Alcademics

Category: Ireland

  • Irish Coffee: It’s All in the Cream

    In Ireland a few weeks ago, I had Irish Coffee three times in as many days. Irish Coffee was invented in Ireland and is credited to a bar at the Shannon airport. Then it was recreated in San Francisco at the Buena Vista. Its popularity in the US helped it travel back to Ireland where became popular around the country. 

    At the Chapter One restaurant in Dublin, they have the most elaborate preparation of the Irish Coffee in town. They add Jameson Irish Whiskey and 2 tablespoons brown sugar to a pan and caramelize it for 10 minutes and grate fresh nutmeg on top. They add half the amount of coffee, then light the pan on fire for just a second and blow it out. They add the other half the coffee then pour it into the glass.

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    Then they add the cream on top. Unlike the other Irish Coffees I've had, the cream was fairly warm as opposed to refrigerator-cold. Most of the fuss of an Irish Coffee seems to be about the cream. I address this in last week's post on FineCooking.com.

    It turns out different countries have conflicting definitions for cream, and even in the US you have to know the difference between "whipped" and "whipping" cream to get it right. 

    The good news is, once you buy the right cream you don't have to whip it very much yourself- just don't stir the coffee first, and pour it over the back of a spoon. More info is in the post here.

  • Jameson Irish Whiskey Distillery Visit

    In early February I visited the Jameson Irish Whiskey distillery – actually two of them.

    The original Jameson distillery is in Dublin, but it is no longer made there. In 1971 it moved to the Midleton distillery in Cork. The reason is because in the late 1960's Irish Distillers was formed, a merger of Jameson, Powers, and Cork distilleries.

    In Dublin there is a visitors' center and restaurant. We went there first. I've got to admit, they did a really good job making a non-working distillery look working, using dioramas and original distillery parts but with fake ingredients pumping through them.

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    The next day we went to the new distillery in Cork. But actually it's the new-new distillery, located next to the old one.

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    Here we skipped the typical tour in favor of an in-depth one. 

    Jameson Fun Facts

    • Triple-distilled, as opposed to most scotch's twice-distilled
    • The old pot still here is gargantuan, probably one of the largest in the world. That is no longer used in favor of two wash stills half the size- that are still pretty huge.
    • All of the pot-still whisky made here is made on the same four stills: two wash stills, 1 feints still, and one spirit still
    • There are also several column stills as Jameson is blended whiskey.
    • Redbreast (available in US) and Green Spot (not) are all pot-still whiskeys.
    • They also make Middleton, Powers, and Paddy here, plus a couple other brands
    • They distill Tullamore Dew here under contract
    • Most Jameson uses ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks. Some (Rarest Reserve) uses ex-port barrels
    • Sherry butts are prepared by putting oloroso sherry (that has already aged the minimum of three years to be called sherry) into new casks for two years to prepare them.
    • Their pot-still spirit is a combination of malted and unmalted barley. If it's all pot-still whiskey, it is called "Irish pot still." Bushmills is "Irish malt" as it uses all malted barley.
    • They don't make a big deal about yeast strains here – use a "standard distilling yeast"
    • We nosed 100% malted distillate vs. malt/unmalt blend. The malted smelled more fruity and esthery than the blend
    • Due to the weather, there isn't a great temperature variation in the barrel warehouses, and only 2% angel's share per year
    • Jameson and Jameson 12 have opposite ratios of pot to column distilled spirit in them, though they don't say the ratios.
    • Jameson 18 tastes like green caramel apples
    • Jameson Rarest Vintage Reserve tastes like the inside of banana peels, coconut flakes, pineapple gum arabic. It is the yumz.
    • Only before 1800 was Irish whisky peated, and much of that would have been poteen rather than whisky. Around 1800 large-scale production became legal in Ireland and everyone moved to using coal rather than peat. So really in modern Irish whisky making there is no tradition of peating.

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