Monster Java Kona Cappuccino
I don't know what it's like to not be able to live without coffee. I always attribute it to an addiction. I suppose it's not hard to not be addicted to coffee when you don't particularly enjoy coffee. Saying that is like saying, "Yeah, I could be addicted to crystal meth but I don't like crystal meth so I don't do it." This isn't something even a coffee fiend could get addicted to, though. I don't know a lot about coffee but I feel that this is a bit too acidic and too sweet for even the most budding of coffee addicts. It is sweet and it is smooth and it doesn't taste like an energy drink which, insultingly so, is the mark for a good energy drink. It's a tad diet tasting due to the sucrose but it's not terrible. It does have a lingering sub-par coffee taste which isn't too offensive.
Honestly though, I don't know if this is technically an energy drink or a coffee drink. Isn't coffee an energy drink in itself? This could be the two mixed together for all I know and who needs coffee, and energy drink, and an energy drink? You need to calm down, buddy. Get some sleep. You need sleep more than you need energy. You might also need some water. Cleanse your body a little bit. Now that I'm looking at you, you could stand to get some exercise, too. I know, it's mean, but we're friends, right? I'm being honest.
- Website
- http://www.monsterenergy.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Sucrose
- Categories
- Coffee, Energy Drink
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman 5 hours, 11 minutes ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
Powerade Zero Drops Orange
Stephen loved to run. His mom went to the grocery store to buy him some Powerade before he ran a marathon. She saw the Powerade Zero Drops, thought it was a drink, and bought it. When she got to the race, Stephen was getting ready to go to the starting line. She handed him the drink and he told her that it was a concentrate. She was overly apologetic because she knew that this race was important. He told her that every so often there were people that handed him water that he could add it to so it was alright. He stood at the line and the man shot the pistol and Stephen took off.
Five, ten, fifteen miles. He was doing well but getting thirsty. Where were all the people with the water? Wasn't there supposed to be people out here handing cups of water? It was getting hot, too. Stephen was slowing down and sweating. Just then, it started to rain. Hard. Downpour. As soon as Stephen hit mile eighteen it was torrential down pouring. Just then, he remembered the Powerade Drops that his mom gave him. He squirted a little in his mouth and opened his mouth and took in the rain. It mixed up nicely and tasted like a vitamin C pill or a watered down orange Vitamin Water. He's got electrolytes and is cranking through the wettest race of his career. Mile twenty he's still running and it's still raining. He's soaking from head to toe but it was hot outside so although hindering and increasingly heavy, refreshing. Every mile or so he'd squirt a little bit in his mouth and drink some water. He was happy that it wasn't gross and actually didn't taste diet at all.
Stephen saw the finish line and ran hard with whatever energy he had left. He finished in the first group of runners and was psyched with the results. He found his mom and told her that he drank rain water and mixed it with the Powerade and it was good. They both went home happy because they did well. Stephen always carried a bottle of this when he raced and thanks his mom for introducing him to it.
- Website
- http://www.powerade.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Sucralose
- Categories
- Diet, Drink Mix/Concentrate, Sports/Dietary Supplement
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman 23 hours, 5 minutes ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
NOS Active Energy Drink Raspberry Lemonade
It has recently come to my attention that through all the gallons of beverage that I have drank throughout my 34 years I have never once had a NOS energy drink. I’ve drunk far more energy drinks than I am comfortable admitting, but for some reason I have never reached for one of these. Perhaps it’s because far too much of my time during my 20’s was spent with friends who cared far too much (in my opinion at the time) about cars. We’re talking about “pimping” and sooping up cars for cars shows and the like. Because of the boredom I underwent I became disinterested in all things car related. Now that I am older I say, whatever makes you happy, do it, but back them I was a surly bastard about it.
Anyways here I stand at my inaugural tasting, and of course it’s not even for their flagship product, but a new line that they are promoting called Active. This line is basically an energy drink/sports drink hybrid. Due to the bottle and the fact that both are distributed by Coca Cola, I have it in my mind that this is NOS mixed with Powerade. I have no idea if that is true, but that is the way it looks and that is the way it tastes.
