Irish Coffee Recipes from Master Baristas

Just as there is no single coffee or whisky, there exists a multitude of Irish Coffees. It's about balance and the selection of ingredients. Theresa Prüssen, Victoria Arthofer and Nicole Battefeld share their recipes here. What they have in common is that they are national champions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

On a foggy February day in 2015 in Oslo, I learned that Irish Coffee is probably the most difficult and at the same time most soothing coffee drink. I was judging the "Coffee in Good Spirits" competition, which is the barista discipline where coffee is mixed with alcohol to create innovative and delicious cocktails. The competition consists of various parts, one of which is the Irish Coffee.

Well, one might think, Irish Coffee is really just coffee, cream, sugar and whiskey – each ingredient is tasty on its own, so surely all components together must be even tastier. Well – until that day in February 2015, I thought similarly.

A participant brewed a filter coffee from Panama of the Geisha variety for her Irish Coffee base. The coffee was dry processed and tasted intensely of papaya and jasmine. She used palm syrup for sweetening, mixed this with a smoky whisky from Japan and crowned the drink with slightly soured cream. I was flabbergasted. Until that point, I wasn't aware that this drink, which looks visually unattractive compared to other cocktails, could be so complex and surprising.

What is Irish Coffee?

Irish Coffee consists of only four ingredients: coffee as a base, mixed with whiskey, everything sweetened, and topped with whipped cream. There is hardly any other mixed drink that can taste so variable.

It sounds as if all Irish Coffees would taste similar because they always consist of the same ingredients. But the interesting thing about this drink is that each individual component can be chosen so precisely that it achieves perfect balance and brings out new flavor notes.

The Glass

Classic Irish Coffee recipes are based – according to legend – on a glass with a 6-ounce capacity, so about 180ml. In the Coffee in Good Spirits competition mentioned at the beginning, glasses with a 240ml capacity are used.

It probably depends on your thirst and outside temperatures which size you prefer at any given time. The glass is a classic goblet. This way the glass can be heated while the bottom is rotated. An Irish Coffee only looks good if the glass is filled to the brim, and for that you need a lot of coffee.

The Coffee Type: Filter Coffee

The drink stands out – and I'll come back to this several times – through balance. With the coffee itself, we also need to pay attention to balance. Just because coffee is one of several ingredients doesn't mean we should use just any coffee. Similarly, we recommend not working with espresso. Espresso or lungos are usually too strong and would dominate the drink and, well, throw it off balance.

Coffees brewed as filter prove to be the perfect ingredient here. Filter coffee brings the quantity to the drink and transports finer, more complex notes into the overall construction. Espresso or similarly intense drinks are not as nuanced and would mask the finer notes in the whisky. However, the filter coffee should be brewed somewhat stronger, that is, overdosed, than usual. It will be diluted significantly afterwards. We recommend at least 7g of coffee per 100ml of water, instead of the usual 6g of coffee per 100ml of water.

The Coffee Flavor: Experiment

During my awakening experience in Oslo, the competitor brewed an extremely characteristic filter coffee, which she then used in the Irish Coffee. However, a complex coffee alone doesn't make the Irish Coffee better if the other ingredients are not equally precisely selected.

We have found that well-developed filter coffees work best as a base. Very light coffees tend to fade in flavor somewhat. "Well-developed" means in our filter coffee language that we would roast them 10 seconds longer than another filter coffee.

Characteristic coffees that are very floral or fruity can be just as much fun as more nutty-chocolatey coffees. Again, it's about finding the balance with the other ingredients. A peaty whiskey, for example, doesn't harmonize as well with a very fruity Kenyan filter coffee. Younger whiskies with lighter tones, on the other hand, pair very well with more floral coffees.

There's certainly no rule for how coffees harmonize with whiskey. Experimentation is the motto. It also makes sense to choose a filter coffee and then find the matching whiskey to go with it. A pretty exciting task best done over a weekend.

The Sweetening Agent

Anyone who automatically thinks of sugar when hearing "sweet" is invited to try something different. The sweetness component serves to make the drink more balanced and to soften the high alcohol content of the whiskey somewhat.

Syrups not only sweeten the drink but also give it a softer texture. From simple sugar syrup to date or palm syrup, there are various ways to combine sweetness with texture.

Muscovado sugar, stevia, molasses, honey – anything that's sweet serves its purpose and invites experimentation. But there shouldn't be too much sweetness – balance should definitely be maintained. And the drink is already quite heavy, so you don't need that much sugar anyway.

The Whiskey

Just as with coffee, we also find a multitude of different interpretations and flavor profiles in whiskey. Once you start clicking through various whiskey blogs, you'll quickly realize that the whiskey world is just as colorful as the coffee world.

Whiskey experts distinguish between flavor profiles such as woody, malty, floral, fruity, peaty, herbal, grainy, grassy, fruity, earthy, and wine-like www.maltwhisky.de.

Before you dive straight into tasting, it makes sense to familiarize yourself with the basics of whiskey knowledge. Best to pick four completely different whiskeys – fruity, peaty, grainy and X – and then try to combine them with a coffee. With that you already have a basic assumption of what goes together. After that, you get into the details, which are no less fun but demand some physical stamina.

The Cream

The cream as the crowning finale of the drink is at the same time the first impression when drinking. Not only is temperature crucial here, which we'll discuss shortly, but also creaminess and of course the taste.

