Since it’s been a cold, rainy day so far, I thought I’d get some cream and brown sugar and refine the old afternoon cup of coffee. After that, I started musing on Irish coffee-making techniques in general, and decided to try to get a discussion going.
So, fellow fans, what are your opinions, ingredients, secret tricks, etc when it comes to making the perfect Irish coffee? My own are fairly simple – prewarm the glass and use strong coffee and real cream. There are probably more intricate methods – trickiest one I’ve heard about involved heating and flambeeing whiskey and sugar.
Quality ingredients make a big difference. I prefer Demerara to the supermarket brown sugar, and non-UHT cream in glass bottles from a local dairy. Brew the coffee strong, but not from a dark roast. Dissolve the sugar in the hot coffee before adding the whiskey, not the other way round. I don’t measure the whiskey, but I pour it strong. For some, Irish coffee is a dessert; I want a drink.
I don’t see the point of flambé, or flame-heating the liquor (as I’m also told some do). If anything, it yields weird, off flavors and an artificial bouquet.
Do not use whipped cream, and do not drip feckin’ green crème de menthe on top. Mint has no place here, and green coloring does not make things “more Irish.”
My feelings about Irish Coffee are analogous to Seamus Ennis’ feelings about the bodhran. When asked the best way to play one, he suggested an open knife.
On the question of the best way to prepare Irish Coffee, I would say don’t. It is an offence to two perfectly respectable drinks (though for most of my life this confection was made with freeze-dried coffee granules), and cream and sugar don’t come out of the collaboration well either. I don’t take whisky too often, but I know quite a few people who do, and none of them mix it, except perhaps with ice or a little water. Also cream is for cakes, not for coffee. It may look nice to start with, but very shortly you’re left with a layer of grease floating at the top of your drink which coats the lips and is reminiscent of nothing so much as a symptom of some exotic disease.
This confection is an ugly tourist lure best consigned to the memory hole.
I remember when I was a kid, my mom liked Irish coffee. She’d never been to Ireland. Your rant is amusing, but it reminds me of Rufus Excalibur ffolkes: ‘We drink Scotch here the way it should be drunk - neat!’
‘Fortifying’ one’s coffee (or even tea) is a long-standing tradition – at least in fiction. People have been adding spirits to their brews forever. Does that make it ‘Irish’? Maybe in a bar. But coffee, cream, sugar, and whisky seems to mostly just be fortified coffee. I guess the difference is that if you’re ordering Irish coffee, then you’re (in your opinion) drinking an abortion. Otherwise, you’re just having coffee with whisky in it. (Rum is another popular additive.) My advice: If you don’t like it, don’t drink it.
Some proponents indicate it was an attempt to recreate a drink had in Ireland, but I know no Irish who will claim it. Others imply it was invented in San Francisco at the Buena Vista in 1952.
And having it there depicts what is really great about Irish coffee… Trust me.
I like coffee with whisky and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. But since I don’t drink spirits often I only have ‘the good stuff’ around the house; so coffee with whisky is a rare thing here.
You’ve credited me (post #5) with the claim that my mother has never been to Ireland, when in fact she was born here, like her mother, and her mother’s mother. They didn’t like Irish Coffee either.
Sometimes all I want is some whiskey in my coffee. Sometimes I fancy a spot of whipped cream. I couldn’t give a flying fig if anyone considers it “authentic” or not, and if you don’t like it, I wasn’t going to share it with you anyway.
The question might more pertinently be applied to your post. But please don’t mistake that for my asking it, the mere idea of the feedback loop is already giving me tinnitus.
To answer yours (and as Johnny above has already divined): amusement primarily. Although at this point I feel as if I’ve inadvertently wandered into some sort of thin skin/humour bypass support group, and much of the fun has gone out of it.
Drink what you will, I’ve taken a solemn vow to oppress you no more. Over and out.
You’re new around here, but here’s the deal… There are a lot of snobs on this MB, and it’s not uncommon to make a pitch for purity. But if you don’t do it with a bit of tongue in cheek, it looks like thread shitting.
Now, if you had the “perfect” Irish coffee recipe that you think should never be modified, that’s one thing. But in a thread seeking advice about how to make said drink, marching in and proclaiming that said drink is an abomination, well… that’s not particularly helpful.
It’s not often I get accused of being too subtle. Maybe I should prefix these things with: ‘Imagine this out of Frasier Crane’s mouth.’ Or stick a big pair of Groucho Marx eyebrows on them. Or, God help me, a smiley face at the end of each sentence, so even the illiterate will know I’m really a nice guy.
I’ll have to look up ‘thread shitting’.
And, Johnny, I like the new porn name. Imagine the lines it’ll generate: ‘Ooh, Johnny! What’s that you’re doing? It’s divine!’
I don’t have it often, but I make my grandfather’s black gang coffe recipe and add good whiskey. Blavk gang coffe=boil milk, add grounds, cool, strain, sugar, drink. Yummy.
Had it at the airport in Shannon, where it was supposed to have been invented.
If you’ve never been to Ireland, you won’t be able to fathom the dairy products there. They are unbelievable in their goodness.
So anyway, the guy behind the counter puts in the whiskey and sugar and coffee. Then he puts in the cream…
(*Now, you know in North America how you can get those huge cardboard buckets of ice cream – you know, the kind you usually see at Baskin and Robbins or at Laura Secord, the kind in the glassed-in freezer thing?
Just imagine one of those filled with real whipped cream*.)
…so he grabs a spoon and digs deep into the bucket, pulling out about a four inch high “mountain” of real whipped cream on the spoon and lays it on its side in the coffee and pushes it toward you with one flawless motion and says to you, “Slainte”, and you take a shallow mouthful, lest you burn your lips or mouth on it, and you realize you’re tasting heaven itself…
(Irish coffees have always been one of my favorite drinks)