Irish coffee isn’t a coffee grown on the hills of the emerald isle it is a simple mix of whiskey, cream, sugar and coffee but its story is legendary. It is also one of our favourite drinks here at Rave HQ. We are going to dive into the history of the tipple and show you how to make the original recipe because it means we can drink on the company time…
What’s its origin story?
This drink isn’t one of those trendy cocktails that appeared in the last few years on TikTok, it is the boomer of cocktails, with its origins going all the way back to wartime.
Back in the winter of 1943 Foynes airport, in Ireland, was the largest airport in Europe. Acting as an airbase for transatlantic flights it was the hub for connecting flights all around the world so it saw a lot of foot traffic. But why the hell are we talking about airports? Well, legend goes that on the 25th of January a Pan Am flying boat left Foynes for New York, however after it hit stormy weather a few hours after taking off they had to turn back. The passengers were shaken by the flight and headed to the restaurant and coffee shop in the terminal for something to calm their jangled nerves. Chef Joe Sheridan brewed up some coffee and added a shot of Irish whiskey to each cup. To sweeten the drink, he stirred in some brown sugar, and then topped it off with a generous dollop of cream as a float. One of the passengers came to Joe to thank him for this cracking creation and asked if it was Brazilian coffee. Joe just smiled and responded, “No, it was Irish coffee” and so the Irish coffee was born.
With the airport being a hub for transatlantic flights the drink soon became legendary with celebrities and politicians regularly grabbing a glass. But it wasn’t until the 1950’s that it really took off (sorry too easy a pun not to make).
Irish Coffee Goes Mainstream
In 1952, the drink made its debut in the United States, thanks to Stanton Delaplane, a Pulitzer prize winning travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Delaplane had tasted Irish coffee at Shannon airport, which replaced Foynes airport in 1945, and was determined to recreate it at home. He convinced Jack Koeppler, the owner of the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco, to help him perfect the recipe.
However, they didn’t have the luck of the Irish on their side encountering issue after issue with trying to recreate the iconic look with the thick cream sinking into the coffee and becoming a mess. With Delaplane saying; “I ruined a bottle of the best John Powers (whiskey) trying to make the cream float. For some reason the cream floats beautifully in Dublin. But for me in the States it sinks”. Eventually, after trips to Ireland to taste it from the source they figured out where they were going wrong. After more experimentation, they found that cream aged for 48 hours and whipped to a precise consistency would float. Soon after perfecting the recipe they launched and were soon serving 700 a day. By 1954 Irish whiskey exports to the USA were up by 40% leading some in Ireland to investigate why. Irish coffee has gone mainstream and it has never really gone out of fashion since. Nowadays the same bar can still go through 100 whiskey bottles a day with 250,000 Irish coffees annually and you’ll see an Irish coffee listed in many restaurants and bars around the world.
🇮🇪 Learn how to make the OG Irish Coffee here 🇮🇪
