# Irish Coffee Source: https://dailyextraction.com/drinks/irish-coffee/ Last updated: 2026-10-20 > Irish coffee is hot coffee sweetened with sugar, mixed with Irish whiskey and topped with a layer of lightly whipped cream that floats on top. You drink the hot coffee through the cold cream. The usual story says chef Joe Sheridan first served it at Foynes airport, Ireland, in 1943. ## At a glance - Chapter: Coffee cocktails - Served: Hot - Origin: Ireland - Glass: Heatproof goblet (180 ml) - Also known as: Gaelic coffee, Irish whiskey coffee ## Ingredients - to ¾ of the glass hot, strong coffee - 2 sugar cubes (or about 2 tsp brown sugar) - 1½ oz (about 45 ml) Irish whiskey - a collar on top lightly whipped cream ## Steps 1. **Warm the glass**: Fill a heatproof glass with very hot water to warm it, then pour the water away. 2. **Add coffee and sugar**: Pour in hot coffee until the glass is about three-quarters full, drop in two sugar cubes and stir until they've completely dissolved. 3. **Add the whiskey**: Stir in a full jigger, about 45 ml, of Irish whiskey. 4. **Float the cream**: Pour lightly whipped cream gently over the back of a spoon so it sits on top as a collar. Don't stir; drink the coffee through the cream. **Irish coffee** is hot coffee, sugar and **Irish whiskey**, crowned with a collar of **lightly whipped cream** that floats on top, so you drink the hot coffee through the cool cream. It was famously first served to cold, tired transatlantic passengers at the **Foynes** flying-boat terminal in Ireland in **1943**, and made famous in America by a bar in **San Francisco**. Here's the recipe, the trick to making the cream float, and how much of the story is legend. ## The short version - **Hot coffee, sugar, Irish whiskey and cream**, in a warmed glass. - **The cream floats** on top as a collar; you don't stir it in. - **Sugar matters**: it sweetens the drink and helps the cream float. - **About 45 ml of whiskey** (1½ oz) in the classic recipe. - **From Foynes, 1943**, says the best-known story; San Francisco made it famous. ## What's in an Irish coffee? Four things, and the recipe IrishCentral gives as Joe Sheridan's original is simple: | Ingredient | Amount | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | Hot coffee | About ¾ of the glass | Strong and hot, says the Irish Whiskey Museum | | Sugar | 2 cocktail sugar cubes | Stirred until fully dissolved | | Irish whiskey | 1½ oz, about 45 ml | "A full jigger" | | Cream | A collar on top | Lightly whipped, poured gently over a spoon | Warm the glass first with very hot water, so the drink stays hot under the cold cream. The Buena Vista serves it in a clear, heat-treated **six-ounce goblet** (about 180 ml). ## How do you make the cream float? This is the hard part, and it defeated the Buena Vista's first attempt. When owner **Jack Koeppler** and writer **Stanton Delaplane** tried to recreate the drink in 1952, the Buena Vista says, "the cream would not float". KQED's account has them trying different glasses and whiskeys while "the cream kept falling down to the bottom". What worked, in the sources: - **Lightly whipped cream.** Delaplane and Koeppler found that lightly whipped cream floated best, says the Irish Whiskey Museum: thickened, but still pourable. - **Aged cream.** The Buena Vista took the problem to San Francisco's mayor, who owned a dairy, and found that cream aged for **48 hours** and frothed to the right consistency floated "as delicately as a swan". - **Enough sugar, fully dissolved.** KQED says Koeppler added more sugar along with the whipping to help the cream float. - **A gentle pour** over the back of a spoon, as in IrishCentral's recipe. At the Buena Vista, KQED watched the bartender warm a row of glasses with hot water, add two sugar cubes and hot coffee to each, stir, add the whiskey, then spoon cold heavy cream on top. The bar serves around **2,000** Irish coffees a day. ## Where did Irish coffee come from? The story, as told by the Foynes Flying Boat Museum to KQED and by IrishCentral: in **1943**, a Pan Am flying boat bound for New York turned back to **Foynes**, County Limerick, in bad weather. Chef **Joe Sheridan** made the cold passengers coffee with Irish whiskey, sugar and cream. Asked if it was Brazilian