Butterscotch Coffee

Hot coffee, butterscotch schnapps, and cream — the Irish coffee template applied to 1990s Buttershots, butterscotch traced to Parkinson's of Doncaster in the 1820s.

The intersection of coffee and spirits has a long history: Irish coffee, created at Foynes airboat station in Ireland in 1943, established the template for combining hot coffee with whiskey and cream. Butterscotch's flavor profile — brown sugar and butter slowly cooked to caramelization — has been beloved since at least the 19th century, with the Doncaster confectionery company Parkinson's laying early claim to the butterscotch confection in the 1820s. Butterscotch schnapps, popularized by brands like DeKuyper's Buttershots in the 1990s, gave bartenders a concentrated form of this flavor to work with. The Butterscotch Coffee combines the warming, vanilla-sweet notes of butterscotch schnapps with hot coffee and cream, creating a dessert-style beverage that emerged from the 1990s trend of sweet, schnapps-enhanced after-dinner drinks. It found a natural audience in cafe-bars bridging coffee service with cocktail menus.