Iced Irish Coffee

A refreshing summer adaptation of the classic Irish Coffee, combining cold brew with Irish whiskey and a float of lightly whipped cream for a cooling caffeinated indulgence.

Iced Irish Coffee is a modern cold adaptation of the classic preparation Joe Sheridan created at Foynes flying boat terminal in County Limerick in 1943, transforming the warming original into a refreshing summer serve that preserves the whiskey-coffee-cream relationship without the temperature. Sheridan's original used hot coffee, Irish whiskey, brown sugar, and a collar of lightly whipped cream poured over the back of a spoon to float on the surface. American travel writer Stanton Delaplane introduced the preparation to the Buena Vista Café in San Francisco in 1952, where it became commercially iconic. The cold version aligns Irish Coffee with the cold brew coffee revolution that transformed specialty coffee culture from approximately 2011 onward — the smooth, less acidic character of cold brew engaging with Irish whiskey's triple-distilled grain smoothness in a way that hot coffee's sharper acidity does not. The whipped cream cap can be adapted to a cold foam float for the iced format. As Irish whiskey's global exports tripled through the 2010s and cold coffee culture reached mainstream scale, the Iced Irish Coffee appeared naturally on café and craft bar menus as a crossover between both trends.