Irish Coffee
Irish Coffee has always been a great drink for many nocturnal adventures. The caffiene keeps you up and the whiskey keeps you loose. It's wonderful for a good time at the casino when you just want to have fun ... all night long. Obviously alcohol and better judgement rarely go hand in hand so use the extra hours of stimulant-induced joy sanely.
There's plenty of legend surrounding this drink, but it apparently goes back to the 1940's and an Irish airport.
The Basics:
- 2 parts Irish whiskey
- 4 parts fresh hot coffee
- 1 tsp brown sugar
- fresh whipped cream
There is a special glass for Irish Coffe, but you don't really need it. I start by dropping the sugar into the cup, then the coffee, stir in the whiskey and quickly top with the cream. Canned cream is perfect for rolling out a bunch of these at a party. The most important ingredients to get right are the coffee and the whiskey.
For Saint Patrick's Day 2007 I brought in a bottle of Jameson to the office for a round of Coffees. We had a short assembly line going using 2 packets of "Sugar in the Raw", 4 ounces of Starbuck's House, 2 ounces of Jameson and topping with canned Whipped cream. We knocked down that bottle to 2 fingers in one pot of coffee.
There are a lot of variations on this drink. I've heard of replacing the whipped cream with Irish Cream which I will have to try soon. Most often varied is the whiskey of choice. Spider Robinson lists Stonebender's Irish coffee as "God's Blessing" and is based on Bushmills Black Bush which I have tried and enjoyed. The Buena Vista in San Francisco uses sugar cubes and Tullamore Dew.
I spent more than a couple hours playing Blackjack and drinking Irish coffee in Reno a few years ago. If you get a good one, you'll know it.