Energy Drink - 555 Reviews

Holy burn.

I don't know who or what this is for but man this is hot. This is like, "this is going to hurt later" type hot. This is the hot that you are worried about when you eat Buffalo [slash] hot wings and then feel that "thing" in your stomach. I think ginger is supposed to make your stomach feel better so that might not happen. There is kiwi but it's so low in the mix that you can hardly tell it's there. Like a girl that dresses up for a party that like a thousand other people go to that it's just so congested she's wildly underappreciated. It's a little fruity, don't get me wrong, but I can't really tell that it was specifically kiwi.

You know what it is, though? Hot as balls, man. If this was a review for an eBay purchase, I would say "A+. Would drink again."

In recent times slowly but surely we have seen a rise in the number of cucumber flavored drinks that are on the market. It's nowhere near the amount of pomegranate or acai, but every once in a while a new one will pop up, and every time I get stoked. Cucumber is a wonderful flavor that I find ridiculously refreshing. The thing is that there are two different cucumber flavors, the pleasant “meat” of the vegetable flavor, which is what I usually find ideal, and the slightly dirty taste of the skin, which I still enjoy, but just not as much. I have some friends who hate the second version (I'm looking at you Jay Zubricky). Upon first sip of this I thought to myself, “This is more skin that meat, but I'm okay with it. It tastes pretty fantastic and it doesn't really taste like an energy drink. “ By the time I had taken two more sips my opinion had completely changed and I had had enough of this drink. What went from a slightly dirty, yet pleasant, cucumber flavor suddenly took a drastic turn into the world of diet sugar water that only vaguely tasted like cucumber let alone lime. I knew that they used a mixture of real sugar and sucralose in here to keep the calories low, but at first the fake sugar flavor was nowhere to be found. Suddenly it was all I could taste. I didn't even make it through half the can before I dumped it out on the side of the road. Well, at least it gave me a little bit of pep, even though my taste buds suffered for it.

I'm beat, dude. Worked until 2, home at 2:30, asleep by quarter to 3, up at 6:30. I need a pick-me-up. I've been disappointed by Dunkin' Donuts inability to make a consistent drink. So what do I choose? I guess this Mountain Dew Kickstart from a bodega I rarely go to but needed to take a walk outside.

How is it? It's fine. I don't know to what caliber this is of a juice and an energy drink but it's got caffeine in it so I guess it will eventually do something. It's not bad. It's pretty sweet and very fruity but I think it tastes better than your run-of-the-mill energy drink. I don't know if I specifically taste blueberry or pomegranate but I'm not complaining. With a drink like this, I don't hold them to their word like I would a "real" juice. Sorry. I'm not trying to be offensive. It's like it's a sparkling juice first and everything else just peeks their little heads in and out to say hello.

I don't know if it's "helping" because I'm fading fast but I've made it to 3:30 and wasn't late for work today. Somewhere there is an accomplishment but I'm too tired to see it. Maybe...if I just close my eyes...for just a second.....

When you see that something only has 15% of an ingredient in it that seems kind of laughable. 15% is such a small amount, and one would think that it might not even register much in the way of taste. The thing is that 15% of juice in an energy drink is on the high side of things and somehow it makes all of the difference. Phyzix does not taste like a traditional energy drink, and it actually tastes like juice. This actually tastes more like pomegranate than acai to me, but the two are fairly similar and I'm not complaining. I drank this faster than expected as it didn't taste fake and chemical.

A nice thing about this is that the energy doesn't hit you all at once and give you the jitters. It has a nice pace to it that kept me going for hours. It wasn't as crazy a burst, but I prefer it this way. I mean I'm not taking speed here; I am just looking for a little boost. This is the direction that I would like to see the future of energy drinks heading.

I am not crazy about the name of this company. Purposefully misspelled words was such a 90's thing to do, and I honestly hoped that we were over it. I would expect something called Phyzix to be a Nu-Metal band and not an energy drink. They sound like they should be on a mix along with Korn, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park.

What I am crazy about is the taste of this drink. It tastes like a pina colada with some orange juice in it (maybe a little mango as well). Usually when drinks are labeled as Tropical they are just a general amalgamation of various citrus flavors. This actually tastes like something that should be drunk at a tropical location. It's sweetened with a mixture of crystalline fructose, erythritol and stevia. The cool crispness and normally unmistakable zero calorie sweetener flavors are somehow masked by the tropical flavor and that is a very good thing.

