Rockstar Punched Fruit Punch

Nice at first, but the taste got tiring quickly. In fact, the aftertaste hung around for the rest of the day. It’s not refreshing, but sickly and sweet, and I can’t quite put my finger on what the taste reminded me of.

Lucozade Revive – Lemongrass & Ginger

Mmmmm nice. Lemongrass and Ginger flavoured sparkling water according to the label, and it’s like drinking a Chinese takeaway. That’s not as minging as it sounds because the drink is really refreshing and more-ish. At only 50 calories it also fits in to the diet category of drinks too. Sadly though, the wake-up factor is low, with no caffeine content listed on the label leading me to assume it must be very low. The caffeine actually in the product is naturally sourced from coffee beans but wasn’t enough to give me the required hit. Still, a very nice product and well worth a try.

Rockstar Sugar Free PerfectBerry

The opinion of people surrounding me whilst I drank this was overwhelmingly about the smell. I didn’t notice that, but taste-wise it was highly perfumed! It was quite a synthetic berry flavour and in keeping with Rockstar tradition, very smooth to drink. The can size was smaller than usual at only 355 ml, and the associated caffeine kick was therefore lessened accordingly.

Power Horse

Ultimately, it is just another Red Bull clone. It gains an extra originality point though for its packaging – still weighing in a 250ml, but in a much stouter can than normal, like a normal soft drink can but shorter instead of tall and thin. For 39p though you can’t really go far wrong, and it tasted very nice with none of the usual bitterness or sour aftertaste associated with cheap energy drinks.

UPDATE: A bit of research on this product has shown that it may actually pre-date Red Bull, and therefore be more original than originally thought (?!) Check out its mention on Wikipedia.

Burn Day

Thanks to a temporary France-based contact (someone went on holiday), you’ll be seeing a few French energy drinks on this site over the next few weeks. Burn Day is the first of them. It contains less caffeine than you’d normally expect, but it brands itself as Energie Rafraichissante. And rafraichissante it is indeed. My first opinion of the taste was lemon and strawberries. Checking the ingredients though reveals carrots and blackcurrants… strange, I still reckon it tastes very strongly of strawberries. It gets top marks for originality and taste because it’s lovely, fruity and different.

Hell Sugarfree

As I expected, an improvement on the regular Hell but sadly still not original. It is a Red Bull clone through and through which is a shame considering the great can design and product image. They could have done so much more.

Blue Bear Light

I’m still not sure what it is about sugar-free energy drinks that makes them taste (usually) considerably better than their lard enducing counterparts, but Blue Bear Light follows the same trend. Spar’s own-brand diet energy drink is a nice little Red Bull clone but sadly a tad overpriced in my opinion.

Red Z

A nice Red Bull Clone which doesn’t suffer from any nasty aftertaste, bitterness or sour notes. I’d be interested in trying a sugar-free version of this one which could potentially improve the flavour. Cheaper than Red Bull, but not cheap enough to make it a preferable choice sadly.

Black Tiger

Sadly it’s another Red Bull clone. Sold by Tesco and seemingly imported from Poland, this drink is quite close to Red Bull itself but with a very slightly sour twist. Given that it tastes like a cheap energy drink, the price of a quid seems quite high but given the amount of money they’ve pumped in to the “Eye Of The Tiger” themed advert on their website and the whole Power is Black marketing campaign I’m sure they justify the cost that way. And on the subject of their marketing campaign, I’m wondering if there’s been a Polish mistranslation somewhere because when I first saw Black Tiger, I immediately associated it with the Black Panthers – which is something completely different and unassociated with this energy drink. I’m sure had this drink been around 1960s then it would have made the perfect official drink…