Iowa Fall 20-Winter 21 - 26

Coffee for the Cold
The warming is in the details for Irish Coffee.

anuary 17 kicks off National Irish Coffee
Week, which culminates in National Irish
Coffee Day on the 25th.
Irish Coffee is traditionally made with hot
coffee, Irish whiskey and sugar, which is then
stirred together and finished with whipped cream.
However, the first versions of the drink go back at
least 100 years earlier. In Vienna, for instance-one
of the world's great coffee cities-Fiaker and
Pharisaer were popular highballs 170 years ago.
They're hot drinks that mix spirits, coffee and
cream. Similar cocktails were available in Germany,
Scandinavia and France, which featured a coffee/
spirits blend known as the Gloria.
No one knows for certain who first made the
modern Irish Coffee, but many people give credit
to Joe Sheridan, head chef at an airport restaurant
in County Limerick, Ireland. In 1942 or 1943, he
tipped a little whiskey into his customers' coffee.
Another story says that Stanton Delaplane, a
travel writer for the San Francisco Chronicle,
introduced Irish Coffee to America
after trying it at Shannon Airport in
Dublin. Others say that Joseph
Jackson, who ran a hotel in Donegal,
invented the drink during World War
II. While his fellow soldiers were up all
night during a German attack, he
combined whiskey and coffee to keep
them both awake and feeling
courageous.
Coffee, whiskey and cream is the
foundation of Irish Coffee but, over the
years and across the globe, there have
been many variations in both
preparation and ingredients.

26 IOWA SPIRITS

Traditionally, the whiskey was Irish, the coffee was
brewed, and heavy cream was layered on top.
Today, however, especially in the U.S., the drink is
often made with espresso, any type of whiskey,
and aerosol whipped cream.
In Southeast Asia, many bars sell a version of
Irish Coffee that's a mixture of ice, coffee and
whiskey without any cream at all. Spanish Café
Irlandés is constructed from several distinct layers,
with whiskey at the bottom, followed by coffee,
and cream on top. Highland Coffee is made with
scotch, naturally, while Jamaican Coffee is served
with rum, and Russian Coffee is fortified with
vodka.
Try some of the following recipes for coffeebased cocktails, starting with the old classic:

Iowa Fall 20-Winter 21

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