Energy Drink - 555 Reviews

Here we are at the end of the Mati products (at least until they release more). It's been an interesting trip. I went from quasi disgust, to thorough enjoyment, to being completely confused as to where I stand on this company. I still mostly fall into the latter category. As I drink the sixth flavor in their line I alternate between enjoyment and dislike. Guayusa is such a strong flavor and it gets weird when paired with other flavors. This is supposed to be a blueberry pomegranate flavored beverage, and while those flavors are there the majority of the taste weight is being carried by the guayusa and lime. I guess that brings me full circle back to my original review where I stated that it's always weird when a beverage is not what you expect it to taste like. It can take you right out of the experience.

Overall these beverages are just fine. As far as energy drinks go I could drink them on the regular and not feel terrible about myself. I guess that is more than you can ask for than with most beverages in this day and age.

One of the simple pleasures in life is when you come home and there is a package waiting for you that you were not expecting. There is the rush of excitement when walk up to the package wondering what it could possibly contain. It's even nicer when you look at the return label and discover that it is not junk, but something you could truly enjoy. I came home to this, opened the box and then less than 15 minutes later I got an email from Alpha Wolf telling me that they forgot to give me a heads up that a package was coming. I appreciate their oversite because it perked up my day a bit.

I wish it wasn't my job to pay close attention to beverages. I put these in the fridge to get cold, and when I finally cracked one open it was wonderful. It tasted fruity and real. There were some other flavors in there as well, but it was all pleasant and it seemed to all make sense. I have never had mango mixed with an antioxidant rich fruit before and now I don't know how no one ever paired them up before. They complement each other perfectly. After a few wonderful sips in when the troubles began. I looked at the ingredients list. Right there in the #2 position was erythritol. Up until that point I had no inkling at all that any zero calorie sweeteners were being used in here at all. After reading that I took another sip and it was painfully obvious. I'm taking full blame on this one. It's not on Alpha Wolf. If they can make a product that uses erythritol and stevia and not have me notice it instantly they have created something great. I'm chalking it up to my brain searching out the flavor once I knew it was in there. This is a wonderfully fruity beverage that will do it's best to help you achieve some clarity in this horrible world in which we live.

Summer is upon us and along with disgustingly hot sticky days it also means that companies are rolling out their new summer lines. To celebrate the season Monster has released this new flavor in their “Juice” line.

From the smell of this I expected it to be a similar super syrupy mess as the Arizona mango beverage. Luckily it was not. In fact, it is decidedly not syrupy and also not super mango flavored. It has more of a general tropical taste, which makes sense seeing as it has guava, grape, apple, pineapple, lemon, apricot, orange, peach, and passionfruit along with mango juice in it. In fact it is 16% juice, and I'm guessing that might be the highest concentration of juice any non-natural energy drink has to offer. This hodgepodge of purees, juices, and syrups is quite a delight on hot summer days when you need a little kick in the pants in order to not take an afternoon nap in the shade. I don't really get what the Day of the Dead motif has to do with the drink or the time of year, but maybe I'm missing something. I do really like the blue of the can though. It's as bright as the flavor.

I started off thinking these Mati drinks weren't very good. I blamed it on thinking that it was going to be a yerba mate base and not guayusa. Then, knowing what I was getting into better, I thought I enjoyed them a decent amount. Now, after drinking 5 or 6 cans of various flavors with some repeating, I really don't know what I think. I really want to like it, because it's different and healthier, but at the same time there is something a little off with the flavor. Not like spoiled “off,” but just strange that I can't seem to acclimate myself to. As soon as I take my first sip of any can, I'm not really a fan, but then about halfway through I start to “get it” and the enjoyment begins. The problem is that if I were to drink another can the next day it would be the same situation and not instant gratification. I know there are certain consumables that you need to grow into. They are things that you completely dislike when you first try them, but eventually they can become your favorites. People say that about beer, but I don't think that flavor could ever be something I would intentionally want in my mouth. You get the idea though. Will that happen with Mati drinks? Is it something that no matter how many times I drink it I will always have to “work” for the pleasure with each can? I don't know if that is something I want. Definitely not on a regular basis.

