Irish Coffee
Four ingredients, one of which people usually get wrong: the cream is lightly whipped, not squirted from a can, and it should sit on the surface while you drink the hot coffee straight through it.
At a glance
- Coffee : whiskey
- 4:1
- Active time
- 5 min
- Total time
- 5 min
- Makes
- 1 glass
- Serve
- Hot, unstirred
- Kit
- Stemmed glass
Ingredients
Note: Whip the cream only until it thickens and just holds a trace from the whisk. Stiff cream sinks in lumps; aerosol cream dissolves within seconds.
Method
-
Warm the glass
Fill a stemmed glass with boiling water, leave it a minute, then tip it out. A cold glass drops the drink below serving temperature almost immediately.
-
Dissolve the sugar
Add the sugar and the whiskey, then pour in the hot coffee and stir until no grains remain on the bottom. The sugar has to go in now. It will not dissolve once the cream is on.
-
Float the cream
Hold a teaspoon upside down just above the surface and pour the cream slowly over the back of it, so it spreads out rather than dropping through. You want a distinct white layer about a centimetre deep.
-
Serve without stirring
Drink it straight through the cream. That contrast, cool cream over hot sweetened coffee, is the entire point of the drink.
Why this works
The float depends on density. Sugar dissolved in the coffee makes the coffee heavier than the cream sitting above it, which is why an unsweetened Irish coffee is so much harder to layer. Skip the sugar and the cream tends to sink. Lightly whipping the cream helps too, since the trapped air lowers its density further without turning it into a solid spoonful.
Temperature carries the aromatics. Whiskey vapour rises through the cool cream layer as you drink, so the drink smells strongly of whiskey while tasting mostly of sweetened coffee. Let it cool and that effect disappears, which is why the warmed glass is worth the extra minute.
Variations
- Gaelic coffee: the same build with Scotch whisky instead of Irish.
- Café royale: swap in brandy and drop the sugar to 1 tsp.
- Non-alcoholic: 1 tsp vanilla extract and an extra teaspoon of brown sugar gets close to the flavour, though the cream float is less stable.
Made it?
Ratings are the most useful thing you can leave. They tell me which recipes need another pass.
No ratings yet. Be the first.
Questions
Which Irish whiskey works best?
A standard blend such as Jameson, Powers or Bushmills Original is what the drink was built around. Sugar and hot coffee flatten out the detail in an expensive single malt, so there is nothing to gain from using one.
Why does my cream sink?
Almost always one of three things. The cream was whipped too stiff, you poured it straight in rather than over a spoon, or you left out the sugar, which is what makes the coffee dense enough to hold the cream up.
Can I use a regular mug?
Yes, though a clear glass is worth using once. The two layers are most of the appeal, and a stem keeps your hand off the hot glass.