Okay - we all know that energy drinks will pickle your liver, curve your spine and damn your soul to the wretched bowels of hell, where cackling demons will force gallon after gallon of warm Rock Star Juiced down your throat for all eternity. But, all that being said - what’s your poison?
Personally, I think Bawls is pretty darned good (http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/drinks/2818/), but it’s hard to find in stores. When I can’t get that, I think good old Red Bull is actually the least offensive of the bunch - yah, it tastes like liquid sweet tarts, but shrugs I actually like sweet tarts, so that’s not the worst thing in the world. And I think Red Bull is less sickeningly cloying than most of the other stuff on the market.
The closest I get to energy drinks is Code Red Mountain Dew. It’s usually my 4 a.m. drink at work - nine hours down, three to go, and I just don’t know if I’ll make it to 0700 awake.
Bawls is good. It tastes like creme-cicles. My personal favorite now is the passion fruit/mango Rock Star (which ever one comes in the orange can). I’ll get one every once in a while. My old sales job used to feed us these things when we had a big sale and he wanted to keep us on the phones. Besides tasting pretty good and getting you amped, it also turns your piss fluorescent green. It’s pretty neat. I think you have to drink at least 2 cans to get the full effect.
I limit myself to the realm of low-carb or diet energy drinks, so I have less choices than others. Of the diet realm, the best I’ve ever had I can no longer find - it was some pseudo-Eastern thing, apple flavored, with a clever gen-x spelling in the name. Xience, maybe? Sorry, that’s all I can remember at the moment. But it wasn’t cloyingly sweet, unlike most.
I tried Diet Bawls once, and it was interesting, but not overwhelmingly impressive.
Diet Full Throttle is awesome - fruity, and again, not too sweet, but it’s incredibly hard to find. Sobe Lean Diet Energy is tasty, but doesn’t pack much energy punch at all. Most of the time, I’m forced to choose between Diet Rockstar (pretty good), Lo-Carb Monster (which I used to like, but I’m sort of over it now) and a gazillion store brands or off brands which all promise to be something different, and end up being Lo-Carb Monster in a different can again.
It seems most people want their energy drinks to be palatable. For me, Red Bull isn’t a beverage to be imbibed for the sake of taste, it’s a dose of medicine and should taste as such. It was the original, and part of the rush is the mental association I have with its tart flavor. Say what you will about Red Bull’s love-it-or-hate-it taste, but it’s the one that set the standard.
A similar example in my mind is alcohol … aside from a minority of folks, most don’t drink alcohol for the taste, they drink it for the effect it gives. This is why some folks insist on having fruity mixed drinks to disguise the taste. By the same token, companies have laced energy drinks with fruity flavors to disguise the taste and make it more “palatable” than Red Bull. I like the fact that Red Bull is so tart and medicinal … it makes me feel like it’s actually working.
FWIW, I think the idea of a “Sugar Free Energy Drink” is one of the biggest oxymorons I’ve ever heard.
Rockstar Juiced are the best I’ve ever tasted. They actually have real fruit juice inside, no high fructose crap. And they appear to by semi-healthy. Check 'em out here.
I love RedBulls, i love the way they taste i would buy just for the flavor. Rockstars are my 2nd choice but i drink then more often because i get more for my money.
They’re too expensive for me to drink them regularly, but I’m a big fan of Rockstar Juiced. I also enjoyed the Monster Java drinks, as well as their M-80. Diet Rockstar (non-juiced) is significantly less offensive than regular Rockstar. Red Bull is awful to me.
Oddly, I’m kinda sorta hooked on Enviga, I like the peach and berry flavors as opposed to the rather bland green tea. It only tastes slightly red-bullish, and has a grand total of 5 calories, which is awesome.
I also like the sugar-free Bawls, and I also find it hard to obtain.
I keep a stash of two “add your own water” energy drinks: H20 Blast is a packet of powdered drink mix you add to your own half-liter (or so) of water. Tastes a bit like Hawaiian Punch, certainly better than Red Bull; needs a fair amount of shaking to dissolve, though. Umph is an effervescent tablet, like an Alka-Seltzer, that you dissolve in water or whatever else; has a faint citrus flavor that doesn’t clash too badly with tea or fruit juice and is unobjectionable on its own. Both can be ordered from chemicalevolution.com, and H20 Blast is also on Amazon Grocery.
I’m a big fan of Lo-Cal Lost and Lost Five-O. The former is in the same favor neighborhood as Red Bull but seems a little more carbonated and refreshing. Though it’s got the same “energy concentration” as Red Bull in a can twice as big, so beware. Lost Five-O is a yummy OJ-energy drink blend.