Fresh cream tastes different from long-lasting UHT and ESL creams. Even a hint of aging-related flavors, which make the cream somewhat rancid, cardboard-like or too buttery, can be disturbing.

It's also worth trying different types and brands of cream, shaking them and just tasting them. Yes, no one said the path to perfect Irish Coffee would be a walk in the park. It's quite demanding.

The Temperature

For me, the most exciting element of Irish Coffee is the temperature contrast. When our lips touch the glass, we first feel the cool cream. The flatter we hold the glass, the more warm-hot whiskey-coffee mixture swashes out from under the cream.

The greater the temperature discrepancy, the more of this surprise effect there is. But be careful: the cream shouldn't be so cold that teeth start to hurt, nor should the coffee be so hot that someone burns their tongue. The goal here is to get as close as possible to the extreme values. It's best to measure this with a simple digital thermometer.

The Mixing Ratio

Once all the ingredients are right, unfortunately that doesn't guarantee the final product will be delicious. My favorite cake, a Swedish buttermilk cake, is only really delicious when the right ratio is chosen. Even though the individual ingredients are all tasty, they don't necessarily have to harmonize.

To find the right mixing ratio, it's best to brew a large filter coffee and put 50g each in espresso cups. To the first cup you would now add 5g of whiskey, to the second 10g, etc. This way you understand which ratio works for you, how much coffee flavor and how much alcohol there should be. Since you're working with ratios here, you can simply scale them later for larger quantities.

The Balance

Once you have your best ingredients together, the most exciting phase really gets going. A bit more of this, a bit less of that, a bit hotter, a bit cooler – finding the right balance is a lot of fun.

It's worth thinking of the drink as an alcoholic cocktail rather than a coffee cocktail. Bartenders always start from the best possible balance. The coffee doesn't have to be in the foreground, just as much as the whiskey. Ideally, the two products complement each other and create a synergy that produces new flavor notes we hadn't even thought of before.

Recipes from Barista Champions

Three Coffee in Good Spirits champions share their recipes for their perfect Irish Coffee here. Theresa Prüssen became Swiss Champion in 2016, Nicole Battefeld from Germany achieved a magnificent fifth place at the World Championships in 2019. Victoria Arthofer from Austria is a two-time Austrian champion.

Theresa Prüssen

In conversation with Theresa (see video above) it became clear that Irish Coffee is a refined cocktail for her and has nothing to do with Kafi Schnapps or Kafi Lutz, where it's really only about the alcohol.

Irish Coffee is a playground for Theresa where she can constantly try new ingredients.

Nicole Battefeld

Nicole Battefeld achieved fifth place at the Coffee in good Spirits World Championships in 2019. Such a performance is no accident – she describes her journey there in an exciting and detailed way in her blog.

Nicole's recipe is really interesting because she uses coconut cream instead of dairy cream. I can only imagine (so far) how that tastes, but it definitely sounds delicious.

Victoria Arthofer

Victoria Arthofer is Austrian Coffee in Good Spirits Champion and runs the café-bar "Das kleine Schwarze" in Steyr. She's also shared her favorite recipe with us and written her personal thoughts on Irish Coffee.

Why Irish Coffee?

"Irish Coffee just reminds me of my Alchemy time in Salzburg ("where it all began") – and it's just incredibly fun for me to prepare – because an Irish Coffee also just looks fantastic when it's finished. The best are the first sips through the cold cream, to the warm, sweet coffee-alcohol mixture."

The Opinion of the World Championship Judge: Nina Rimpl

Nina Rimpl is National Coordinator of the SCA Switzerland and has been a sensory judge at international coffee championships for several years. She particularly enjoys the Coffee in Good Spirits competition, in which Irish Coffee is one of the drinks to be served.

On Irish Coffee, Nina is clear:

an underrated drink, unfortunately prepared terribly almost everywhere.

Nina Rimpl, Sensory Judge

Nina continues: "Irish coffee is fantastic at the right moments. Autumn/winter, late afternoon, after a long walk, something between drink/coffee/warm up/dessert. The Irish Coffee consists of few ingredients, the most important thing about it: the balance, or rather the ratio of the ingredients. It's not about the creativity of the ingredients."

And further:

A classic coffee cocktail that can be well connected with specialty coffee, since you can wonderfully bring the characteristics of single origins into synergy with the remaining ingredients.

Nina Rimpl, SCA Coordinator Switzerland

But how does Nina actually judge an Irish Coffee?

"First, and very important, the temperature difference between cold cream and very hot remaining drink. When you put the glass to your lips, the cream touches the lip, the cream slowly makes its way into your mouth and suddenly at a certain tilt angle of the glass the quite warm liquid with completely different viscosity penetrates and the alcohol burns slightly in your mouth. Not too sweet, alcohol must be recognizable, as must the character of the coffee for me. A "normal" filter recipe is rarely suitable, the drink takes on a watery character, the coffee must be quite intense/dense to develop its character."

Second, for Nina the combination of ingredients is decisive:

"I got to judge the Coffee in Good Spirits World Final 2x and drank some incredible Irish Coffees there. Complex, round, multifaceted, flattering. Too bad that as a judge you only get 2 sips on stage. What stays with me is Dan Fellows' IC, which was announced as sticky toffee pudding and reminded me exactly of that feeling of Christmas and the spices."