Mountain Dew

The original US Mountain Dew is my favourite drink ever so obviously it’ll get full marks for taste and originality! This can was purchased in a store called Americandy in Cardiff who specialise in imported American produce. It’s sadly not widely available in the UK with the inferior Mountain Dew Energy being the flavour touted over here. Jammed full of high fructose corn syrup and concentrated orange juice, this proper Mountain Dew is possibly the best thing in the world ever apart from chocolate.

The taste is slightly of citrus but not sharp in any way at all and the colour is the trademark fluorescent yellow. It doesn’t have a huge caffeine hit but that’s not what this drink is all about. It’s full of sugar, a bit of caffeine, but mainly it is nice and refreshing especially on a hot day.

Emerge Stimulation Shot

Nice. Quite sweet considering this is an energy shot, which are usually very bitter. It perked me up and didn’t make me feel like I’d just downed a dose of medicine. Sadly I can only find this shot as part of a pack of 4, but it’s not that expensive by comparison with other shots.

Relentless Inferno (Orange)

Does anyone remember being given Calpol as a child? I’m not talking about the original purple liquid, I mean the Calpol for older children. It was orange flavoured and drinking Relentless Inferno immediately reminded me of orange Calpol. That’s no t a bad thing, but it’s the most accurate way I can describe the flavour. It doesn’t have the usual background taste of Relentless at all, it just has a very sweet syrupy orange flavour. It gets quite sickly towards the end of the huge can, and is not ideal as a refreshing drink for a hot day. I’d suggest it is suitable for sipping slowly over a few hours while working away at your coursework or latest project deadline… slow is the key here.

Emerge Light

Like its calorific cousin, Emerge Light is another Red Bull clone. Maybe it was the mood I was in at the time, but I preferred this low calorie version to the full fat. Of course, this now means I need to do a side-by-side taste comparison to be totally sure. Sadly though, there still isn’t much to discuss about this drink as it doesn’t stand out at all from amongst the crowd.

Lucozade Energy Orange

Much better! It’s still a very watered down flavour, but the subtle orange masks the underlying fizzy sugared water taste of the original Lucozade nicely. Quite refreshing and pleasant to drink, but lacking the caffeinated kick of a conventional energy drink. I’d suggest this is suitable for drinking later in the day if you need a short-lived pick-me-up which won’t stop you getting to sleep later that evening.

Monster Ripper

I may stand corrected on this one, but I believe that this drink was Monster’s first attempt at making something a bit different. They’ve combined their energy drink formula with apple, passion fruit, pineapple and guava juice to give it a tropical flavour. Regular readers may already be aware that I’m not a big fan of tropical drinks, but this one is much more pleasant. Maybe it’s because they’ve managed to mask any sharpness to the flavour, it really is a very sweet and fizzy tasting drink.

As energy drinks go, this is quite refreshing and unique. There’s no doubt that it is a Monster drink – it still has that distinct Monsterness about it that sets this brand apart from the rest.

Emerge

A nice Red Bull clone with below average caffeine content. This drink has nothing particularly special about it to discuss, hence me padding out this review with this lump of words. It tastes okay and isn’t too expensive – would pass as a good mixer with vodka.

(Update 2012-02-18): Emerge was recently rebranded and the can now looks more like this. (click on the thumbnail for a larger image)

Lucozade Energy Original

It tastes like sweetened fizzy water. In fact, it is so tasteless that you can actually taste the metallic tang of the carbonated water itself. The caffeine content of this product is pretty low too – it doesn’t even need the High Caffeine Content warning that adorns most energy drinks.

In fact, I can’t really see the point of this product… the low caffeine puts it at the bottom end of the energy pile meaning it relies on the sugar more than anything to give you a kick. The carbonated water means it is not really ideal for sports either – personally I can’t cope with bubbles when I’m running. There are however a wide range of flavours which may improve the taste situation and I’ll try to review as many as I can.

Relentless Devotion (Berry Juiced)

Ribena with a kick. That’s how this drink is best summed up. It’s described as being Apple and Berry flavour and the blackcurrant really stands out. It’s a very potent drink with all the fruit juice giving a powerful sugar rush, and the usual 32mg/100ml caffeine content helps of course.

It’s the first ‘berry’ flavoured drink I’ve tried so far which actually tastes like real fruit and not a synthetic approximation. On that basis it is getting reasonably high marks on originality because it doesn’t taste at all like an energy drink.