coffee, he said it was **Irish coffee**. Then it went to America. The sources agree on the outline but not the details: | Question | One account | Another account | | --- | --- | --- | | Where it was invented | Foynes terminal, 1943 (Foynes museum, via KQED; IrishCentral) | Possibly the Dolphin pub, Dublin, around 1940 (Eric Felten, via KQED) | | Where Delaplane tasted it | Foynes airport (KQED, IrishCentral) | Shannon Airport (The Buena Vista) | | When he tasted it | 1951 (IrishCentral) | Before the Buena Vista night of 10 November 1952 (The Buena Vista) | | Sheridan in San Francisco | Worked at the Buena Vista for ten years (IrishCentral) | Came to San Francisco, but it's unclear if he worked at the Buena Vista (KQED) | | First recipe in the US | Buena Vista, 1952 (The Buena Vista) | Clementine Paddleford's St Patrick's Day column, *New York Herald Tribune*, 1948 (Felten, via KQED) | The Foynes story is best treated as legend: Felten told KQED that adding cream and sugar to disguise the taste of coffee during the Second World War is a likelier origin than a single stormy night. Nor were the Irish first to mix coffee and spirits; the Irish Whiskey Museum notes that coffee cocktails were on menus in Austria, France and Germany long before. What is clear is that the drink became a sensation in **San Francisco**, thanks to Delaplane's columns and the Buena Vista. Delaplane later told *Time*, IrishCentral reports, "I can't stand the stuff anymore." *Irish coffee contains alcohol: for adults only. Please drink responsibly, and take care with very hot glasses.* ## Irish coffee vs other coffee cocktails - **[Carajillo](https://dailyextraction.com/drinks/carajillo/):** Spain's coffee with brandy, rum or liqueur. - **[Caffè corretto](https://dailyextraction.com/drinks/caffe-corretto/):** espresso "corrected" with a dash of grappa or another spirit. - **[Espresso martini](https://dailyextraction.com/drinks/espresso-martini/):** a cold, shaken cocktail of espresso and vodka. - **[Pharisäer](https://dailyextraction.com/drinks/pharisaer/):** Germany's coffee with rum under whipped cream. - **[Rüdesheimer Kaffee](https://dailyextraction.com/drinks/rudesheimer-kaffee/):** coffee flambéed with Asbach brandy, from the Rhine. Explore every drink in the [coffee cocktails chapter](https://dailyextraction.com/drinks/coffee-cocktails/). ## FAQs ### Why does the cream sink in my Irish coffee? It's the classic problem: the Buena Vista's first attempts sank too. Whip the cream only lightly, so it thickens but still pours, and pour it gently over the back of a spoon. Make sure the sugar has dissolved in the coffee first. The Buena Vista found aged, frothed cream floated best. ### Which whiskey is used in Irish coffee? Any Irish whiskey. IrishCentral says the people at Foynes today say Joe Sheridan used Power's; the Buena Vista in San Francisco has long used Tullamore D.E.W., according to KQED and IrishCentral. ### Who invented Irish coffee? The usual answer is Joe Sheridan, chef at the Foynes flying-boat terminal in County Limerick, in 1943. Drinks writer Eric Felten told KQED it may have started a few years earlier, around 1940, at the Dolphin pub in Dublin. Neither story can be proven. ### How did Irish coffee get to America? Through San Francisco Chronicle travel writer Stanton Delaplane, who tasted it in Ireland and worked on the recipe with Jack Koeppler of the Buena Vista Cafe, which dates that night to 10 November 1952. Felten found a recipe in a New York Herald Tribune column in 1948, four years earlier. ### Should you stir an Irish coffee? No. Stir the sugar into the coffee before adding the cream, then leave it. The pleasure is drinking the hot, sweet coffee and whiskey through the cool layer of cream on top. ## Sources - [The true history of Irish coffee and its San Francisco origins](https://www.kqed.org/news/11621844/the-true-history-of-irish-Coffee-and-its-san-francisco-origins) - [The Irish coffee story](https://www.thebuenavista.com/home/irishcoffee.html) - [The real story about Irish coffee and how it was invented](https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/The-real-story-about-Irish-Coffee-and-how-it-was-invented.html) - [The history of Irish coffee](https://irishwhiskeymuseum.ie/?p=4399)