Advantages: Its simply delicious and we can be proud to have bought British!
Disadvantages: None whatsoever, as long as you brush your teeth regularly.
Can someone please tell me why Glaswegians refer to a bottle of Irn Bru as
"a boatul u jinjur"
To translate a "a bottle of ginger"
Actually I think I would be right in saying that "ginger" in Scotland refers to pop or fizzy - a general name for a soft drink.
As far as I am aware there is no ginger in it. Perhaps it is a reference back to the days when the most popular, or at least prevalent fizzy drink was Ginger Beer??
Or perhaps it is a refernce to its orange colour, and a refernece to ginger as in Gordon Strachan ginger, you know the hair colour??
Anyway, semantics aside this is the King of Soft Drinks.
Why Pepsi and Coke are still the top two soft drinks in the UK I will never know, when we have this amber nectar, to borrow a phrase. At least in Scotland this stuff outranks the two leading colas. I encourage everyone outwith Scotland to buy British and make Irn Bru the number one UK drink!
For those who have never tasted Irn Bru, let me try to describe it for you. Right off, it is a carbonated sweet drink, orange in colour, and as can be expected, quite sticky. So far so good.
Now what about the flavour?
The flavour is indescribable. I have never tasted anything like this. It is not as though the name is descriptive, i.e. gives you a clue. It is without doubt a sweet drink, but you can't pin it down. It doesn't even taste fruity. Now the recipe is a closely guarded secret, so it is not even as if we have access to a hint.
You will be pleased to know though it is not made from girders - that was just a clever advertising campaign. Despite the name, I don't know if it contains any iron, or even irn! It is spelt Irn Bru, not Iron Brew. It is made by A.G. Barr - Irn Barrs ha ha (I'll get my coat).
I hear it does contain caffeine, which might account for just a little of its magical hangover-cure properties - great for "The Afternoon After The Morning After The Night Before" to quote Billy Connolly. Yes Irn Bru is supposedly a hangover cure.
To fully appreciate Irn Bru, you need to drink it from a glass bottle, which I only think you get in Scotland - in England I have only ever seen Irn Bru in big plastic bottles. There IS a definite difference in taste between that bottled in glass rather than plastic. You might just get this in a glass bottle in Farmfoods if you are outside Scotland.
Whilst we are talking of Farmfoods, they also from time to time carry the range of Barr's other soft drinks -seriously Barr's soft drinks outclass any other soft drinks. If you get the chance to try Barr's Limeade, you will never touch poncy Lilt, Tropicana, Tango or any other 'exotic' treats.
To really, really appreciate Irn Bru, you need to be sat on the banks of Loch Lomond with a (glass) bottle of Irn Bru and a black pudding supper freshly caught from the chip shop in Balloch.
Let's buy more of this British treat and knock the yankee soft drinks off the top of the fizzy drinks chart.
Delicious!
Summary: Top marks!
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