On top of that there is no taurine in here, so it doesn't have that expected chemical energy drink taste. The energy you get from this beverage comes from a blend of guarana, green tea, cha de bugre, ginseng, l-tyrosine, maca and yerba mate. I'm pretty sure that if this was all natural they would boast about it, but I don't see anything that isn't natural in the ingredients. This is a straight up pleasant beverage to sip, and I am willing to overlook their name choice for the quality of the product.

You know what we need? A new poster child for a specific demographic. Not since James Dean have we had a person who identifies a people. No we do. Rob Gronkowski is this generation's James Dean. Like it or not, he embodies all that is today's youth. I bet he wears a backwards baseball hat. I bet he fist bumps no less than fourteen times per day. You know what else? I bet he could beat the living tar out of me on his worst day. Rob Gronkowski could have non-stop diarrhea for a week and still whoop me. Rob Gronkowski could have lost a limb in a bar room brawl, be hopped up on painkillers and wear glasses with wildly poor prescriptions and still knock my block off.

That being said, his drink might be the best Monster I've had. Yeah, it tastes like what fruit would taste like if you wrapped it in quotes and was made exclusively from chemicals but hey, as far as taste is concerned, it's the best that Monster has to offer. Could I drink a whole bottle? No sir or ma'am. Could Rob Gronkowski drink one? Rob Gronkowski probably adds it to his Trix instead of milk. Rob Gronkowski probably wears it as cologne and pulls down more in one night than I have my entire life.

Rob Gronkowski. King among bro-men.

Oh the high hopes I had for this. Mexican mocha? Really? A nice, chocolate cinnamon coffee drink? Well if that's what you expect, you will most certainly be disappointed. It might be coffee, alright. Might. This only has a hint of almost every ingredient but cream. It tastes like creamy sugar with coffee and cinnamon essence. It's strangely thick.

I didn't like it. There I said it. It tastes like a diet drink and is not a diet drink. It hardly tastes like coffee, which I expect out of a coffee drink and the Mexican part of it is so faint that it almost isn't worth mentioned. Do it or don't do it, Starbucks. You can afford to do either. Small, test batches. Amp up the spice and send a can to me. I'd love to review something polarizing and accurate.

As I'm driving through the Swedish countryside after two days of no sleep I have a beautiful body of water to my right all I can think of is "Why am I drinking an energy drink?"

I'm on tour in Europe with Night Birds and I just realized that I 100% was peer pressured into buying this. It looks completely ridiculous and we were all laughing. Next thing I know some Kroner coins are being pressed into my palm, and I was opening the cooler.

Lucky for me it's actually pretty good. It's a citrus Monster that leans heavily on grapefruit. It doesn't have too much of a classic energy drink flavor. Overall it has a pretty light flavor, and it's very pleasant. In addition it has that textured Monster can that I enjoy.

This is apparently from Ireland and "The Doctor" is MotorGP champion Valentine Rossi. I have no idea who that is, but I'm assuming he's a big deal over here.

Let me tell you when you haven't eaten much or slept in days these things hit you hard and fast. Good thing I'll be sitting in a van for a few hours. Thanks peer pressure.

Celsius sent us over a couple of flavors that we have already reviewed. I'm not sure if they are reformulated, or if it's just new packaging, but since it's been about five years since I reviewed the other one, I thought I'd give it another go.

When so much time has passed memories can get a bit hazy. I had a general idea of how this tasted, and reading my old review filled in some gaps. From what I said and what I remember I'm pretty sure they have tweaked the recipe a little. This has a cleaner orange taste and it's not so much an orange soda flavor. It certainly still tastes diet, but I don't mind it as much as I remembered. It's a functional beverage meant to help you burn calories, so of course it's not going to be loaded with real sugar. They seemed to find a way to soften the diet taste a bit, or else I'm just more used to it than I was back then. Either way if you are the sort of person that is drinking Celsius, then you probably have a good idea of what you're getting yourself into.