What we have here is very light lemonade with a little bit of raspberry flavor to it with a whole lot of electrolytes thrown in the mix. Oh, and a whole lot of sodium, which is normal for sports drinks. You don’t taste the energy drink aspect of this at all. The only foreign flavor I can really taste is the artificial sweetener sucralose. Overall this isn’t all that bad. It’s not a flavor that I generally go for, but I know there is definitely a lot of people out there that would.
This is a beverage made for when you work out. My question is when are you supposed to drink it though? If you drink it before you work out you get the benefit of the caffeine, taurine and the like, but the electrolytes are wasted. If you drink it after, the opposite is true. I suppose you could drink it during your work out, but I feel like you’d only get half the benefits from each side. I chose to drink it before hand, in hopes that somehow the electrolytes are set on a time release. We can only hope.
- Website
- http://www.drinknos.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Sucralose
- Categories
- Energy Drink, Lemonade, Sports/Dietary Supplement
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper 1 day ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
Mistic Mango Mania
There was a point in my life where I thought that Mistic would eclipse the rest of the beverage world. It was nicely carbonated, it tasted completely amazing and exotic to my ten year old taste buds in the late 80’s. Best of all they looked like wine coolers, so being the dumb kids we were we could act like adults (or older teenage girls of the time) after a long day of skating. Then they all just disappeared without a trace. I was dumbfounded as to what could have happened to my beloved drink. I pounded them whenever I could, so obviously the rest of the world was doing the same. Something must have been amiss. Perhaps it was a government conspiracy.
Probably a decade later Mistic reentered my world. The bottles looked similar, but they were no longer carbonated. My heart was broken. It just wasn’t the same. It still had a great fruit flavor, but without it’s bubbles, it sank into the scenery as companies like Sobe took center stage.
Now more than another decade has passed and I’ve encountered the beast again. The bottle has changed, and perhaps that is for the better. The old bottle always left me hoping in vain that it would be sparkling. With the new bottles my former dreams have been decimated, so I can enjoy it for the fake juice that it is.
What we have here is a “juice drink” that only has 3% juice in it, yet it really tastes like mango...strongly. It’s ridiculously sweet and not very good for you with 56g of sugar in this 16 oz bottle, but what it lacks in health is surely there in flavor. Let’s face it mango juice is not readily available in a lot of areas. Especially in the more inner city bodegas, which are the only places I ever seem to find Mistic drinks. Sometimes you just crave the mango taste, and this is a decent tasting substitute for when the real juice is not at hand.
I would now like to take the time to plead with the Mistic folks (who seem to have no internet presence) to please bring back your sparkling line, and make it exactly as you did when I was a child. I will buy a truckload. Actually how about you send me a truckload for free, for making you millions by reminding you how awesome you once were.
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Juice
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper 1 day, 2 hours ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
Cafe Plaza Ice Coffee
Deep in the jungles of Taiwan, there is a man called Hanklin. His mother wanted to name him "Hank" and his dad wanted to name him "Franklin" so they thought it would make the most sense to just combine them and everyone wins; everyone except for Hanklin who has a really dumb name.
Hanklin wanted to get out of the city. He was an extrovert. He moved to a jungle, hooked up a couple solar panels, built a 500 square foot house, and subscribed to satellite internet. Yeah, it's slower, but he's "off the grid." He works hard but doesn't do so well with others. He tends to lose his temper over dumb things like getting sand in his shoes, when he's eating a hamburger and the stuff on the inside starts to fall out, and when people don't hold the door for him when he knows they know he's coming. He was a raw plastic salesman that uses the term "remote office" to its fullest extent.
He works day and night which is fine by him. When he needs stuff, he drives the fifteen miles to the closest town and goes shopping. He tries to make as little stops as he can. One day, he went to town and bought a bottle of ice coffee. He usually just drinks bottled water but he just made a big sale and decided to "splurge" even though he makes over $100,000 and probably spends less than $100 a week to live. He got home with his many, many melons, odd cuts of odd meat, suntan lotion, cases of water, vegetables, and toiletries and decided to crack open his new drink.
