How to Make the Best Irish Whiskey Cocktails for St. Patrick’s Day

If you love a Whiskey Sour, but don’t want to get eggs involved, you don’t have to—the cocktail still benefits enormously from simply using fresh ingredients and measuring them so they’re balanced against each other. The only thing I’d note is that without the egg whites there’s nothing here to bind to the tannins, so choose a whiskey that doesn’t have that many. Both Canadian and Irish whiskies are perfect candidates for this—Redbreast 12, Crown Royal, Seagram’s VO, Jameson or Tullamore D.E.W. or the like. Aim for 40 percent and avoid too much age—basically the budget end of the spectrum is ideal.

Add all ingredients to a shaker tin. Add ice, seal tins and shake hard for six to 10 seconds. Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass, and garnish with an orange slice, or cherry, or both.

It is true that a good Irish Coffee is within reach to everyone, but it is also true that pushing the cocktail to be its best self involves a specific series of steps that, according to lore, were perfected by a bartender at Ireland’s Shannon International Airport and given to travel writer Stanton Delaplane, who came home to San Francisco in 1952 to offer it to the Buena Vista—a place that’s still selling the world’s best version today. If you can’t make it to the Bay Area for one, here’s how to make it yourself.

Whisk or shake unsweetened heavy cream until it is gravy-thick but still pourable (if you have one of those whisk-balls for protein shakes, that works particularly well). Pre-heat glass with hot water. Empty water and add the sugar and coffee to the glass, then stir to dissolve sugar. Add whiskey, then gently layer the cream on top of the liquid (you can use a spoon to layer, but if the cream is semi-whipped it won’t be necessary). Take a sip through the cold cream, and shake your first once again at San Francisco for having so much cool shit.

The cocktail comes to us, like so many greats, from Hugo Ensslin’s 1916 Recipes for Mixed Drinks and the recipe most of us use is more or less the same as his—a healthy pour of Irish whiskey, with lime juice and some grenadine (pomegranate syrup) to sweeten. It is much less famous than its sibling cocktail the Jack Rose (an otherwise identical mixture with apple brandy substituted for Irish whiskey, invented around the same time), but is a better drink.

One of the reasons Irish whiskey is currently overlooked for cocktails is because it is by tradition light and mild, but mildness is a strength all its own—subtle flavors that would get bulldozed by the blasting oak of something like bourbon are allowed to express their full selves. In the Wild Eyed Rose, the voluptuous tartness of the grenadine gets to arc across the whole palate, supported by the warm light malt of the Irish whiskey and given a malic kiss at the end by the lime juice.

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake for eight to 10 seconds, then either strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass or strain into a coupe or cocktails glass, up. Garnish with a lime wheel, a couple pomegranate seeds or even nothing at all.

There are a few cocktails that fly under the banner of “Irish Breakfast,” but this is certainly the best, a combination of Irish Whiskey, lemon juice, orange liqueur, and orange marmalade. It is clean, bright, and delicious, and plays perfectly into Irish whiskey’s inherent gifts. Irish whiskey tends to be light and mild, a touch malty, and not too tannic or oaky, and the Irish Breakfast leans into it elegantly—the light breadiness of the whiskey is the perfect foil for the rich orange notes of the liqueur and marmalade, while the relative lack of tannins obviate the need for an egg white, and the marmalade adds a juicy, candied punch.

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker and add ice. No need to stir, shaking will mix everything just fine. Shake hard for eight to 10 seconds and strain up into a chilled Martini or coupe glass, and garnish with an orange peel.

Irish whiskey is known for its friendly mildness, so to pair it with a charging rhinoceros like Green Chartreuse gives the cocktail a shove into a realm of intensity that Irish whiskey drinks rarely occupy. Made in equal parts as creator Hugo Ensslin originally conceived it, the Green Chartreuse utterly dominates the experience, but back down the liqueur and boost the other two ingredients a touch, and the Tipperary is a bold but charming drink. The Irish whiskey meets you up front, its light caramel sweetness amplified by the Chartreuse, while the mid-palate goes deep with vermouth’s red fruit before handing the baton back to the Chartreuse for long finish of herbal fireworks.

Add all ingredients to a mixing glass with ice and stir for 10 to 15 seconds (on small ice) or 20 to 30 seconds (on big ice). Strain up into a coupe or cocktail glass and garnish with an orange peel.

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There’s a problem with the Cameron’s Kick cocktail, but it has nothing to do with the taste. It tastes great. No, the problem with the Cameron’s Kick—and the reason that you’ve maybe never heard of it, despite it being one of the very few classic Irish whiskey cocktails we have—is that it doesn’t make any bloody sense. My problem is this: Why are we splitting the base between Irish whiskey and scotch? What specifically are we trying to achieve? Split bases in classics are super rare. They’re much more common these days, but either way, when you see them, it’s generally two ingredients that are, you know, different, designed to complement each other—rum and rye, say, or Calvados and Cognac. Irish whiskey and scotch, on the other hand, are (or can be) so similar you have to dress them different to tell them apart. A mild blended scotch and an Irish whiskey may not have identical voices but they’re singing the same song, and it’s not in any way clear what is being achieved by including both.

When you make two Cameron’s Kicks side-by-side—one the classic recipe, and the other just with 100 percent Irish whiskey—the former is good and the latter is great. Together the flavor is muddled, slightly discordant, but alone the Irish whiskey gets to sing, its apples and pears and slight malt and gentle touch a perfect foil to the zesty front palate of the lemon and the deep finish of the almonds. So just go all Irish whiskey and you’ll have the best version of this classic you’ll try.

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker with ice and shake hard for 10 to 12 seconds. Strain either off ice into a cocktail glass, or onto fresh ice into a rocks glass, and garnish with a lemon peel.

Tom Bullock was the first African American to publish a cocktail book, called The Ideal Bartender, in 1917. And in St. Louis, he was renowned behind the stick, known as wizard with the Mint Julep. He had the good idea of mixing absinthe and Benedictine, the first author I’ve seen do that. He was perhaps the first to publish a Martini-like cocktail with an onion, that would become the Gibson. He also has a flurry of original cocktails, any one of which I’d be proud to present to you today, but my favorite is the Admiral Schley High Ball, made of Irish Whiskey, lemon juice, pineapple syrup, dessert wine, and soda. 

Schley was a Navy Admiral and a hero of the Spanish-American War, and this is actually not the only drink named for him (the other is a bourbon and rum Daiquiri of sorts in Charles Baker’s 1939 A Gentleman’s Companion), but Bullock’s drink was first, to say nothing of being both more creative and tastier. The Admiral Schley’s High Ball is a lovely and disarming drink, the bright fruit of the pineapple teasing out the honeyed brightness of the dessert wine, with the mild oak from the Irish Whiskey providing structure, a kind of a gentle but present backbone. It plays to Irish Whiskey’s core strength, which is that it’s such a soft and approachable spirit that subtle fruit—that which would be bludgeoned by bourbon or even scotch—is allowed to express itself and entice you with its subtleties.

Add all ingredients to a cocktail shaker and shake on ice for six to eight seconds. Strain into a tall glass over fresh ice, top with soda (optional) and garnish with a pineapple wedge or lemon peel.