Pronounced ‘Iron Brew’, big in Scotland where it was originally produced as an alternate to beer for the nation’s steelworkers. Funnily enough, IRN BRU now enjoys a reputation as the hangover drink of choice in its country of origin, so I guess IRN BRU and alcohol have to a certain extent kissed and made up.
On cracking the can, you are greeted with a Delicious bubble-gum-esque smell. The colour is somewhere between Fanta and brown cream-soda, leaning towards the Fanta side of things, which is inconsistent with the smell and kind of confusing. The soda is very, very fizzy.
The tagline “Unique Blend of Mixed fruit Flavours” coupled with the athletic-looking can design had me prepared for a Mountain Dew meets Gatorade type drink. The very minimal/watery aftertaste had me at first struggling to put my finger on just what IRN BRU tasted like. I guess it’s mainly orange-based, with a slightly Mountain Dew-esque ‘unspecified citrus flavour’ element to it, and a creaminess that’s not quite vanilla, but is very light and kind of tastes like a weak banana flavour- I think this is the bubblegum I smelled at the beginning. A fairly hard soda to describe, while it does have elements of a number of other flavours/sodas it’s pretty unique I guess. Not amazing, fairly refreshing and not thick at all (which I was somehow expecting it to be, I think because of the energy drink-ish can).
While there is no immediate aftertaste, the IRN BRU did leave a taste in my mouth that I noticed a minute or so after finishing a can, nothing terrible, just a reminder that I’d recently consumed a soda and that this soda was vaguely orange-flavoured.
Strangely enough, the bubbles I can see sitting in the soda while in the glass don’t seem to be making it to my mouth- it’s as if somehow they’re managing to escape between somewhere between leaving the glass and entering my mouth, the drink seems almost flat until after it is swallowed, when a bubble or two that were too slow to escape, make one final last-ditch effort to exit my mouth, resulting in a tiny bit of ‘after-fizz’ just after swallowing. Fairly strange and frustrating, I can see the bubbles sitting right there, I’ve never experienced this sensation before.
Apparently caffeinated but my can didn’t say so?
I can’t decide where I stand on IRN BRU. It’s fairly light and refreshing which is almost always a positive thing, and the flavour is fairly unique if not overly exciting. The weird sensation with the bubbles/fizz is kind of off-putting. I feel like IRN BRU is something that everyone just has to try for themselves to see whether or not they like it. Although I’ve given it a fairly low score, I’ll probably give IRN-BRU another try sometime soon.
63/100
-LC
Available at Leo's Fine Food and Wine, Kew.
Just to mention the bottle shops sell a irn bru/vodka mixer it is yum and irn bru is avaiable at coles, it is in the international section but have not found it a safeways. Oh I love irn bru :) and strangely enough I am not Scottish.
ReplyDeleteI'm drinking it even as I type these words. Irn-bru is just a creaming soda variant. Don't try telling that to the Scotts, though.
ReplyDeleteA little secret from a Scot - no-one actually knows what this drink's supposed to be! The recipe, and even a description of the flavourings, is kept closely under lock and key, presumably because it's so phenomenally unhealthy that it would horrify people to know what they were actually drinking.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I am completely hooked on the stuff. The residents of Scotland, and especially the Central Belt, are basically weaned onto this soda at an early age and drink it constantly from then onwards.
In Scotland, it's a complete cultural phenomenon as opposed to just a drink. It's the "Other national drink" alongside whisky. (Try the two together - the whisky takes the edge off the slightly cloying sweetness.)
There was an outcry recently over claims that the company were going to have to change the colour of the drink to comply with food additive laws - this was viewed as absolute sacrilege by fans of the drink, and seems to have been quietly dropped for now.
The company that makes it is based near where I live, and their open-door days are always a complete sell-out since people want to see where the magic happens. :)
It's a source of some considerable pride to the manufacturers that Scotland is the only country in the world where Coke is not the top-selling soda.
There are also a whole stable of comic marketing initiatives which go along with the Bru, and these are well worth a look. Some of the humour is very distinctively Scottish, but I think it would be universally appreciated. Check out the website at www.irn-bru.co.uk or type the soda name into YouTube - guaranteed to be an eye-opener for the uninitiated!
The crap sold in Australia has no caffeine and no quinine making a huge difference to the flavour and use as a hangover cure.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't made with orange, the colour of the can is manipulating you to think that. I'm Scottish and I have no idea what flavour Irn-Bru is, all I know is it tastes amazing and nothing sorts you out after a heavy night of drinking than drinking this ice cold from a can, plastic bottled Irn-Bru doesn't quite taste the same as the glass or when it is in can form. I have friends in Brisbane and I have let them try it for the first time and describe it to their creaming soda, but cream soda to people in Scotland and England is american cream soda, which, for me, is stomach churning. It also upsets me to think that Irn-Bru could possibly be compared to any other drink in the world. Irn-Bru is Irn-Bru just as Coca Cola is Coca Cola. Everyone has to try it at least once and I'm positive you will fall in love. Danny from Scotland x
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