Bulldog

What a nice little Red Bull clone this is. Sweet, syrupy and generally very pleasant to drink. According to the can, the brand has won the accolade of “The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise: International Trade” a number of years in a row. Even though the award was for the product’s business practises as opposed to the product itself, I’m giving it the 2013 award for “The Fizzy Wake-Up Awards best Red Bull Clone 2013”.

Planet Energy

Cheap tasting, watery, sour, pretty much all the things I find boring and unoriginal in a typical Red Bull clone. It does have a very slight aniseed taste to it which makes it bearable, but overall I wouldn’t bother again.

Go Fast! Energy Shot

Bitter, but then that’s what you usually expect from an energy shot. Sadly it tastes nothing like its canned brother, but it does wake you up pretty quick.

Black Sun

When the can described the product as pineapple flavoured, I was expecting a sharp and sour kick. I was surprised! This drink tasted amazing. They’ve managed to create a sweet pineapple drink which, whilst fruity and refreshing, is not overpoweringly so. Most energy drinks that attempt to sweeten their tropical themed products to avoid the sourness end up with a synthetic flavour – again, this drink avoids that too. This drink is one of my favourites in the ‘trying to taste like a proper fruity drink’ category.

B52

Awesome name! Disappointing execution 🙁 If you’re going to name your energy drink after a massive bomber, you should at least go to the effort of altering the flavour slightly. It seems like they’ve developed a great design and concept, then filled the can full of “Mixture A: Generic Energy Drink”. Nearly there guys…

Black Energy Zero Sugar

Usually you can taste the sweeteners in a low calorie energy drink especially when compared to its full fat cousin. This time, they’ve done an excellent job in making a zero sugar version taste just like the original. Other than that, I’ll refer you to the review of the original Black Energy because the drink is pretty much identical, including the Mike Tyson endorsement.

Go Splash: Energy Lightning Red

This is an unusual product. It’s a concentrated product which you add to water. The bottle contains 48ml of ‘energy squash’, and you are supposed to add 0.8ml of product to every 100ml of water, so per 100ml you only get 20mg of caffeine. But, the bottle has enough juice in it to supply 6 litres of water with caffeinated goodness – that’s 24 cans of Red Bull in a liquid comparison, or about 16 cans if comparing caffeine content. In other words, be careful to water it down enough or you could end up with serious jitters.

In reality though, what you end up with is quite a watery tasting drink. I experimented with different concentrations but you’re never really too sure how much to put in. The directions say 1 squirt per 200ml, but how big is a squirt? I ended up with about 3 medium squirts in 200ml of water just to get a drink that didn’t taste like manky water, but even at that concentration it tasted more like watered down flat generic energy drink. A good idea, but needs more work.

Here’s a tip – don’t use water! I made an acceptable drink by squirting a decent amount in to a glass first, then pouring in Sprite afterwards to make a fizzy and sweet mix-up. Much better than mixing it with water.

Strike Energy

I was expecting something different from Barr, the group famous for distributing Irn Bru. It sadly wasn’t that different, but I’m reluctant to put it in the same clone category as so many others. It definitely has the familiar Energy Drink (c) taste, but it’s more fruity, more refreshing, and less chemical than the clones generally are. Maybe I was in the right mood, but I enjoyed it. And it was only 49p for a 330ml can. With a regular can size like that, it doesn’t immediately jump out as being an energy drink – the big word ‘Energy’ on the side of the can does help give the fact away though.

Evolve

Too sweet, metallic tasting, and leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. I can’t recommend this brand unfortunately – it’s just a bad Red Bull clone and as it’s supplied in a large can, there’s also a lot of it to get through. Too sickly to be enjoyable.