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ORIGINAL REVIEW:
A couple of friends and I were planning on riding to Niagara Falls on our bikes today. It was close to, if not over, 90 degrees out but we figured we'd be riding next to the river the whole time, so it should be cooler. It was, but it was still pretty hot. Before we left I downed this can of Celsius. I definitely enjoy their sparkling drinks over their teas. They both taste so overly diet (they are weight loss drinks what so I don't expect otherwise) but the bubbles mask it a bit. This tasted like a really cheap diet orange soda that you would find at Aldi or some such discount grocery store. It wasn't the greatest, but for what it is and what it does I can't really expect a gem. I definitely felt an energy burst from it, and I will assume it helped burn calories. So I downed the can pretty fast, let out a humungous burp and hit the pedals.

We made it about halfway through Wheatfield when we decided to stop at a gas station and refill our water bottles. We were sitting outside sipping on some crisp cold water when suddenly my front tire let out all its air. It was loud and it was fast. The bike was laying on the ground for about ten minutes without being touched for ten minutes before it happened. I blame the sun. I really think it got to hot and burst. Stupid sun, you're just fighting dirty because I put on SPF 85 sunscreen!

Sometimes your ladyfriend nicely makes you dinner when you are sick, even when she just had a long day of school/work and is exhausted herself. She grinds up the always great garlic salt mix from Trader Joes to spice it up a bit for you. Not often, but sometimes, in her delirious state she doesn't realize that she left the cap on and goes to add more when she tastes it and it doesn't seem to be doing anything. This time she remembers to take the cap off and an obscene salty mess tumbles into your otherwise delicious meal. You don't want to be rude, or unappreciative, so you eat it, sodium and all. Now it's a week later and you have a can of Salted Caramel Java Monster in front of you and all you can think of is how salty that meal was and if this tastes even a fraction like that, there's no way you will be able to enjoy it. Salt could be ruined forever, and that would be a horrible life to lead. I mean think of all the salsa and guacamole I would miss out on? That's not a life I have any interest in living.

Somehow, like in a dumb sitcom, everything turned out just fine. It wasn't overly salty. In fact it has only the faintest trace of sodium, which is how drinks should be. No one wants a salty drink, unless it's some boozy concoction on a beach, and even then I don't understand it. This has a general canned coffee flavor to it, with some small traces of caramel. There is another flavor that people tend to overdo it with. With a confection that is pretty much just burned sugar, less is usually more. I want hints of it, not a sore jaw from chewing a hunk of it for hours. Luckily there is no trace of the energy drink flavor in here. The idea of it mixed with coffee, is pretty wretched, and Monster seems aware of that, so they keep them separate.

Overall I found myself enjoying this way more than I had anticipated. It's nothing terribly special, but I had overall low expectations and every single one of them were surpassed. Aim low and you'll never miss the mark.

I know a lot of people who say things like, “Well obviously I would prefer organic, but without all of the chemicals, energy drinks just don't work.” Okay maybe no one has ever said that to me, but it's basically the message that comes across. I'm here to day to tell those people that they are very wrong, and I have a restless night to prove it to them. I knew I had to stay up late last night, so around 8PM I drank 2/3 of this can. At 4:30AM I was still tossing and turning for no other reason than I partook in this beverage. That's right, I didn't even consume the entire can and over 8 hours later I couldn't rest no matter what I tried. To be fair I am more sensitive to caffeine than your average person, but that is a ridiculous amount of time for it to still be effecting me. All of its energy comes from green coffee beans and guarana seed extract, butI promise you that these Rockstar Organic energy drinks do work, and you can down them without feeling terrible about putting a bunch of chemicals into your body.

As an added bonus to the effects, this tastes pretty great as well. It may not contain any juice, but it has a nice passion fruit flavor mixed with a general exotic tropical fruit amalgamation. I'm pretty sure there is guava involved in there, but maybe that is me tasting what I want to taste. It doesn't matter if it's in there or not, it's one of the best tasting energy drinks I've ever tasted.

Back to the classic taste of energy drinks where one dumb nerd just throws a package of packs of (American) Smarties into, I don't know, like a generic fruit punch. It's not terrible and it's better than "the old days" of energy drinks. Is it because it's organic? Probably not. It's probably better ingredients so, yeah, in hindsight; it probably is because it's organic. It's not terrible but it's kind of pretty standard tasting. As far as energy drinks go, this does taste "original" in the sense that it tastes like all of the other "original" energy drinks out there.