I would say this is 60% guayusa 20% orange and 20% lime. At least half of the citrus aspect of this tastes like it comes from the rind. That's not a terrible thing, but something I feel is worth noting. The more I think about the citrus, the more it seems to come through. Maybe it's because I'm nearing the end of the can. Maybe it's there because I'm looking for it. These drinks will remain a mystery.

Hydrive has updated their formulas as well as their look and both are for the better. The bottles now look less street corner bodega and more co-op market. I'm not talking trash on the bodegas of the world. I spend way too much time in them and love them. Their coolers just always look like a hodgepodge mess of bottles who themselves have a hodgepodge mess of design work. The new Hydrive designs are very clean looking and I find them more visually appealing. A twelve year old may not.

As for the new reformulation of the flavor it no longer tastes like melted down sugar free candy. In fact, even though it is sweetened with sucralose it doesn't taste overly diet at all. Like the new design work the new taste is also very crisp and clean. It kind of just tastes like flavored water with a hint of sweetness. Well that might be an exaggeration, but you get the idea. It doesn't taste like a diet mess. It's not something I would normally drink, but I enjoyed it enough for what it is; a non-carbonated energy drink that doesn't taste like chemicals, or like an energy drink at all.

This is…€¦weird. By this point I know what I'm getting into with Mati, but this time around, it's still weird. It is still mostly has the guayusa flavor, but the peach mango aspect of it is what makes it so strange. Both fruits are very present, but even though everything about this is natural, they certainly don't taste that way. This is what I would expect sentient robots from the future to think these fruits taste like. Can fruit taste digital? I don't want to say they taste like peach and mango flavored chemicals, more like microchips are telling my android brain that it tastes these flavors. I don't know how it happened since there is no garbage in here. It's not a particularly unpleasant, it's just unusual, you know like pop stars in the 80s.

A large part of me wants to dedicate my life to science in order to create/discover a zero calorie sweetener that has no real taste, other than that of real sugar. I completely applaud people for watching their calories and realizing that there is far too much sugar in most mass marketed consumables. On the whole we are not a healthy country and I appreciate when companies and consumers step up to try to do something about it. The problem is that the healthier sweeteners that sugar and corn syrup are swapped out for have specific tastes of their own, which just also happen to be very strong. I will happily admit that erythritol and stevia are preferable to other garbage zero calorie sweeteners out there, but they are still overpowering. If they were not included in this beverage it would taste wonderfully like raspberries. You can tell that this is a beverage that would actually taste like raspberries and not some generic fake berry flavor. Unfortunately it is buried under the flavor of the sweeteners.

This could have been incredible tasting, and still healthy if only another sweetener option existed. I'm going to don my lab coat, get out some beakers and get to work. I will not rest until I have an answer that will let this beverage be what it so desperately wants to, and deserves to be! Either that or until it's lunchtime. I'm actually kind of hungry not. I'm going to make a PB sandwich.

This is pretty darn tart, in a good way. A bulk of the flavor comes from a combination of passionfruit and lime juice. The rest of it is the guayusa. If nothing else this is very interesting. It's the type of drink that requires a learning curve. If you go into it blind I would expect that you wouldn't really enjoy it and that it would just taste weird. When you know what you are getting you can start to enjoy it. The more you drink it the more you enjoy it. It is a bit odd drinking something that is passionfruit flavored that is not super sweet, but life goes on and by the time I reached the end of this can I was totally on board, even if I was tentative with the first few sips.

I'm always interested in trying “alternative” energy drinks. I'm not really sure who dubbed them that, but at some point a person or a sentient computer decided that any beverage that was meant to give you energy, but did not contain taurine and a bunch of chemicals wasn't of the norm. I'd like to think that ingesting artificial ingredients would be out of the norm, but who am I. Naturewise tried to remove the stigma by labeling their beverages “Whole Body Vitality Drinks.” They give you a little pep, enhance focus, suppress food cravings (don't we all need that?), and reduce stress. That all sounds like a good deal to me and I will take the change in moniker to have it.

