We had assumed that crafting an Irish Coffee would be difficult. It’s not except for one step – whipping the cream to a light batter-like consistency. After attempting this step with a whisk, we pulled out our immersion hand blender for the win.
Once you’re ready to craft an Irish Coffee at home, the first step is to heat your Irish Coffee glass. This step insures that your coffee will stay hot while you sip it.
The most efficient technique is to pour boiling water into the glass and let it sit for a minute or two before discarding the water into the sink.
Fun Fact
We often use this same technique to warm our coffee mugs in the morning.
Once your glass is warm, measure two teaspoons of brown sugar and dump them into the glass.
Pro Tip
You can use granulated white sugar instead of brown sugar in a pinch. However, we prefer the rich, deep molasses flavor that brown sugar adds to the cocktail.
Pour freshly brewed hot coffee into the glass.
Pro Tip
If your coffee isn’t hot, you can give it a quick 30 to 40 second warm-up in the microwave.
Our recipe calls for a healthy amount of Irish whiskey. After all, it’s a boozy beverage. We use a Japanese jigger to ensure accurate measurement and minimize spillage.
Buy a Japanese jigger from Amazon if you need a jigger or want an inexpensive upgrade.
Stir the brown sugar, hot coffee and Irish whiskey until the sugar dissolves. This step should take about 10 seconds.
The final step is the most challenging and is the one that may take a bit of practice.
True Confession
We got lucky on our first try and then failed the next two times. In other words, you may want to practice floating a layer of cream on top of the coffee mixture before you craft Irish Coffees for guests.
Our best advice is to blend heavy cream with a hand blender until it achieves a batter-like consistency. This will help the cream to float atop the coffee. A lot of recipes call for lightly whipped cream which didn’t work for us.
Once we pulled out the hand blender, getting the batter-like blend was a piece of cake (pun intended).
Floating the cream sounds difficult but it’s actually easy.
Instead of pouring it directly into the glass, pour the batter-like cream onto the back of your bar spoon. The metal utensil will act as a buffer, dispersing the cream so that it forms a layer instead of sinking to the bottom of the glass.
Pro Tip
Do NOT stir the cream. Instead, sip your boozy beverage through the creamy layer for maximum satisfaction and possible cream moustache.