I can also say that this is better than both of the other versions of Dark Dog's stuff. Jay liked them. Good thing he reviewed them. This is good, though. I enjoyed it and I didn't get "the shakes" which I appreciate because I am trying to work and can't with "the shakes." Keep it original, Dark Dog.

Here we have a company who understands how to do low calorie beverages. Perhaps it's just me but when I'm looking to lower my sugar/calorie intake, just reducing the amount of sweetener is a perfect solution. I don't need a beverage that is “fake sweet.” Sure zero calorie sweeteners can lower the amount of calories until they are non-existent, but they also have a very specific overpowering flavor to them that can ruin nearly any drink that they inhabit. In most cases you can taste the sweetener more than you can taste the actual flavor. Dark Dog still uses cane sugar, in conjunction with coconut sugar, but lowers the quantity to give you an energy drink that has 50 calories from 11g of sugar, yet you can also taste the flavor of the beverage with no distractions.

The caffeine in this drink comes from the trifecta of green tea, yerba mate, and guarana. Unlike the sweeteners used those flavors are very prevalent in the taste. This is essentially a sparkling tea drink with vitamins and a splash of juice added. The combination of elderberry, acerola, cranberry and lemon juice is very minimal and you can only detect hints of it when you take a sip. There is a vague fruitiness floating around the tea flavor.

If this can didn't state that it was only 50 calories I would never guess that it was a low calorie beverage. It still has just enough sweetness without loading you up with buttloads of sugar. Yes, that would be cubic buttloads the only official unit of measurement at Thirsty Dudes.

Allow me to let you in on a little secret; one letter can make a world of a difference. Someone could be threatening to “kill” you, but you won't think it's a big deal because their phone autocorrected to “bill” you. Perhaps you are preparing your loved ones a nice dinner of “Hunan” beef, but they think that you have slaughtered the neighbors and prepared them a “human” feast. Things can go pear shaped fairly easily these days. It is at this point that I must inform you that “mati” and “mate” certainly are not the same thing. So when you open up a can and expect to be getting a nice,, cherry flavored tea; what you actually are getting is cherry flavored guayusa. Sure they both supply you with a decent amount of caffeine, but the tastes are wildly different. What you expect to be a beverage that will have a nice earthy flavor will actually be strangely fruity with no balance. This is fruity and something that falls between bitter and sour. I'm not sure I would really enjoy this even if I wasn't mistaken as to what I was about to imbibe. Even though there is real cherry juice in here, when it mixes with the guayusa it gives it a vaguely medicinal flavor that just doesn't sit right with me.

I have never tried the original Dark Dog energy drink, but I have come across images of it on the internet and I have always found the yellow can with the weird black silhouette of a dog very intriguing. I don't know who that design is marketed towards as it doesn't look EXTREME or classy, but it's always made me want to try it. Okay, so I guess we discovered that it is marketed towards weirdos like me. Unfortunately I've never come across it in a store, so I've yet to try it. The company was nice enough to send us a bunch of samples of their new Organic line, and if these are anything like the original I was right to want to try it.

The design of the cans is definitely more on the classy side of things. It's simple and clean in a way that would appeal to the stereotypical health food yuppie. It still has that strange dog silhouette, but it's smaller and your eyes aren't immediately drawn to it. There is nothing intriguing or offensive about it, and that is probably how a food label should look.

The taste of this is very different than your classic energy drinks. There is absolutely nothing candy-esque about it. It tastes like a slightly bitter blood orange juice with a bit of lemon thrown in. It makes sense because 25% of what is in the can is blood orange juice. It's lightly carbonated, which with the juice makes it taste more like a nice Italian soda rather than an energy drink. The energy aspect of the beverage comes from natural caffeine and seven different vitamins. A lot of the time when energy drinks are like this the effects aren't that strong, but this can has certainly given me a little kick in the pants to get me moving on this sluggish day. It's nothing that will make you twitchy, but it certainly did more for me than a cup of coffee would have. Now I just need to know the story behind that dog. I fear he may haunt my dreams.

Section one: The False Apology
Sorry (not sorry) this is the third coffee drink in a row.

Section two: The Review
Editor Dan and I went to Toronto to see Zombi, a prog/synth band from Pittsburgh that we hadn't seen in over a decade. The show didn't start until 9:30 and it was a two-ish hour drive home. It was a late night and only got later. What do you do? Coffee, right? That's the right thing to do. I thought that coffee plus additional energy would do the trick, which I did since I'm alive to write this review and now sitting in a ditch upside down off the QEW.

