irish-austrian cream? belgian coffee?

ok. coffee with irish cream liqueur, which is basically a vanilla latte with a little irish whiskey, and cafe vienna, which is sort of a vanilla latte with cinnamon....both good. what happens when you do something sorta in the middle? this evening i yanked as many ingredients as seemed likely to work well together, and threw together a new concoction. personally, i think this is the best coffee pollution i've made yet; try for yourself and find out:

3 @ 14oz cans of sweetened condensed milk (i used store brand cheap stuff)
1 @ 1 pint carton of heavy whipping cream (store brand again)
about 1/3 cup of honey
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg (what the hell...it's nutmeg, should be good....)
1-2 tbsp chocolate syrup (Hershey's, of course...just there to darken it up a little)
1 ever-so-slightly-shy cup of irish whiskey (you can always add more)

blend the hell out of it. the whiskey (which is a bit less than 2/3 water) has a tendency to try to separate a bit otherwise.
yield: about 2 liters (a little less than half a gallon). lasts a couple weeks easily in the fridge.

i used Bushmill's middle of the road offering....i'll prob'ly use around 75% more next time, more if i have enough scratch for some exceptional whiskey.

blend thoroughly. mix about 4-5 parts very strong, very hot coffee (preferably the darkest roasted stuff you can get your hands on) to 1 part of your batch of inf's newest irish-austrian-cream-stuff, and may i suggest both pouring the cream in the cup first, so that it blends nicely on its own, and selecting a particularly good book to settle in with.

you may have surmised i'm still debating what to call this stuff.  for this lexicographic undertaking i chose the spectral endpoints of Vienna and the geographic heart of Ireland, which, in the absence of ready contradictory data, i think as likely as not comprises a complexion as typically Irish as any other Irish locale. be that as it may, i must confess to being sorely tempted to choose the town of Limerick as representative of general Irishity (careful where you utter- and how you pronounce- that last term i just coined)...but as usual, i digress ad nauseum. Vienna and the geographic "heart" of Ireland are approximately equidistant from a rather nondescript spot in the northern portion of Belgium, as the very-high-endurance crow flies.

also, it's entirely possible that the mixological lexicon already includes something named "Belgian Coffee", or for that matter, a differently named beverage sufficiently similar to my potion to render its imminent christening redundant and unnecessary. while that's certainly a time-honored tradition in mixology, i consider it reasonable cause to postpone the official naming ceremony and star-studded gala pending the outcome of additional research, which will likely include locating and scrutinizing a more detailed map of Belgium than i could find in less than 2 minutes on the internet, and a bartender's reference guide. until that time i'm open to suggestions....and though certainly all submissions will be duly noted and considered, i suppose it's not inappropriate to attribute a modicum of preference to suggestions offered by those who've actually brewed up their own batch of the stuff.

incidentally, store-bought Irish cream liqueur runs around 34 proof (i recommend Bailey's or Carolan's if you buy pre-made), so cutting it by 80% with coffee should make a drink that's approximately 8 proof, or about half as strong as average beer, 1/3 as strong as average wine. the recipe above is nowhere near that strong; it's only about 1/7 whiskey, which in my case (or rather, bottle...i'm not rich nor alcoholic enough to buy whiskey by the case!) is 80 proof, so it's probably in the neighborhood of 11-12 proof without the coffee, or about 3 proof with it. for the mathematically disinclined, that's about 1/3 as strong as average beer, 1/4 as strong as average wine.

this all boils down to the fact that this recipe could certainly accommodate more whiskey. i suppose, for that matter, you could eliminate the whiskey altogether, but i only recommend resorting to that unappealing course of action in the event you find your whiskey insufferably poor. and by all means, buy better whiskey next time. but for me personally, in the end, the coffee's the most important ingredient.

coffee is life.