Irish coffee

Irish coffee is a hot cocktail made from Irish whiskey, black coffee and sugar, topped with a layer of cream that drinkers sip through. It was born in Ireland, but the recipe most people know took shape in San Francisco in the early 1950s.

History

Coffee drinks mixed with spirits existed long before this one. In nineteenth-century France a coffee with brandy was called a gloria, and similar combinations were around at least a century before the modern version.

The classic form dates to the 1940s or 1950s. The most widespread account credits Joe Sheridan, a chef at the flying-boat terminal in Foynes, near today's Shannon Airport, who added whiskey to the coffee of passengers chilled by a flight delay. Around 1952 the travel writer Stanton Delaplane, who had tasted it there, worked with the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco to serve it, refining the method so the cream would float.

Sheridan later emigrated to work at that same bar, which helped spread the recipe. In 1988 Ireland's National Standards Authority published a standard for Irish coffee, which has been withdrawn since at least 2020.

Culture

Today it is a staple of cafés and bars around the world, and its preparation allows many variations. Espresso machines have replaced filter brewing in many places, and purists prefer to whip the cream by hand rather than use an aerosol. In Spain it is often served in three layers, with whiskey at the bottom, coffee in the middle and cream on top, even though the traditional method is to drink it mixed. In Southeast Asia it is frequently served iced and without cream. Other drinks named after it replace the whiskey with tequila, rum or vodka, as in Mexican and Russian coffee. Irish cream coffee, known as Baileys coffee, is another popular offshoot.

Trivia