College Hockey Update:  This is a rare second edition in a single week for College Hockey Update, but we have some big news from Friday night’s games, as well as an important announcement, and accompanying instructions, for our readers.  Well, what happened in that crazy North Star College Cup? #1 Mankato State easily handled #17 Minnesota by a 4-2 margin, and in the opening game . . . . shocker!  Bemidji State nailed #7 Minnesota-Duluth, shutting them out 4-0, and thus Mankato State dodged the bullet of facing #7 UMD, setting up instead a championship game of Mankato vs. Bemidji, and a consolation game of Minnesota vs. UMD.  #2 North Dakota beat Colorado College by a 2-1 margin, and #3 Boston University beat #12 Vermont by a 4-2 margin.  And following up on Bruce Carlisle’s masterpiece article Friday on last Saturday’s win by St. Lawrence over Harvard . . . .  shocker!  Cornell beat #4 Harvard by a 3-2 margin, breaking the tie with only 41 ticks left to tock.  #5 UMass-Lowell was taken down 7-3 by #18 Providence, and . . . . shocker!  #6 Bowling Green lost 3-1 to Lake Superior State.  Not such a shocker, #9 Miami of Ohio was upended by #11 Denver, 3-1, and #10 Michigan Tech needed overtime to get by Alaska-Fairbanks.  And . . . . to really, really follow up on Bruce Carlisle’s game summary, the St. Lawrence Skating Saints continued their roll as they beat #13 Yale 3-2 in OT.

So it’s January, and it might be a bit chilly where you live.  Perfect time for . . . . an Irish Coffee?  Well, wouldn’t you know it, Sunday, January 25th is National Irish Coffee Day.  “Baloney,” you say?  Surprise, it’s true!  So on Sunday as you struggle to find any way at all to derive any satisfaction from watching either the NHL All-Star Game at 2pm PT, or the NFL Pro-Bowl at 5PM PT, have an Irish Coffee.

Irish Coffee was preceded by other coffee cocktails by fully 100 years, but what we know as Irish Coffee was invented in the 1940s on an awful, cold, wet, blustery night by Joe Sheridan, the head chef at Foynes Port, the predecessor to Shannon Airport, in Ireland.  Sheridan threw some Irish Whiskey into some coffee to warm a group of American passengers who had disembarked from a Pan Am Flying Boat that night, and they asked if they were drinking Brazilian Coffee, to which he replied that it was Irish Coffee.  Stanton Delaplane, Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, convinced Jack Koeppler and George Freeberg, owners of the Buena Vista Café at 2765 Hyde Street in San Francisco, to recreate the drink and start serving it there the night of November 10, 1952, thus introducing the drink to the United States.  Delaplane was apparently so hammered from all the attempts at perfecting the drink that he could barely get on the cable car outside the front door of the BV at the end of the night.  Delaplane popularized the drink by mentioning it often in his syndicated travel column, which was read across the country.  The BV is still open to this day, and while it is not as popular as it remained in the 70s and throughout the 80s, it’s still busy.

The traditional drink ingredients are 4cl (2 parts) of Irish Whiskey, 8cl (4 parts) of hot coffee, 3cl (1 1/2 parts) of fresh cream, and 1 tsp of sugar or brown sugar.  The sugar and whiskey are added to the coffee and stirred in until fully dissolved (including sugar is essential to floating the cream).  Lastly, the layer of cream is poured over the top of the back of a spoon held right over the coffee, and which is raised as the level in the glass rises.  Note that in the original recipe, liquid cream is used.  In 1952 it was then-mayor George Christopher who contributed the idea that the cream should be aged 48 hours to enhance its thickness and the likelihood that it would float on top of the coffee.  The coffee is then drank through the cream; the cream is not mixed into the coffee.

Now then, as happens with about anything, there have been some modifications to this recipe and preparation, to the taste of the preparer.  One such preparer would be our co-publisher, Jim Slaughter.  Jim has his specific ingredients, preparation, etc . . . .  and I think it’s time we laid it out here.  Jim’s ingredients are an Irish Coffee glass — he even specifies that it is to have a gold rim and little green shamrocks on it, one “long shot” of good espresso, “two fingers” of Irish Whiskey, two tablespoons of brown sugar, and fresh heavy cream “laced” with a “dollop” of white sugar which is beaten “until it has the consistency of custard but not whipped to fluffiness.”  In Jim’s world, I mean recipe, the preparation is to prepare all ingredients and have them at the ready, then to pour the whiskey and brown sugar into the glass together and use an espresso steamer to heat the whiskey and dissolve the sugar “about eight to ten seconds,” then to “carefully” put a match or lighter to the whiskey to flame the whiskey for a few seconds to cut down the alcohol, then to “pull your shot” (add in the espresso), and then to lay down a “carpet” of the prepared, beaten cream, and then to drink the coffee through the cream.

Now, if you look at the recipes, Jim’s seems to have a higher whiskey/coffee ratio than the original recipe, and therefore one  might wonder if you just backed off the amount of whiskey, if you could save yourself the chore of lighting it on fire . . . .  Ok, all kidding aside, I have had Jim’s sacred Irish Coffee concoction, and it’s very, very good.  I’ve also made a simpler method, without espresso, also beating, or whipping the cream, sometimes making it fluffy, but frankly it is better the thicker it is.  For those who’d like to examine Jim’s recipe and methodology in close detail, I provide this link to Jim’s post/page on the “I Need Coffee” blogsite:  http://ineedcoffee.com/the-best-irish-coffee-in-the-world/

But whatever you do, why not celebrate this drink on Sunday, January 25th?  Think about it, it might be cold where you live.  A sample of local temperatures right now, at the time of this writing:  Short Hills, NJ — 32; Greenwich, CT — 34; Boston — 33; Prague, Czech Repbulic — 34; Canton, NY — 22; Laconia, NH — 17; Minneapolis — 33; El Paso, TX — 32; Boise, ID — 26; San Rafael, CA — 44; San Francisco — 53; Malibu, CA — 69 (probably not as critical there); Los Angeles, CA — 60 (getting there); Arcadia, CA — 57; and Taipei, Taiwan — 73 (probably not as critical there either).

Thanks to Debra Bogosian for pointing out that it’s about to be National Irish Coffee Day, for the inspiration for this post.

This provides the top ten teams, rankings, records, and last weekend’s results — these rankings are unchanged from last Monday the 19th, and do not include the results of Friday night the 23rd, which are reported above in this post:

[table id=102 /]

That’s all for now.  Stay tuned, and go Terriers!

— Tom