Irish Coffee

Don’t be fooled by Irish Coffee.

Despite its innocent name and frothy topping, a classic Irish Coffee packs a devilish wallop thanks to its double whammy of freshly brewed coffee and potent Irish whiskey.

In other words, drink your Irish Coffees with care. The combo of caffeine and alcohol can make you sensible and senseless at the same time.

An Irish Coffe is a caffeinated cocktail that’s crafted with Irish whiskey, hot coffee and brown sugar. It’s then topped with a thick layer of whipped cream. If you think this combination sounds decadent, you are correct.

However, don’t assume that it’s challenging to craft an Irish Coffee at home. Although its creamy top layer looks difficult to achieve, our Irish Coffee recipe is entirely doable for novice mixologists who may or not also be lazy mixologists.

In other words, if we can craft an Irish Coffee so can you!

Although Irish Coffee garnered much of its fame as the signature drink at San Francisco’s Buena Vista Cafe and as a popular St. Patrick’s Day tipple, the original Irish coffee traces back to Ireland. Shannon, Ireland to be exact.

Legend has it that Joe Sheridan, the head chef at the Foynes Airbase (now Shannon Airport), invented Ireland’s most famous cocktail in the 1940s. The origin of the name is related to the shot or two of Irish whiskey he added to each coffee cocktail.

As the legend goes, travel writer Stanton Delaplane introduced the Irish Coffee to the Bay Area bar after he became besotted with the boozy beverage in Shannon. It was only a matter of time until the drink’s inventor jumped the pond and joined the party. Yes, Sheridan eventually moved to San Francisco and crafted Irish Coffees at the Buena Vista Cafe to a steady stream of Irish Coffee fans.

Fun Fact
Mindi drank her very first Irish Coffee at the Buena Vista Cafe on a frigid San Francisco summer day.

Although the Irish Coffee tastes like it has a slew of ingredients, its ingredient count is both short and sweet. In fact, you probably already the following ingredients at home:

Don’t worry if you’re missing an ingredient or two. They all should be available at your local shops.

We craft Irish Coffees with Jameson Irish Whiskey for a couple reasons…

First, the popular Irish whiskey is readily available in Lisbon. Since Jameson is the most popular Irish whiskey, it’s should be easy to find in your corner of the world as well. Second, and more important, the triple-distilled whiskey tastes great in this and other cocktail recipes.

Book a tour and tasting at Jameson’s original distillery in Dublin if you want to learn more about this ‘grain to glass’ whiskey produced with both malted and unmalted barley, French maize and Irish water.

Coffee is an important Irish Coffee ingredient – it’s in the drink’s name after all. Accordingly, using quality coffee in any Irish Coffee recipe is a must.

We brew coffee for our Irish Coffee recipe using the same single-origin coffee beans that we use to brew our morning joe. Right now, our beans are from Brazil. Other times, we source locally roasted beans from countries like Kenya and Peru.

While people typically brew these type of beans with a Haribo V60 or Chemex, we use an automatic coffee machine. But not just any automatic coffee machine. We splurged and bought a stylish SMEG with no regrets.

We had assumed that crafting an Irish Coffee would be difficult. It’s not except for one step – whipping the cream to a light batter-like consistency. After attempting this step with a whisk, we pulled out our immersion hand blender for the win.

Once you’re ready to craft an Irish Coffee at home, the first step is to heat your Irish Coffee glass. This step insures that your coffee will stay hot while you sip it.

The most efficient technique is to pour boiling water into the glass and let it sit for a minute or two before discarding the water into the sink.

Fun Fact
We often use this same technique to warm our coffee mugs in the morning.

Once your glass is warm, measure two teaspoons of brown sugar and dump them into the glass.

Pro Tip
You can use granulated white sugar instead of brown sugar in a pinch. However, we prefer the rich, deep molasses flavor that brown sugar adds to the cocktail.

Pour freshly brewed hot coffee into the glass.

Pro Tip
If your coffee isn’t hot, you can give it a quick 30 to 40 second warm-up in the microwave.

Our recipe calls for a healthy amount of Irish whiskey. After all, it’s a boozy beverage. We use a Japanese jigger to ensure accurate measurement and minimize spillage.

Buy a Japanese jigger from Amazon if you need a jigger or want an inexpensive upgrade.

The final step is the most challenging and is the one that may take a bit of practice.

True Confession
We got lucky on our first try and then failed the next two times. In other words, you may want to practice floating a layer of cream on top of the coffee mixture before you craft Irish Coffees for guests.

Our best advice is to blend heavy cream with a hand blender until it achieves a batter-like consistency. This will help the cream to float atop the coffee. A lot of recipes call for lightly whipped cream which didn’t work for us.

Once we pulled out the hand blender, getting the batter-like blend was a piece of cake (pun intended).

Floating the cream sounds difficult but it’s actually easy.

Instead of pouring it directly into the glass, pour the batter-like cream onto the back of your bar spoon. The metal utensil will act as a buffer, dispersing the cream so that it forms a layer instead of sinking to the bottom of the glass.

Pro Tip
Do NOT stir the cream. Instead, sip your boozy beverage through the creamy layer for maximum satisfaction and possible cream moustache.

Irish Coffee may be a classic but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it your own. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Discover 10 essential bar tools for the home mixologist.

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