The Irish Car Bomb is truly one of the worst drinks you can imagine to order in Ireland, or anywhere else. However, the drink remains popular with young drinkers in the United States who don’t seem to know why the name is offensive.
The reason you should never order the shot-beer combo has a lot to do with Irish history. Car bombs were a horrible reality for people of all ages in Ireland in the not too distant past. There’s no quicker way to get labeled a clueless young American than walking into an Irish pub, walking up to the bar thinking you know what you’re doing, and then ordering several “Irish car bombs.”
First of all, hardly anyone in Ireland knows that a drink called ‘Irish Car Bomb’ exists anywhere. Then because it will confuse the bar staff or you will be quickly told “We don’t serve that here” and possibly asked to leave.
What is an ‘Irish car bomb’?
An Irish car bomb is a drink that has become popular in the United States of America, although it could best be described as a perfect waste of three good drinks. Officially known as an American beer cocktail (although beer is not usually an ingredient in most standard cocktails) the “Irish Car Bomb” is more exactly a “bomb shot”, like a kettle maker.
To make an Irish car bomb, first take a glass of Irish stout (more commonly Guinness, although this is not a requirement), and pour in a little more than half. Next, fill a shot glass with a measure of Irish cream (like Bailey’s), and float a measure of Irish whiskey over the creamy liqueur. To complete the “cocktail,” the shot glass is dropped (“bombarded”) into the beer. Then disaster begins.
Once the stout, whiskey, and cream are mixed together, the entire mixture will curdle (which, by the way, doesn’t diminish or enhance the flavor, but may offend your sensibilities in other ways). So the goal of the “Irish Car Bomb” is to grab the beer and liquor combo as quickly as possible. This makes the drink very popular with people who don’t really care what they drink, but who want to get a big production out of their drink and get drunk in the shortest amount of time possible.
And although the drink is quite popular in the United States, it is practically unknown in Ireland. There were some cases of trendy English bars that tried to introduce it and received serious complaints. Read on to find out why the name of the drink is such a terrible and insensitive idea.
What an Irish car bomb really is …
Imagine being out and about on a shopping trip when a “safety alert” is announced and you pass a red car. That really explodes while you’re still around. His hearing is gone, the flying glass has cut his back, he has been thrown to the asphalt and abrasions to prove it.
This is not a scenario that had to be imagined in Ireland: it was the stark reality of life for decades during a period that was commonly known as The Troubles.
Think of Omagh in 1998, when a car bomb parked on the city’s main shopping street by some “dissident Republicans” killed more than two dozen people: women, men, children, pensioners, British, Irish, Spanish. Or think of Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, when coordinated car bombs planted by the Loyalists killed 33 people (34 if you count an unborn child), the highest death toll of any day during the “Troubles.” For some visitors from the US, it might also help to think of Oklahoma City in 1995, when 168 people were killed, what if someone created a cocktail with the name of a US national tragedy?
Ireland has had its share of car bombs and other IEDs (‘Improvised Explosive Devices’), north and south of the border, planted on both sides of the sectarian-political divide, with a death toll that still threatens to rise due to some duped »freedom fighters« trying to express their point of view by planting another horrible device with the full knowledge of risking innocent lives.
That is why ‘Irish Car Bomb’ is a terrible, offensive and insulting name for a drink in Ireland. Applying for it in a country that saw dozens of people killed by real Irish car bombs is not very quickly welcomed.
Just stop and think!
Now that you know the history of the drink’s name and why it is an incredibly sensitive topic in Ireland (both Northern Ireland and the Republic), it is easy to see why you should never order the drink as a tourist.
Perhaps they are no longer produced daily in Ireland, but the world news is still filled with violence around the world every day. All of that means that what might sound like a fun drink name is anything but, and it’s certainly not smart either.
And overall, it’s a waste of good drinks.
If you want to order a true Irish drink, just order a decent, straight, no-ice Irish whiskey, followed by a much nicer beer chaser, giving you time to savor them too.
