Hydrive Energy - 12 Reviews

Hydrive has updated their formulas as well as their look and both are for the better. The bottles now look less street corner bodega and more co-op market. I'm not talking trash on the bodegas of the world. I spend way too much time in them and love them. Their coolers just always look like a hodgepodge mess of bottles who themselves have a hodgepodge mess of design work. The new Hydrive designs are very clean looking and I find them more visually appealing. A twelve year old may not.

As for the new reformulation of the flavor it no longer tastes like melted down sugar free candy. In fact, even though it is sweetened with sucralose it doesn't taste overly diet at all. Like the new design work the new taste is also very crisp and clean. It kind of just tastes like flavored water with a hint of sweetness. Well that might be an exaggeration, but you get the idea. It doesn't taste like a diet mess. It's not something I would normally drink, but I enjoyed it enough for what it is; a non-carbonated energy drink that doesn't taste like chemicals, or like an energy drink at all.

I don't know if I will ever get used to non-carbonated energy drinks. Yes, I know the original energy drinks (coffee and tea) were not carbonated and served this world for hundreds of years without people complaining that they needed more. Times have changed though and when I see the word energy listed on a beverage the taste of chemical bubblegum-y citrus flashes across my senses. The thing is that it's not that great of a flavor, we've just become acclimated to it. It's a nice change of pace to have a product that will give you a rush of caffeine and vitamins to help get you through the day that is out of the norm.

This tastes like a plant was bottling some diet black cherry soda, but the line to carbonate it was out of order and also about 1/3 more water got into it than should have. I understand those sound like negative things, but this is better than any black cherry soda I've ever tasted. It also tastes way less diet than I had anticipated since it is sweetened with sucralose. I expected that horrible fake sweetness to punch me right in my uvula, but it turns out it's fairly mild. To such an extent that I believe it could be passed off as “energy flavor.”

Black cherry may not be my flavor of choice, but I have no real complaints about this. It gave me the little boost I needed to get me through my work day and it did it while maintaining a decent taste. What more can you ask for in these times?

Thin and doesn't go well with chocolate. Not a fantastic tagline but a true one. Look, I'm working on a website that sells products to minibars and I've been looking at candy and snacks all day and now I've got a hankering for like every snack known to man. So here I am, snacking my life away and drinking this. I am not reviewing this as a chaser to chocolate but as a fair warning, this is not to be drunk with chocolate.

Alone and by itself, this is fine but on the low end of the spectrum for lemonade. I think they put it in that category because they had to put it somewhere. It's got no pulp, no bite, and if anything, just some sourness to it. It doesn't taste like an energy drink, which is good, but aside from that, not a lot of honey, which is half the name. It kind of smells like bubble tea, which is strange but should be noted. It's got a bit of a crap-drink bite to it but that subsides pretty quickly so I'm only slightly notching it for that.

Now I get back to peanuts, chocolates, candy bars, and the like. It's not the worst site I've worked on but looking at it makes me oh so hungry. OH SO HUNGRY!

Oh you can't drive “double nickels on the dime?” When you say that do you mean that you always drive slower than the 55 mph speed limit, or are you a speed demon, a lead foot?

This is just dumb. What am I even trying to talk about here? Minutemen and Sammy Hagar references? Complete nonsense.

Let's get down to the real business. Hydrive is a diet, uncarbonated energy drink. Some of their other flavors seem to also be hybrids of energy and sports drinks, but there is no mention of electrolytes anywhere on this label, so I'm going to assume this is straight energy. Even if it's not a sports/vitamin supplement beverage, it still tastes like some version of diet vitamin water.

If there was one thing I thought I knew in this world it was that anything diet that was also peach flavored was doomed for failure. Those two components don't interact very well, but in here I don't hate it. I certainly don't love it, because I don't think I could ever love anything that contained sucralose, but I made it through the entire bottle with no complaints. It definitely has that fake peach flavor, but the mango softens it up a bit, and it's not insanely fake sweet. You can tell the fake sugar is there, but it doesn't fully control the flavor, like it does in a lot of drinks.

If you're on a diet you could certainly do a lot worse than this.

Peaches are soft, weak fruits. They've got a fuzzy exterior and are a soft pink color. They're wimps. Cue wild peaches: tough guys with hard exteriors. Emotionless, these guys go into bars, dump popcorn on your head and then hit on your girlfriend. They are notorious for kicking sand at you when you are at the beach. That's the worst kind of bully right there. They do it when you, a human, are asleep. All fruit has their own life. What?! You thought they just hung out on vines and trees all day? Nope. Wrong. When you juice a peach, which is like genocide, but that's an argument all in its own, you get juice. When you juice a wild peach, you get all the piss and vinegar that comes with it in the form of energy.

Hydrive, the foremost hater of wild peaches put this little drink together because they think you would like it and they actually have the ability to bottle up their enemy. If you could, you would. The taste of success is sweet, a little diet, but definitely sharper than a regular peach drink which is as soft as a fresh pup's fur. This doesn't taste like peach too much at all so if you hate peaches like Hydrive hates their crazy relatives, you might still like this.

If those wild peaches didn't pee in the window of CEO of Hydrive's car and put all those framing bags of wild peach poop on his front porch, we wouldn't be able to enjoy this drink. He is the mastermind behind this but they're seriously jerks.

Sure Gatorade replenishes your electrolytes and brings the sodium levels in your body up to par, but what about giving you a little energy for after the big game. You worked hard. You exhausted yourself for the love of the game and the adoration of the fans. Now you are exhausted and you don't even know how you're going to make it to the locker room without passing out. Lucky for you Hydrive has created a sports and energy drink combo. It's non-carbonated which makes it kind of strange. It tastes more like a lemon lime sports drink than an energy drink. Actually it tastes more like Powerade than Gatorade. That makes it lose points. Powerade is gross. What elementary school cafeterias do to pizza is what Powerade did to sports drinks. Not a scene you want to be involved in.

Oh yeah, watch out when you dump this over your coach's head after winning the big game. It is still an energy drink after all, and it will absorb into his skin and cause heart stoppage.

Remember Tommy Lee Jones in Batman? Two Face. This drink is not so much villain as much as it is just two faced. It's half good and half less good. Initially it tastes like a diet Capri Sun or Sunny D. It's got a somewhat gritty, "Hey they put powdered vitamins in here!" taste to it. Then it tastes like Tang. I like Tang. I love quality drinks but part of me loves Tang and ain't nothing wrong with that. Oh, you've got something against Tang? You think because you're an adult you can't like Tang anymore? You would be wrong, good sir.

What is this? A review for Tang? Nope. Not anymore. This drink is like a Gatling gun in your favorite video game with a Gatling gun. Here's how they work. You've got to get it up to speed before the bullets start flying and once it's going, momentum keep it going to when you're done shooting dudes, it's still spinning and you can shoot quickly until it slows down. This drink is like that. You have to drink through the roughness but once you get past it, you can keep sipping and it's good. Once you stop for a minute, you know, so that you're not drinking anymore, you have to re-work yourself back up.

Before I continue I'd just like to state that I have not gone completely beverage crazy this morning and been downing drinks left and right. I'm playing a little bit of catch up, as we like to refer to it down at Initech.

Now that I've cleared that up I'd like to announce that I am completely in love with Triple Berry Smoothies from Orange Julius. I know there are much better smoothies out in the world, but something about the frothiness of their Triple Berry really hits me in the right spot. I've also been conditioned to think of that exact flavor whenever I hear the words triple and berry said back to back.

Now you know where my head was when I opened this drink. Unfortunately Hydrive couldn't live up to that glory, but this is in no way a bad drink. It's a non-carbonated "enhanced water energy drink." Like most energy drinks it tastes like some sort of melted down candy. Not a brand name candy, but some sort that you would buy in the bulk section. What is that company? Brachs? I guess that is a brand name. Oh well. It tastes like a melted down hard candy. I'm okay with that. You should be too.

Hydrive is slowly becoming my favorite non-carbonated energy drink. For being in a market full of carbonated drinks, they really needed to step up the game to stand out. First, the tall slender bottles are not used often. Plus, they are really good to hold while drinking. Secondly, it's only 30 calories a bottle and this is almost 16 oz! Even though this is a low calorie drink, it doesn't have a diet taste to it at all, which is great.

Speaking of taste, for an energy drink, this is awesome! It has no chemical taste to it at all. It's basically like Vitamin Water with a blend of energy giving ingredients. I'm only half the way through the bottle and I can already tell it works. I was yawning before I opened it up but now I'm wide awake and ready to be productive. Since it's not full of sugar and calories, I actually feel good after drinking this.

Let's kick this thing in to high gear! I wish we had a commemorative drink to...commemorate this occasion. What do you have there? HyDrive? What's that, an energy drink? I don't like energy drinks. They taste like someone put fake sugar and a case of Smarties in a can and called it "energy". Fine, I'll try it. Because this is such a momentous occasion, I will try it. Because you are the best man in my wedding, I will try it.

It's not bad. Is that strawberry? Kiwi strawberry, huh? Cool. Got to say, I don't get any kiwi but the strawberry is pretty good. It's got the smallest bit of a diet sting to it, but it's so light that it's not hard to convince myself it's the strawberry.

I don't feel energized but it's only been three minutes. It's pretty good and at only thirty calories per bottle, I'm sure to still fit in this cummerbund. Now where were we? Right. The momentous occasion that is buying a killer 1988 Ford Taurus sedan. Let's kick this thing in to high gear!

Today ended up being pretty glorious. My ladyfriend and I went on a bit of a bike ride. When I got home my roommate informed me that he was going to the 42nd Puerto Rican Greased Pole Festival. I said "Wait....whaaaaaaat?" and jumped back on my bike and rode to downtown-ish. This festival was fairly small, but if I was a meat eater I believe I would have been in heaven. I have to admit all the food looked amazing. Then it began. The Greased Pole Climb. Four teams of five members had to build a human totem pole by climbing up each other on a pole that looked like it had used motor oil slathered all over it. It was downright hysterical. Only one team made it all the way to the top of the telephone pole to grab the prize at the top. Everyone involved was completely covered in grease and I laughed a lot and didn't understand a word the announcer said because it was all in Spanish.

By the time I got back home after all of that I was pretty beat, but we were meeting some friends for dinner, so Natalie and I split this bottle of Hydrive. We both needed a little pick-me-up, but didn't want to get all crazy. What we drank is essentially a Vitamin Water-esque drink with some energy drink style additives. As Neuland pointed out it's strange to have non-carbonated energy drinks. It's even weirder when those words are printed on the bottle. This tasted exactly like grape Popsicles. It's not something I normally look for in a drink, but since it was very hot and humid today, it seemed sort of fitting. This also has aloe vera and acai in it and it's supposed to help speed up recovery time from a night on the town or some such thing. I don't know if that's true, but I bet a bunch of people at that festival could use some of this tomorrow morning.

The world of non-carbonated energy drinks is still new to me. I'm not against them, they're just relatively new to the world and I'm still getting used to them. There have been some amazing ones, like the Monster Rehab, which make me optimistic for Hydrive.

There are a lot of things unique to this drink. For one, it's in a tall plastic bottle, which is uncommon with energy drinks. Plus, it's basically a vitamin...I'm sorry, 'enhanced' water with energy ingredients in it. As for the taste, not bad, but not amazing. The black cherry flavor is strong, and almost has a medicinal quality to it. It doesn't taste like an energy drink, which is always a good thing, but it's a lot heavier than other vitamin waters. This is definitely a good alternative to traditional carbonated energy drinks.