When it comes to St. Patty’s Day drinks, you have a few classics to choose from: Guinness beer (which you can also make bread with), whiskey ginger, and of course, Irish coffee.
Whether served morning, afternoon, or evening on March 17th (or any day you’re feeling particularly Irish!), a hot Irish coffee is a delectable cocktail that anyone can make — no shaking needed, no hard-to-find ingredients necessary.
The genesis of Irish coffee — a simple mixture of coffee, sugar, cream, and whiskey — is a little more straightforward than most cocktails. Though coffee and spirits have long been mixed, the Irish coffee took off in the 1940s when a chef at an airport on the west coast of Ireland started adding a nip of whiskey to the coffees of disembarking passengers. Consider that many of those coffees already had cream and sugar, and a famous cocktail was born.
That drink was then brought to America in the 1950s by a San Fransiscan travel writer who worked to replicate the recipe at the Buena Vista Cafe, in the heart of the Fisherman’s Wharf district. After some fiddling, they nailed the formulation and preparation, and have been serving Irish coffees ever since, to the tune of a few thousand per day. It’s the place to go if you want a quintessential Irish coffee (in America, that is). I, in fact, became enamored with the drink after a visit to the cafe back in 2014, after attending an AoM book signing event. The Buena Vista freely gives out their recipe, which I’ve taken the liberty to recreate below.
Slainte!
Whiskey on the bottom shelf.
Bourbon on the top shelf.
Choose wisely to always smile!
How to? Don’t.
Visit Joe’s for suds and great food!
Problem solved!
The airport is Shannon, Ireland, where they still serve the original. Proper Twelve
is a decent Irish whiskey for tying one on, but it doesn’t do anything tasty in Irish coffee.
Proper 12 is blended sheep piss.