Irish Coffee and Blueberry Danish
I didn’t ask for the vice. The vice asked for me.
It was New York City. It was an Irish bar. It was a Saturday morning. But was it five o’clock? Or was it six? And was I up all night? Or was I up early?
It was June of 2002. It was the World Cup in South Korea and Japan. I remember the soccer fans in the bar. I remember my stool up against the rail. I remember the matches on the television sets. I remember the cups of coffee. And I remember the glasses of Guinness.
I wasn’t looking for this vice. This vice was looking for me.
As a student in Europe, I drank Guinness and coffee one morning in Dublin, at a bar near Trinity College, with a cast of poets and philosophers, vagabonds and vagrants, and a little girl whose mother was among the apostles of this vice. A replay of a soccer match was on a television set. I remember the little girl looking at me impassively, with curiosity.
“Why do you like drinking all of this black stuff?” she asked me.
I wish I could have articulated for her one or two of the descriptors I would learn how to speak for myself. How the roasted coffee bean and bitter chocolate flavors of one brew were an ideal coupling for those of the other. How the texture of the coffee was a perfect foil for that of the Stout.
“I don't know why,” I answered her. “Maybe your mom could give you a taste of her black stuff.”
“She has.”
“And?”
“I’d like to taste them again.”
The beer part of this vice is Guinness Draught. (You may also find Guinness Extra, Guinness Foreign Extra, and Guinness 0.0, at your local bar or beer shop, but for the purposes of drinking glasses of Guinness with cups of coffee on a Saturday morning, Guinness Draught, with its modest alcohol of 4.5%, is ideal.) Guinness is an Irish Dry Stout. A Stout is a dark ale made with roasted malted barley. (The two primary styles of beer are ales and lagers. Ales are made using yeasts which ferment at warm temperatures. Lagers are made using yeasts which ferment at cold temperatures.) An Irish Stout is an especially dark ale, with roasted and bitter aromas and flavors. If you drink your Guinness Draught from a keg at a bar, its tap line infuses nitrous into the beer to create a smooth, creamy texture.
The vice followed me from New York City to Chicago back to New York City and then to Milwaukee, where I observe its rites on Saturday mornings with my nephews, Leighton and Marcelo. We buy blueberry Danishes at Rocket Baby Bakery (6822 W. North Ave.), and we go to the Highbury Pub (2322 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.), where we watch football, which is to say soccer, on its television sets. We eat the blueberry Danish as we drink the cups of coffee and glasses of Guinness. I cannot overstate the beauty of this alchemy. Marcelo says the pleasure is “like soccer, both sophisticated and common.” Leighton adds emphasis to the practical side of drinking Guinness in the morning. “Its relatively low alcohol,” he says, “allows me to operate heavy machinery later in the day.”
If you’d like to initiate yourself into this vice and taste the beauty of its virtues, may I suggest a cup of coffee and a glass of Guinness on the Saturday morning before St. Patrick’s Day? The Rocket Baby blueberry Danish and the soccer at the Highbury and are up to you.
