Iron Brew

Irn-Bru is a carbonated soft drink produced in Westfield, Cumbernauld, Scotland. It is made by A.G. Barr of Glasgow since moving out of their original Parkhead factory in the mid-1990s and at a second manufacturing site in Mansfield, England. In addition to being sold throughout the United Kingdom, Barr's Irn-Bru is available throughout the world and can usually be purchased where there is a significant community of people from its native Scotland. Innovative and sometimes controversial marketing campaigns have kept it as one of the best-selling soft drinks in Scotland, where it competes directly with global brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

It is popularly conceived that the name 'Irn-Bru' originated with the re-building of Glasgow Central Station in 1901. When workers from the William Beardmore and Company Steel Works in Glasgow were dying from the large amounts of beer drunk to quench their thirst from the heat of the steel works, an alternative was sought.[by whom?] A local soft drinks manufacturer, A.G. Barr, approached the steel works and a contract was created to provide the workers with this drink. This unnamed drink later went on to be known as 'Iron Brew' because of its connections to the steel (and iron) works.

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Canada

Irn-Bru sold in Canada contains no caffeine, as until recently only dark coloured drinks were permitted to contain caffeine. As a result of this, and the omission of quinine, the taste is different, and the restorative effect is almost nil.

The now-defunct McKinley/McInlay soft-drink company in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, for many years offered its own non-licensed beverage called 'Iron Brew'. It was a brown carbonated soft-drink with a fruity cola taste. After the company stopped operations around 1990, PepsiCo continued to sell the drink locally as 'Cape Breton's Irn Bru'. The packaging consisted of plainly labelled plastic bottles (black text on a featureless white label) and a disclaimer 'Not a source of Iron'.

The standard Irn-Bru distributed in Canada also contains the 'Not a source of iron' disclaimer on the label.

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the_ginger_ninja said:

Not a massive fan myself.

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