He took one sip and was brought back to when he lived in the States. A more complicated time filled with excess, noise, and complicated decisions. The coffee was good but it was a bit too sweet for his liking. It wasn't too much that he couldn't drink it, but it was sweet enough that he wouldn't drink it again. It smelled good, tasted alright, and was tall enough to span two drink sessions.
When he finished the bottle, he put it in his one weekly garbage bag and went on with his life. After all, now he had the energy to start selling the new Polystyrene beads that they got very cheap at a high markup that will net Hanklin even more money that he won't spend.
- Website
- http://www.uni-president.com
- Country
- Taiwan
- Sweetener
- Sugar
- Categories
- Coffee
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman 1 day, 3 hours ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
Ahhmigo Brain Boost Super Greens Cleansing Energy
In the deserts of the southwestern United States there roams a nameless man. He is a man with many friends who have never heard him utter a single word. To those who know of the lore he is simply known as Ahhmigo. He wanders the desert with his trusty llama and helps those who are lost. The thing is he is kind of a jerk. He drives around in a jeep all day with a llama riding shotgun, until he finds someone wandering in the sand. He then pulls up, flips open a cooler from the back and tosses the wayward soul a bottle of water and a packet of vitamins and the like. He then just points in the direction of the nearest town, and just drives off. I know he’s giving some help, but the dude has a jeep. He could easily drive the people to safety instead of just hydrating them. He becomes their friend (I guess) and offers them refreshment, but like I said, he’s kind of a jerk.
This is the closest you will come to experiencing an encounter with this leathery skinned man. It is a bottle of spring water that has a cap full of freeze dried vegetables, roots, fruits, herbs and vitamins, just like the astronauts use. It helps to keep the ingredients fresh so that you can get the most out of them. Much like a Japanese soda, you smash the top down, into the fluid below, but instead of releasing a marble, a dusting of health enters your water.
The majority of these ingredients in cap drinks use zero calorie sweeteners to help make it more palatable for your average drinker. Ahhmigo is no different in that they use stevia, but with so much other healthy stuff in here, you can’t really taste it at all.
For drinks like this I normally list all of the weird ingredients that I’ve never heard of before, but I’m sure are ridiculously good for you, but this seriously has so many that it would be the entire review. They are broken up into different categories on the ingredients list, which include algae, phytonutrients & enzymes, tonic herbal extracts & mushrooms, green juices, western herbs and natural antioxidants. I would like to mention that it has bladderwrack though. Now that’s something completely new to me.
Overall this tastes like an old style health food store smells. It’s mostly wheat grass that I taste, but there are a bunch of other flavors in there that just make it taste healthy. It’s like someone took every little think that was healthy that they could find, juiced it all together, and then watered it down a bit. There are some flakes of the powder that I couldn’t get to dissolve, no matter how long I shook it.
This is certainly a strange drink that is fitting for the strange fellow in the desert who travels with a llama. If you ever come across him, make sure you thank him, as he probably saved your life, but also give him a little guff, for not helping more.
- Website
- http://www.ahhmigo.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Stevia
- Categories
- Drink Mix/Concentrate, Sports/Dietary Supplement, Water
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper 2 days, 19 hours ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
Suavva Cacao Juice Smoothie Mango
We here at Thirsty Dudes have not been too stroked on the Suavva line. In fact both of the other flavors we have reviewed have gotten the lowest rating possible. As is to be expected, I have been very hesitant to try this third flavor, and it’s been staring at me every time I open my fridge for the past month or so. Sometimes you need to just buckle down and power through an experience, and that is what I had prepared myself for today. I expected to make it 2-3 sips into this bottle, but to my surprise it actually tastes decent.
I guess cacao just needs a strong fruity flavor to combat its strong superfruit taste. I find it odd that most superfruits taste kind of similar. It’s like they all use acai as a weird mutated grape tasting base. Due to that it’s no surprise that this reminds me of mango and acai mixed, with a little something extra in there. Luckily that something extra is not the paint smell/taste that mike mentioned in his review of the original variety. The mango flavor takes center stage in this, and I am grateful because that means I will be able to make it through the entire bottle and gain the benefits of the antioxidants from the cacao.
