the Fuzzy Tauntaun will less sweetness, a bit more booze, a bit more tart, and served straight up. You’ll need: 2 oz Ciroc Peach Vodka, .5 oz orange juice, .5 oz lemon juice (pretend it’s fresh-squeezed 😉), and .5 oz of cane syrup (not pictured below).
That edible glitter is totally not required but why would we NOT make something glittery and (in our case) blue?! EMBRACE THE SPACE DRINK! We used about a pea-sized scoop.
The result? A swirly, glittery, BLUE cocktail.
Top it with that Buzz foam…
…and you’ve got yourself a cocktail fit for the finest bar in all of Tatooine, Batuu, or any of the other outer planets.
This goes down easy if you like a STRONG drink. It still tastes sweet and fruity but the sugar takes a backseat here. You get much more citrus to balance the peach.
If you’re looking for “an elegant weapon for a more civilized age,” as Obi-Wan Kenobi would say, give this a try and let us know what you think!
WHEW! Guys. Group hug — we did it! Don’t you feel all accomplished and molecular gastronomist for accomplishing such a feat?! WE DO. We’re so proud of you. We totally believed in you the whole time. 😉 That buzz foam mixture will last for a long time in the fridge sealed up, so you can make these drinks whenever you like after first making up the mix. Give it a try and let us know how you do!!
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Do you like Oga’s Fuzzy Tauntaun? Let us know below!
Rick says
Hello!
You emphasize 1-2% a lot, but I’m struggling to find where you say in relation to what. 1% of the water weight, or of the TOTAL weight of the beverage. As long as we’re weighing, maybe grams would make more sense than something typically considered volumetric. Thank you so much for sharing!
Jessica Hogan says
Hey Rick! If you follow along, we cover it once you add the buzz button infused alcohol and water together. Take a weight measurement of the combined buzz button alcohol and water and find 1-2% of that. That’s how much lecithin you’ll use. Most molecular gastronomy recipes we found tend to err on the much more wide-open side of giving percentages and letting you pick metric or imperial for the rest (we went imperial since it’s what most in the US know!). Hope it works out for you! 🙂
Mickey says
Hello!
How much foam (or roughly how many drinks) does 1.5oz of the buzz button mixture produce?
Also, how long can the buzz button mixture be kept for? Best to store in the fridge?
Kimberly Loughlin says
Webrestaurant has the Fuzzy Tauntaun glasses 24 to a case 😉
DFB Gigi says
Ah! You’re right! That’s so cool!
& says
Hi! Very interested in making this at home and thank you for making a very well explained copycat recipe! My question is – if I make the bubbles science mixture, will it keep in the fridge for longer periods of time (like if i made a batch and wanted to save more for a later gathering)? How long do you think it will be good for if kept cold? Thank you!
DFB Gigi says
Unfortunately, we aren’t really sure. You can try to make it and see if it’s still good a few days later and if not you might just have to make it again.