This is sweetened by erythritol, stevia and monk fruit and it has a strong fruity/bubblegum taste that always accompanies the latter of the three. The first time I ever came across monk fruit was in Vemma, and now I always relate anything with it to that weird pyramid scheme energy drink. It's a very specific taste and a strong one at that. In fact it is a contender for the prize of being the strongest flavor in this can. The magic trick that monk fruit plays is that the more you drink of a beverage the less you notice the taste and the other flavors take over.
The flavor of this is supposed to be citrus matcha, which sounds great. The thing is I don't really taste any specific citrus, nor do I get a strong green tea flavor. What I do get is something that, to me, tastes kind of like Juicy Fruit gum. It's actually kind of great, but it's not what I expected. Towards the end of the can I got a bit more tea flavor, and I think the bottom ¼ of it was the peak of the flavor.

I am always pleased when a company can make a beverage that uses zero calorie sweeteners and the don't taste like specific garbage. It's nice to be able to enjoy a beverage and not feel bad for all the calories you just ingested, and that is from someone who has never been on a diet in their life.

I don't know if I will ever get used to non-carbonated energy drinks. Yes, I know the original energy drinks (coffee and tea) were not carbonated and served this world for hundreds of years without people complaining that they needed more. Times have changed though and when I see the word energy listed on a beverage the taste of chemical bubblegum-y citrus flashes across my senses. The thing is that it's not that great of a flavor, we've just become acclimated to it. It's a nice change of pace to have a product that will give you a rush of caffeine and vitamins to help get you through the day that is out of the norm.

This tastes like a plant was bottling some diet black cherry soda, but the line to carbonate it was out of order and also about 1/3 more water got into it than should have. I understand those sound like negative things, but this is better than any black cherry soda I've ever tasted. It also tastes way less diet than I had anticipated since it is sweetened with sucralose. I expected that horrible fake sweetness to punch me right in my uvula, but it turns out it's fairly mild. To such an extent that I believe it could be passed off as “energy flavor.”

Black cherry may not be my flavor of choice, but I have no real complaints about this. It gave me the little boost I needed to get me through my work day and it did it while maintaining a decent taste. What more can you ask for in these times?

Okay, I should probably go back and re-review the cherry version of this. I just read what I wrote and after drinking the tropical version I think I was just being difficult. Pretty much my main issue with the cherry was that I misunderstood what it was and had prepared myself for yerba mate and was shocked when that was not what it was. How can I hold the company responsible for me being a dummy? With this can of tropical I knew what I was getting into and I found it to be a much more enjoyable experience.

Like the can says this is “Healthy Energy.” Most energy drinks are full of chemicals that you are not quite sure how to pronounce. This is juice, water and guayusa leaves. There isn't even any sugar added. All of the sweetness comes from the juice and trust me it does its job. It does have a base guayusa flavor, which can be a bit odd when you're not used to it. Not to worry though because you quickly become acclimated and after a few sips it no longer stands out. There are a handful of fruit juices in here doing the rest of the flavoring, but to me the tropical they speak of seems to be a mixture of lime and passion fruit. It's a combo that I have never had before and I need to have a lot more of.

This is bubbly, sweet, and pleasant tasting. I would enjoy it even if it weren't functional. As it is I also get the added bonus of a bunch of caffeine, antioxidants, and potassium. I feel like I'm winning all over the place. It could also be that the caffeine is hitting me pretty hard.

You only live once, but as it turns out life can be pretty horrible sometimes, especially if you are drinking a beverage such as this. You may be in luck though, because this tastes like it may or not be poison. If I saw a warning on it that said “If ingested call Poison Control.” To me it tastes like carbonated blue Hugs that a neighborhood creep drugged to off the kids on the block. Perhaps there was a mix up and in fact I am consuming windshield wiper fluid? Do you want to know how hard it was to get through this? My friend says it tastes how freshly cleaned toilets smell. Enjoy!

As you may know from reading thirsty Dudes (You don't, because you don't. I mean, why would you?) I have a sensitivity to caffeine and energy drinks can really screw with me. I don't drink them very often because of this. The thing is that I actually kind of like the weird energy drink taste that exists nowhere else in the beverage world. On top of that there are situations where I have to be up until nearly dawn and the chances of me staying awake that late on my own are slim. Friday was one of those nights. I knew I needed some help and figured I might as well cross another drink off the Thirsty Dudes list, so I stood way longer than any human should in front of the beverage cooler checking each of the energy drinks to our master list to see what we hadn't reviewed yet. Shockingly there were very few that we hadn't written about. I'm a fan of citrus, and the green of the can made me think it would be heavier on the lime side of things, so I chose this can of Rockstar Revolt.

