Irish coffee

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This drink is designated as an
IBA Official Cocktail
Irish Coffee
Irish coffee created with 10 year-old Bush Malt
Type: Cocktail
Primary alcohol by volume:
Served: Hot
Standard drinkware:
Irish coffee mug
IBA specified ingredients†:
Preparation: Heat the coffee, whiskey and sugar; do not boil. Pour into glass and top with cream; serve hot.
†Irish Coffee recipe at International Bartenders Association }}

Irish coffee (Irish: Caife Gaelach) is a cocktail consisting of hot coffee, Irish whiskey, and sugar, stirred, then with thick cream floated on top. The coffee is drunk through the cream. The original recipe explicitly uses cream that has not been whipped, although whipped cream is often used. Irish coffee may be considered a variation on the hot toddy.

Contents

[edit] Origin

The original Irish coffee was invented by Joseph Sheridan, a head chef at Foynes, County Limerick. Foynes' port was the precursor to Shannon International Airport in the west of Ireland; the coffee was conceived after a group of American passengers disembarked at the airport on a miserable winter evening in the 1940s. Sheridan decided to add some whiskey to the coffee to warm the passengers. After being asked if they were being served Brazilian coffee, Sheridan told the passengers that it was Irish coffee[1].

Stanton Delaplane, travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, claimed to have brought Irish coffee to the United States when he convinced the Buena Vista bar in San Francisco to start serving Irish coffee on November 10, 1952.[1][2]

However, since around or before that date the beverage has been served at Tom Bergin's Tavern in Los Angeles, where a large sign reading "House of Irish Coffee" has been in place since the early 1950s.[3]

[edit] Preparation

A mug of Baileys coffee
A mug of Baileys coffee
  • Black coffee is poured into the mug;
  • Whiskey and at least one level teaspoon of sugar is stirred in until fully dissolved. The sugar is essential for floating liquid cream on top.[4]
  • Thick cream is carefully poured over the back of a spoon initially held just above the surface of the coffee and gradually raised a little. The layer of cream will float on the coffee without mixing. The coffee is drunk through the layer of cream.

[edit] Variations

Whipped cream rather than thick liquid cream is sometimes used, although contrary to the original recipe; it is easier to drop a dollop of whipped cream in or even spray it from a can than to float liquid cream, and it will float even if the coffee is made without sugar. The experience of drinking the coffee through the floating cream is lost.

In Spain a "Café Irlandés" ("Irish Coffee") is sometimes served with a bottom layer of whiskey, a separate coffee layer, and a layer of cream on top[2]. Special devices are sold for making Café Irlandés.

Variants of Irish coffee are made, all essentially the same but with different names and using a different spirit. This list will never be hard and fast, as any bar can serve such a drink and call it by any name they choose.

The cocktail known as "Dutch coffee" is hot black coffee with sugar and advocaat stirred in.

A small cup of strong coffee is sometimes drunk with a shot of alcoholic spirits (brandy, grappa, marc) and without cream or milk, but these are quite different from Irish coffee.

Thick cream can be floated on sweetened coffee without the addition of alcohol, instead of being stirred in. In England this is also known as a Floater Coffee, and should ideally be served in an Irish coffee mug (see above).

[edit] References

  1. ^ Nolte, Carl, SAN FRANCISCO Coffee, cream, sugar and -- Irish whiskey ... but Buena Vista changed brands, <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/22/BAGM1MI1FP1.DTL&hw=irish+coffee+buena+vista&sn=001&sc=1000>. Retrieved on 9 July 2007 
  2. ^ "Buena Vista Tweaks Formula for Irish Coffee", San Francisco Chronicle. 
  3. ^ Tom Bergin's Tavern. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved on 2007-10-17.
  4. ^ Joe Sheridan's Original Irish Coffee Recipe, <http://www.coffeecakes.com/joe-sheridans-irish-coffee.html>. Retrieved on 9 July 2007 

[edit] See also

Wikibooks
Wikibooks Bartending has a page on the topic of

[edit] External links


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