London's best cocktails on tap

Flex your best pint-pouring arm because it’s time for a cocktail. Bars are pulling beer from their kegs and replacing it with litres of ready-mixed cocktails, to be drawn out in seconds for instant refreshment. Not that these are cheat drinks: Rich Woods, who’s launching a Tap & Tails keg cocktail service at the new Duck & Waffle Local, St James' Market, Piccadilly, points out it’s not as easy as just pouring a batch of cocktails into a barrel and hoping it works.

Carbonation, dilution and chilling are just some of the elements that require careful attention. ‘Rather than someone saying “That’s not a bad drink for a tap cocktail”,’ he enthuses, ‘I want people to say: “Wow, that was a great drink and it came from a tap!”’

Best of all, a kegged cocktail allows you to try a cheeky sample before you commit to a full glass. Here’s where to get your tap on…

One Point Eight, anywhere

This bar can pop up wherever you want, whatever the occasion. A super-speedy hybrid draught/tap system allows staff to push out 120 cocktails an hour — fast enough to sate the thirstiest of partiers. Start with a Fire Monkey (chillified tequila with mango and lime) and slurp your way on to a Maple Old Fashioned — sweetly smoky and non-threatening enough to act as a gateway to avowed whisky haters — then finish on a cheeky half of Lemon & Charcoal Martini, with activated charcoal that will possibly stave off a hangover. Raise a glass to this ingenuity at Backyard Cinema and The King and Co in Clapham, where it’s currently in residence.

Duck & Waffle Local, St James' Market, Piccadilly

The perma-booked duck-centric restaurant in the Heron Tower in Bishopsgate is expanding with a new Duck & Waffle Local opening in St James' Market, Piccadilly this spring where the emphasis is on speed. That means cocktails that come as fast as your duck burger, from the grapefruit and burnt toast-infused Breakfast Fizz to its rum punch, the Duck & Stormy. As Woods points out, not only do taptails allow for consistency they also ‘give the bartender more time to interact with a guest and give them a better service. After all, regardless of our role, we are all hosts’.

Fox Bar, Brixton

​Shoreditch House was one of the first places to embrace the taptail. As far back as 2013, it was pumping pre-prepared Palomas (below) and Pimm’s Cups that were so good no one would believe they weren’t freshly made. At its cosy new south London bar it’s all about the Nitro Espresso Martini: a rich, sweetly caffeinated mix of cold-drip coffee and vodka, pumped through with nitrogen to preserve it, then chilled and squeezed — with dangerously little effort — into glasses. It’s instant coffee, but better.