Taps Aff: the archetypal Glasgow cocktail – large, colourful, bittersweet and in your face.
Named for the tendency of the Scottish male to take his shirt off whenever the temperature reaches more than 15 degrees Celsius to strut about bare-chested like some mangy alpha dog, no matter his state of physical disrepair.
A deceptively refreshing, sweet, gingery whisky cocktail for those who don’t like whisky.
‘Rainy days and Mondays always get me down’ sang the Carpenters.
I never fancied that, so I resolved long ago to make sure I always met the day head on and hands free. This has led to some peculiar decisions over the years, so I wasn’t surprised when one rainy Monday I found myself caressing the voluminous orange curves of a Taps Aff in Finns Bay1, Milngavie.
The recipe is simple: Barrs Irn-Bru 2 and Famous Grouse scotch, with lime and a dash of bitters.
Famous Grouse is the best-selling Scotch whisky in Scotland, a well-balanced malty blend dating back to 1896. Irn-Bru is of course, Scotland’s ‘other’ national drink, a wild, ginger concoction of indeterminable flavour that outsells all other fizzy drinks in the country.
Simple yet effective.
In fact, it’s lethal. The fruity, sweet, spicy Irn-Bru works neatly with the lime to mask the whisky almost completely. If it were to be described as as easy to drink as sweet fizzy lemonade it would be because it is drinking sweet fizzy lemonade.
The only thing that would hold you back after a few is that sweetness. But as anybody familiar with the Glasgow diet will know, sugary sweetness never stopped anybody in the West of Scotland from overindulging in anything.
If you’re Scottish you will likely find this really refreshing on a hot summer day. (They do happen 😉)
If you’re a fan of cocktails you might be slightly bemused by what seems to be simply a can of Irn-Bru tipped into a bulbous glass with a slice of lime.
If you’re a whisky drinker you’d likely wonder where the whisky had gone.
And if you’re Glaswegian you’d probably just get annoyed at someone spoiling a good can of Irn-Bru with a piece of fruit.
But hey, rainy days and Mondays.
Mixing it up
Enjoy.
- As of January 2025, Finns Bay was closed. ↩︎
- Irn-Bru advertising.
Irn Bru marketing campaigns from Barr’s have always been rather… unique.
(Code for rude, crude and well worth watching.)
They dance carefully around the bounds of good taste from mild amusement to verging on the vulgar, and have been known to go to far, with the most controversial adverts taken off air by the regulator.
If that’s not a recommendation, I don’t know what is. Check them out. ↩︎
