Tequila Slammer: The Fizzy Pub Shot and the Salt-and-Lemon One With the Same Name

We heard it before we saw it, the first time. Wet coats steaming on a pub bench, rain on the windows, and from the far end of the bar a flat thump, a hiss, and a cheer. Someone had covered a glass with her palm, brought it down hard on a beer mat and swallowed the whole foaming thing before it could climb over the rim.

That’s a tequila slammer as most British drinkers know it. Ask a certain kind of American bartender, or open an old recipe book, and the same name brings you something else entirely.

Two drinks, one name

Our own database shows the muddle nicely. The entry called Tequila Slammer has no fizz at all. It’s salt, tequila and lemon: lick the salt from the back of your hand, down the tequila, bite the lemon. The Tequila Body Slammer follows the same steps with the salt placed on somebody else, which we’ll leave to you and that somebody.

The pub drink is in there too, but it goes by other names.

Equal parts is the pattern, and that’s about all the recipe there is. Search Cocktail Builder for tequila and 7-Up and the whole family turns up under half a dozen names. At home we follow the Tequila Pop’s ounce and ounce. The tequila goes in first, and the mixer follows gently so it keeps its bubbles.

One word trips up American readers. In a British pub, “lemonade” means the clear fizzy kind, close to Sprite or 7-Up. Pour in the still, cloudy lemonade from an American fridge and nothing whatsoever will happen when the glass comes down.

Why it foams

Any fizzy drink is holding more carbon dioxide than it would like to. The gas was forced in under pressure, and once the can is open it wants out, slowly, through the small bubbles you see rising.

A sharp knock speeds all that up in an instant. The jolt travels through the liquid and shakes loose the tiny bubbles clinging to the glass, and each one gives the dissolved gas somewhere to gather. They swell, rise, split into more, and in a second or two you have a column of foam where you had a calm drink. It’s the same trick as tapping the top of a friend’s open beer bottle with the bottom of your own, which we don’t recommend either.

Your palm or coaster holds that foam down for the moment between the slam and the swallow. We’ve found the mixer needs to be cold, since cold soda holds on to its gas and foams at a pace you can manage. Lemonade from a warm cupboard will erupt up your wrist. A bottle that’s been open since last weekend gives you a sweet tequila shot and an anticlimax. Leave room in the glass as well. All that foam has to go somewhere, and half full is plenty.

From there you have two or three seconds. The bubbles are bright on the tongue and the sweet lemon covers most of the tequila’s bite. Let it sit and you’re holding a small, flat, lukewarm drink.

How to order one

In the UK, “tequila slammer” will usually do it, though not every pub is willing, and we’d take a refusal gracefully. Somebody else has to sweep up the glass. In America the name might get you salt and lemon, so say what you mean: “a shot of tequila with Sprite in a rocks glass, for slamming.” Some bartenders know it as a popper, and there’s a Popper in our database under that name too. Our tequila shots list has plenty that don’t involve hitting the furniture.

A plain blanco is right here. The lemonade flattens anything subtle, so your good bottle can stay on the shelf.

Keeping the glass in one piece

We take this part seriously, because the whole drink consists of hitting glass against a hard surface with your hand on top of it.

Start with a heavy glass: a thick-bottomed rocks glass or a sturdy tall shot glass, never anything thin or stemmed. Run a finger around the rim and look at the base before you pour, and if you find a chip, that glass is finished for the night.

What’s underneath counts for as much. We fold a bar towel or stack a few beer mats on a wooden table, and we stay well away from stone, tile and granite. One recipe in our files, the Tequila Bang Bang Mexico Style, has you slam onto a short length of 2x4 propped up at one end. That’s a lot of carpentry for a shot, though the instinct is sound.

The other useful layer goes on top. A coaster or folded napkin between palm and rim beats bare skin, and any ring should come off that hand. Then bring the glass down flat from a few inches up. It’s the sharpness of the jolt that makes the foam, so a full-armed swing only adds risk.

Each slam also adds wear, so we swap glasses between rounds. A glass that has been hit a dozen times is no longer the one you checked. At home, a thick polycarbonate tumbler does the job and removes most of the worry, though thin disposable plastic will split. If anything cracks, stop, pour the drink away and clear up properly, however much the table protests. One or two of these make a fine moment in an evening. Past that, the aim gets worse.

Other things to slam

The idea doesn’t belong to tequila. Around bonfire season we like the Apple Slammer, equal parts apple schnapps and 7-Up, which is gentler and tastes of sparkling green apple candy. For a party, Fuzzy Slammers swap the soda for Champagne, with half an ounce of white rum and a little lemon, and the foam comes out finer and drier. Whatever lemon-lime soda is left in the bottle has a long list of other uses in our drinks with Sprite.

The Alabama Slammer is no relation, by the way. It’s a tall, sweet, fruity drink that nobody has ever needed to hit on anything.

Last modified on November 1, 2026