This most definitely did not taste like I had anticipated. I had expected a lime version of a classic energy drink. That weird part bubblegum part citrus taste mixed with a whole lot of lime. Instead, this tastes like 7 Up or Sprite with a little something extra in it. That something is kind of like this was made from a powder and it wasn't missed up enough. There isn't an actual gritty texture to this, but it tastes like there should be. I don't understand where that is coming from. There is no trace of the “energy drink taste” that I mentioned earlier, this is its one thing. There is also no real taste of the orange juice that is listed in the ingredietns.

I personally think that lemon lime is the most boring of soda flavors, but I know there are people out there who love it, or it wouldn't be such a staple. This is going to make some people very happy.

Do you ever find yourself wondering why cleaners always seem to be lemon scented? Do you find yourself wishing that you lived in a world where you could clean your counters, floors and woodwork with something that smelled like blueberries? Does your mind then drift and you find yourself contemplating what that delicious smelling cleaning product would taste like? Well lucky for you Amp has the answer for you and it's fairly gross.

First off, blueberries are great. Who hasn't sat down and accidently ate an entire basket in one sitting? Secondly, I also love grapes, especially white grapes. When they are nice and plump at a perfectly ripe phase they are fantastic. This beverage somehow messed up mixing two wonderful tastes together and I blame the sweetener. This doesn't have the typical sucralose flavor to it, but it does something to the other flavors that just ruins them. It starts off with a decent blueberry taste but then it turn to the white grape. The two don't mingle. They simply do no mix together. The thing is at the exact moment of the switch the sucralose does something and it tastes like a cleaner and everything is ruined. This is so close to being good. It makes the jump from roof top to roof top, but just misses and plummets to its death.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think I am finally getting old. I get creaks. I get aches. I fall asleep on the couch while watching movies at night. All of the telltale signs are there. On top of all that I have mentioned it seems to happen with increasing regularity that I need some sort of boost to get me moving in the morning at work. I always assumed that when people talked about needing their morning coffee it was due to their bodies getting used to ingesting caffeine. Now I am realizing that sometimes you just need the push, even if your body is not used to it. I try to not make it a regular thing, but at least once a week I find myself drinking something caffeinated in the morning (usually tea). This is a great alternative though. It's a mixture of guayusa tea and fruit juice that tastes amazing even without added sugar.

In this beverage the fruit juice sits pretty evenly with the tea flavor and that is exactly where I want it to be. It's not sweet, but it's also not bitter. Everything about this falls right in the middle. All of the energy in it comes from the caffeine derived from the guayusa leaf, so it doesn't leave you feeling insane. It's just a gentle push to help you get through the morning. It's just a bonus that it won't leave you with gross coffee breath or unwanted calories from sugar. It's simple, it's delicious and it's just what I want in the morning.

This is…€¦odd. I don't mean that it tastes strange, it's actually very pleasant. The unusual thing about this energy drink is that they went out of their way to make it caffeine free (get it? Unleaded). The little blurb on the can says that it's so people who enjoy the taste of Monster, but who are also sensitive to caffeine can still enjoy it. My question is caffeine really the ingredient that people get all jittery over? I mean I do have a sensitivity (read: I'm not addicted so it serves its intended purpose and doesn't just make me “normal.”) but I feel like it's more the taurine that gets me all crazy. Natural energy drinks don't affect me the same way as Monster and it's brethren do. This is still loaded with B vitamins, niacin, taurine, ginseng and the like, so it still gave me a boost. It seems odd to me and not something there would be a big market for. If it serves its purpose to allow people to get where they need to go, good for it.
Overall it tastes like a slightly diet regular Monster; all sweet like chemical candy. Can we take a moment to acknowledge that energy drinks are the only beverage that diet versions don't taste absolutely disgusting? This is sweetened with sugar as well as sucralose and it doesn't taste like poison at all. The other flavors just mask the diet death taste in all the right ways.

Alternative energy drinks keep popping up more and more. I say alternative because they don't have the same ingredients or taste like Red Bull and its artificial ingredient filled running crew. Sure a lot of these products don't pack the same punch, but do you really need those crazy jitters? I didn't think so.