Was it an enjoyable experiment? It was "fine." It was strangely smooth. It seems that all of the sweetened coffee drinks from the United States lost all the edge or the bitterness of coffee, lately. Maybe it's canned, sweetened coffee. It all is starting to taste like thinner, melted, coffee iced cream. I don't want that. I don't think that I expected a high quality roast since Rockstar is not a coffee company first, but this seems like they cut a lot of corners and just bought "coffee flavor." This did not taste like an energy drink which I appreciate.

It did its job and that's what's important. I suppose that it was just "OK" was secondary. Strange, but secondary.

Caffeine energy in coffee just wasn't enough. Now we need to pump up the jams by adding more vitamins. One more thing is that we have to add vitamins that no one has ever heard of and are unpronounceable to the human tongue. I don't know about you, friend, but I don't go around saying to myself, "I certainly feel like I need more cyanocobalamin and pyridoxine hydrochloride in my diet."

Vitamins and minerals aside, this is a pretty basic drink. It's really smooth. Like really smooth. It tastes vaguely like coffee and more like a cream you might put in your coffee. It's not bitter like coffee and tastes more like coffee ice cream due to its smoothness. Look, it's not bad but it's no, say, Mr. Brown but what is, right?

I have never had a diet beverage that was passion fruit flavored before. The entire concept seems like an oxymoron since it's such a sweet fruit. It feels like the amount of sugar naturally contained in a single passionfruit would be more than the allotted amount in a drink labeled as diet, or low calorie. I guess this has no real juice in it, so that makes sense. I don't know what dastardly lab tech created an artificial passionfruit flavoring. It seems like something science should not tamper with. It's a perfect fruit and if life were a movie tampering in it would bring upon the end times. I think we are probably safe though as it doesn't have a very strong passionfruit taste. It is also not very diet tasting. I will accept the one if it keeps the other at bay. It's not the best. It's also not the worst. It's just sort of there and it gives you a decent energy burst. A portion of each sale goes to the breast cancer research, so I feel perfectly fine about purchasing this.

A kid I work with doesn't really know what lemonade really tastes like. I don't know how. If you have made it to your twenties, you should know what lemonade tastes like. I asked if he wanted this. He declined. I don't know why. Maybe it was because I told him not to judge all lemonades by this "functional" lemonade. I'm not judging this based off lemonade but just saying that since this is not trying to be "just lemonade," it should not be reviewed as such.

So how is it? It's surprisingly good. Smooth. There is no bite. It's clearly lemonade but is smoother and doesn't have any of that natural sour bite that something derived from lemons would have. It splits sweet duty with Stevia so there is a little bit of that but way down in the mix like when you said your girlfriend could sing backups in your bands recording and you potted her way down in the mix where it's almost negligible whether she is there or not. Sure, she can tell her friends she's on the record and sure she'll get credits in the linear notes but she gave an "old fashioned" to the drummer so she can do whatever she wants because she sucks.

Tommy, you have been drinking far too many energy drinks. I can assure you that they are not improving your gaming skills. Sure, they might help you stay up until the early hours of the morning, but you're a teenage you should have no problem staying up that late anyway. I mean you don't wake up until noon. Fine, I can't handle your whining, you can have some sort of energy drink, but it has to be one of these natural ones and not that chemical swill you and your friends like to down. Also, you have to agree to go outside and have fun with your friends. Go and cause a little trouble, you're young that's what you're supposed to do, not sit in front of the TV all summer. Good, then it's a deal. Here have this can of V8. Don't look at me like that it isn't that gross tomato juice stuff, V8 has expanded their line. This is sweet potato and carrot juice with fruit juice and green tea extract mixed in. Trust me, it tastes fantastic. You don't even notice the juices except for the orange and pineapple. It has some underlying flavor that I can't really place, but it just makes it taste more interesting.

Tommy, the thing about this energy drink is that it won't give you the jitters and will make you actually play your games better with steady hands. See I'm looking out for you. It's just caffiene and B vitamins. It's also on the healthier side because it's 34% juice and it's low in calories. I know you don't care about these things, but I'm your parent and it's my duty to look out for you when it comes to these things. Okay now live up to your end of the deal and go outside. I'm calling Johnny house and if you're there you're grounded mister!