Sips & Synopsis

• This Weeks Makings

• Section

• Drink of the Week - Irish Coffee

• Behind the Bar - Floating Cream

• Bonus Cocktails

• Mocktail or Zero Proof Option

This Weeks Makings.

The furnace came on by itself Monday night. I heard it kick in around ten and realized I had not touched the thermostat since April.

That’s the switch. Cold drinks stop sounding good and hot ones start sounding comforting…

The United States marks National Coffee Day next Tuesday, September 29, and the international version lands on October 1. So this week we are making an Irish coffee. Hot coffee, Irish whiskey, a little brown sugar, and cold cream floated on top so you drink the hot through the cold.

Four ingredients, about three minutes, and almost everybody gets the last one wrong.

In this week's newsletter:

• The Irish coffee, four ingredients and one step people skip

• Floating cream, and how to make it sit there instead of sinking

• Two bonus cocktails, one gin and one brandy

• A trivia question about the bar that turned this into an American habit

• A zero proof version with the same cream and the same warm glass

Trivia Question❓

One San Francisco bar has been pouring Irish coffee since 1952 and says it serves more of them than anywhere else. Which bar is it, and about how many does it pour in a day?

Answer at the bottom of the newsletter

The Irish Coffee

Hot coffee, Irish whiskey, and brown sugar, with cold cream sitting on top instead of stirred in.

Ingredients

• 1.5 oz Irish whiskey

• 4 oz hot brewed coffee

• 2 teaspoons brown sugar, or 2 sugar cubes

• 1.5 oz heavy cream, lightly whipped

• Boiling water to warm the glass

Directions

1. Fill a six ounce footed glass with boiling water, let it stand a minute, then pour the water out

2. Add the brown sugar and the hot coffee to the warm glass and stir until the sugar is gone

3. Pour in the whiskey and stir once

4. Whip the cold cream by hand until it thickens slightly and still pours in a ribbon

5. Pour the cream slowly over the back of a spoon held against the surface, and do not stir

Why It Works
Joe Sheridan, a chef at the flying boat terminal at Foynes on the west coast of Ireland, is the man usually credited with it. The story goes that a flight to New York turned back in bad weather in 1943 and he sent out coffee with whiskey in it to warm the passengers up. It reached America through Stanton Delaplane, a travel writer at the San Francisco Chronicle.

The order of the build is the recipe. Sugar goes in first because it will not dissolve under a layer of cream. The whiskey goes in after the coffee so the heat carries it up. The cream on top is not a garnish. It is a lid. You drink hot sweet coffee through a cold layer, and those two temperatures arriving together are the reason the drink exists at all. Stir it and you get whiskey coffee with cream in it, which is a fine thing and a different thing.

Behind the Bar - Floating Cream

Cream floats for one reason, and the reason is air. Straight out of the carton it is heavier than coffee and it sinks. Whisk a little air into it and it turns lighter than the coffee, and it stays where you put it.

The target is looser than most people think.

Whipping it:

• Pour cold heavy cream into a jar or a small bowl, straight from the fridge

• Shake the jar or whisk it for about 30 seconds

• Stop when it coats the back of a spoon and still pours in a slow ribbon

• If it holds a peak you went too far. Stir in a splash of fresh cream to loosen it.

Pouring it:

• Hold a spoon upside down with the tip touching the surface of the coffee

• Pour the cream onto the back of the spoon slowly, so it spreads instead of punching through

• Leave about half an inch of room at the top of the glass

Two other things matter more than people expect. Warm the glass first, because cold glass pulls the heat out of the coffee in under a minute and the temperature gap is the whole point. And brew the coffee a little hotter than you would drink it black, since cold cream takes a few degrees off on the way down.

Cold heavy cream and thirty seconds of shaking will get you there.

A few tools that help - or a mason jar with a lid does the same job, and a mug works if you warm it first.

• Irish coffee glasses, heat-treated and footed, six ounces so the drink sits at the right depth

• Small cocktail whisk, for whipping cream by hand without hauling out a mixer

Bonus Cocktails

Two more for the nights you want something cold in your hand. One gin, one brandy, neither one near the coffee pot.

The Bramble

A gin sour with blackberry liqueur poured over the top so it bleeds down through the ice.

Ingredients

• 2 oz gin

• 1 oz fresh lemon juice

• 0.5 oz simple syrup

• 0.5 oz crème de mûre, or another blackberry liqueur

• Crushed ice

• Lemon slice and a blackberry to garnish

Directions

Fill a rocks glass with crushed ice. Add the gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup to a shaker with cubed ice and shake for about 10 seconds. Strain over the crushed ice, then top with more crushed ice. Drizzle the crème de mûre slowly over the surface and let it run down through the glass. Garnish with a lemon slice and a blackberry.

Why it works
Dick Bradsell made the first one in the mid 1980s at Fred's Club in Soho, London, and said plainly that he wanted a British drink. The name comes from the bramble bushes he picked blackberries off as a boy on the Isle of Wight (he tells it in his own words here). Underneath the color it is a gin sour with blackberry in it. The crushed ice is doing real work rather than decorating. It keeps melting while you drink, which stretches the liqueur out and stops the glass from turning syrupy by the third sip.

The Sidecar

Brandy, orange liqueur, and lemon. Three ingredients, shaken cold, served up.

Ingredients

• 2 oz cognac or another good brandy

• 0.75 oz Cointreau

• 0.75 oz fresh lemon juice

• Sugar for the rim, optional

• Lemon or orange peel to garnish

Directions

If you want a sugar rim, run a lemon wedge around the outside edge of a chilled coupe and roll that edge in sugar. Add the cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice to a shaker with ice. Shake for about 12 seconds. Strain into the coupe. Twist a peel over the surface and drop it in.

Why it works
Nobody has settled who made the first one. It turns up in print in 1922 in two books at once, and Harry MacElhone credited Pat MacGarry of Buck's Club in London before later editions of his own book credited MacElhone himself. The Ritz in Paris claims it too (the competing claims are laid out here). What is settled is the split between two recipes. The French pour is equal parts brandy, Cointreau, and lemon, which comes out sharp and bright. The English pour from the 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book is two parts brandy to one each of the others, and that is the version above. Equal parts is a lemon drink with brandy in it. Two to one lets the brandy show up.

Mocktail or Zero Proof Option

The Zero Proof Irish Coffee

Same build, same cream, same warm glass. Stronger coffee doing the work the whiskey used to do.

Ingredients

• 4 oz hot brewed coffee, dark roast, brewed at half again your normal strength

• 2 teaspoons brown sugar

• 0.5 oz vanilla syrup

• 1.5 oz heavy cream, lightly whipped

• Grated nutmeg, optional

• Boiling water to warm the glass

Directions

Fill the glass with boiling water, let it stand a minute, then pour it out. Add the brown sugar, the vanilla syrup, and the hot coffee, and stir until the sugar is gone. Whip the cold cream until it pours in a slow ribbon. Pour it over the back of a spoon so it sits on the surface. Grate a little nutmeg over the top if you want it.

Most of what Irish whiskey brings to the original is sweetness and a little oak, not heat. Vanilla syrup covers the first and a dark roast brewed strong covers the second. Warming the glass matters more here than it does in the full version, because the temperature contrast is carrying more of the drink on its own.