Komodo takes things a way I have never come across before. They carbonate coconut water and add some caffeine and B vitamins to supply the imbiber with energy. They only use natural ingredients and you can tell by the way it tastes. It's strong on the coconut taste, but I suppose that is what you want when you purchase a coconut energy drink. The flavor does fall a bit on the toasted side rather than the plain old coconut water side of things, but that may be due to the use of stevia as well as cane sugar to keep the calories down. This is something new and interesting and it's decent enough to go back for return purchases.

It's common knowledge at this point (at least amongst us that read comics) that Bill Finger got screwed on getting credit for his work in the DC universe. The man helped create some of the most well-known comic characters of all time, but Bob Kane got the bi-lines. In recent years he has finally started to get the credit he deserves. I can only hope that if his estate is not responsible for these energy drinks that they give some sort of credit, because there is absolutely no way the image on this can is not based on his character The Joker. I'm not a litigious man, but if credit is not being given, perhaps a trip to the courthouse is in order.

As for the taste of this beverage, I can only assume its creation went something like this: Harleen comes over to her boyfriend Joe's apartment after picking up some mangos from the grocery store and plans on making them some smoothies with the orange juice that she saw in his fridge. Upon arriving to the apartment she discovers that the orange juice has actually been sitting in there for several years and the inside of the carton looks like some sort of hate crime. The pipes in the apartment are so gross and rusted that the water comes out tinted brown, and there is no way she is going to consume that. She really wants that smoothie though and the only other liquid Joe has in the house is some generic Red Bull type energy drink. With a shrug and a sigh she pulls out the blender and mixes away. The result is this drink. It has a general energy drink taste underneath a very strong mango flavor that tastes authentic, even though I'm sure there's no way in Gotham that it is.

Redline makes some of the most intense energy drinks I have ever some across. If I drink one it's absolutely guaranteed that I will not come anywhere near sleep for at least 12 hours. It's a blessing and a curse, just like logic. The reason I mention this is that the same creators have concocted this energy drink as well. While it may not have the same intensity it still gives you the shot to the heart that you so desperately want from energy drinks, but that so few deliver.

Bang does not use sugar in their beverages, as the spike in blood sugar that they cause is also one of the things responsible for the energy drink crash that some people experience. Nobody wants to go up, just to fall even further down later. Instead it's sweetened with sucralose; I know, not very game changing. The thing that does make Bang stand out amongst the armies of energy drinks that fill coolers in gas stations all across the planet is their energy blend. They use a mixture of Creatine, CoQ10 and branch chain amino acids as well as the usual caffeine and B vitamins. I'm not totally sure what the difference is chemically, but I can tell you I most definitely got a pick up on my drive home from MI yesterday. Of course it was just in time for traffic to come to a standstill, so I was chock full on energy in an essentially parked car on the highway. How wonderful. It just hit me that since Creatine is included these are probably intended for use when you're working out, you know…€¦not sitting in a car.

This flavor is Star Blast and that may mean that it's supposed to be star fruit flavored, or it may just be a catchy name. Either way it tastes like a slightly diet version of some random Hubba Bubba or Bubblicious gums from the 80s/early 90s. It's very sweet in the fake sugar way, but it's not gross. It really tastes like kind of fruity gum to me, and that's fairly pleasant.

I have no qualms with Bang. In fact I quite enjoyed this. I do have a problem with the way people were driving in Canada yesterday though. There were no accidents. There was no construction. Why were you stopping and starting so much then?

This was…€¦weird. No matter how many times I reminded myself that this was kiwi flavored, every time I took a sip my brain/taste buds colluded and made me expect lime. This is not lime. It was never supposed to be lime. Red Bull does not want me to think lime. The problem is the green can makes me think lime, and that is my problem, not theirs. I mean it's not a huge problem, but it is weird when you expect tangy citrus and you are greeted with a sweet fruit flavor.
To be fair this is probably the most accurate kiwi flavored drink that I have ever tasted. They really nail that quick aftertaste that kiwi gives you. I could actually believe that this was just a kiwi soda and not an energy drink, because the chemical taste is not very strong. I kind of want it there. How strange is that? I complain about that flavor so much, yet when it comes to a Red Bull product, I want it there. Something is clearly wrong with me.