- Website
- http://www.suavva.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Agave Nectar
- Categories
- Smoothie
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper 3 days, 3 hours ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
Monster Rehab Tea + Pink Lemonade + Energy
Am I the only one who feels like non-carbonated energy drinks don’t work? Even thought I know they have the exact same energy giving ingredients, the absence of thousands of tiny bubbles tricks my brain into thinking that I will not be awake for much longer. Well brain, learn to work properly because I can assure you this does provide the burst of energy that it sells you on. It’s been awhile since I have physically been able to feel an energy drink, and I’m sure my nearly empty stomach played a supporting role in that.
Monster hit the nail on the head when they decided to mix their energy formula with tea and lemonade. They use a nice mixture of brewed black and green tea, instead of some garbage powder. That mixed with the pink lemonade it tastes wonderfully like summer and it does a great job of masking the typical energy drink flavor. It also 95% hides the taste of the sucralose used to sweeten this. This is decent tasting lemonade that has only 6g of sugar in the entire can. That’s some kind of magic right there. By the way what is in pink lemonade that makes it pink? Online tells me it’s just dye, but it taste different to me.
On top of this tasting great and giving you a healthy dose of hopped up energy it also has coconut water and a bunch of antioxidant rich fruits to help you recover from a rough night of some crazy scavenger hunt that you were more than likely on. I mean that’s how everyone spends their weeknights, right? Oh, and the secret to winning is to find the name of the baby gorilla buried in the pet cemetery, and get that can of Mello Yellow, no matter what.
- Website
- http://www.monsterenergy.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Sucralose
- Categories
- Diet, Energy Drink, Iced Tea, Lemonade
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper 3 days, 23 hours ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
Push Orange
Friggin' hot dogs, man. I love those guys. Jay and I used to have fantastic barbecues that would fill our entire front yard with punk kids who just wanted to have a good time. We lived in a nice, family neighborhood and these kids that were with us did not blend in. Nicest kids in the world, but not something you would expect to see in that place.
At the barbecue we would have hamburgers, hot dogs, veggie and non and an array of drinks. This is pre-Thirsty Dude so we didn't have the greatest stuff. Usually boxes of Gregory's, the straight edge box wine. One thing we did was get orange pop. Hot dogs are properly washed down with orange pop. I don't know what it is. It's probably the same thing that makes Papaya King make so much sense. This would have been a fantastic accoutrement to those parties because it's a good orange. It's a standard orange but it's pretty crisp and not too sweet.
I would love to ask the new residents of that apartment if we could have a little cookout for old-time sake but I don't think they would like all those bikes in the front yard and Depeche Mode blaring on the stereo. I would though, brother. I would.
- Website
- www.http://pushbeverages.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Soda Pop
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman 3 days, 23 hours ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
NOS High Performance Energy Drink Zero
The Fast and the Furious 6 comes out next week. It would seem appropriate to save this can and review it alongside of the movie, but I don't think they would be so keen on that idea. I could probably wait until an engine revs in the opening credits and time my can opening to that moment so no one would notice. It would probably enhance my experience of watching it.
But let's not kid ourselves, the series is a guilty pleasure of mine and I’m already really excited to see it. Those who know me might be really shocked for my love of a tricked out car racing movie franchise because I have never had my driver’s license. I like taking the bus/ riding my bike and have never had to urge/need to drive. As for my love of the Fast and Furious movies, I look at them the same way I do the Die Hard series: they are really fun to watch.
Now for the drink at hand, it's good but not worthy to be featured next to a fancy car that costs more than I will make in 5 years (Mike is the car guy, I don't know the names/makes/models of cars). It's on the better end of diet energy drinks, but it doesn't have much character to it. It's like the racer that crashes first in each movie; they have a prominent role in the movie but are very forgettable.
- Website
- http://www.drinknos.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Sucralose
- Categories
- Diet, Energy Drink
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Derek Neuland 4 days, 7 hours ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment