Irish Coffee combines freshly brewed coffee with Irish whiskey and sugar, and is topped with a dollop of lightly whipped heavy cream.
Though the Espresso Martini has been having a moment in recent years, Irish Coffee remains the most famous boozy coffee drink. People have been adding liquor to coffee for more than 100 years and coffee cocktails have been enjoyed throughout Europe since the mid-19th century.
The Irish Coffee supposedly came together for the first time at an airport lounge in the midwest of Ireland in the 1940s. But the drink didn’t really take off until it came to the United States in the early 1950s at San Francisco’s Buena Vista Restaurant.
As the story goes, in 1952, on a chilly November evening, travel writer Stanton Delaplane helped to recreate a coffee drink he had tried at the Shannon Airport in Ireland called the “Irish Coffee.” Alongside Buena Vista’s owner at the time, Jack Koeppler, they tinkered with the recipe until they mastered the exact proportions and cream consistency of the drink, down to the pre-heated, clear stemmed coffee vessel.
Why does the Irish Coffee work?
The original formulation for Irish Coffee is simple: hot coffee, Irish whiskey, sugar and whipped cream. However the drink’s success hinges on the quality of the individual ingredients. When the come together perfectly, it’s like a long, warm hug on a frigid night.
Irish Coffee is a drink that varies wildly depending on where you’re ordering it from. It’s most often too sweet, too creamy and light, and not balanced properly. Sometimes Irish cream is involved, the coffee preparation is sub-par, and if there’s whiskey involved at all, the choice is basic, at best.
Since the coffee component is such a large part of the drink, be sure to provide a base of strong, quality brew that you would enjoy on its own. The coffee should also be used soon after it’s made for the freshest taste.
Many quality Irish whiskeys can be added for that signature cereal grain kick but it’s important to choose a dram with a more robust flavor profile that can stand up to a bold coffee. The Buena Vista uses Tullamore D.E.W. and New York City’s famed Irish bar The Dead Rabbit uses Bushmills Original Irish whiskey. Jameson is a classic but you can experiment with more unconventional bottlings such as Powers Irish Rye or Teeling Small Batch.
For the sweetening agent, you can use anything from raw sugar cubes to a simple syrup. This recipe calls for a few teaspoons of rich demerara sugar for an earthy caramel flavor that will help showcase the sweet fruit notes in the whiskey and coffee.
The key to a perfect Irish Coffee cream topper is a consistency that straddles rich and dense and light and frothy. Be sure to whip the heavy cream just before it gets to a peak-forming whipped cream texture. This will allow you to easily spoon it atop the drink, creating a dazzling layer of cream that can be smoothly mixed into the drink, once ready.
