Sucrose - 113 Reviews

This was…€¦weird. No matter how many times I reminded myself that this was kiwi flavored, every time I took a sip my brain/taste buds colluded and made me expect lime. This is not lime. It was never supposed to be lime. Red Bull does not want me to think lime. The problem is the green can makes me think lime, and that is my problem, not theirs. I mean it's not a huge problem, but it is weird when you expect tangy citrus and you are greeted with a sweet fruit flavor.
To be fair this is probably the most accurate kiwi flavored drink that I have ever tasted. They really nail that quick aftertaste that kiwi gives you. I could actually believe that this was just a kiwi soda and not an energy drink, because the chemical taste is not very strong. I kind of want it there. How strange is that? I complain about that flavor so much, yet when it comes to a Red Bull product, I want it there. Something is clearly wrong with me.

As I'm driving through the Swedish countryside after two days of no sleep I have a beautiful body of water to my right all I can think of is "Why am I drinking an energy drink?"

I'm on tour in Europe with Night Birds and I just realized that I 100% was peer pressured into buying this. It looks completely ridiculous and we were all laughing. Next thing I know some Kroner coins are being pressed into my palm, and I was opening the cooler.

Lucky for me it's actually pretty good. It's a citrus Monster that leans heavily on grapefruit. It doesn't have too much of a classic energy drink flavor. Overall it has a pretty light flavor, and it's very pleasant. In addition it has that textured Monster can that I enjoy.

This is apparently from Ireland and "The Doctor" is MotorGP champion Valentine Rossi. I have no idea who that is, but I'm assuming he's a big deal over here.

Let me tell you when you haven't eaten much or slept in days these things hit you hard and fast. Good thing I'll be sitting in a van for a few hours. Thanks peer pressure.

Section one: The False Apology
Sorry (not sorry) this is the third coffee drink in a row.

Section two: The Review
Editor Dan and I went to Toronto to see Zombi, a prog/synth band from Pittsburgh that we hadn't seen in over a decade. The show didn't start until 9:30 and it was a two-ish hour drive home. It was a late night and only got later. What do you do? Coffee, right? That's the right thing to do. I thought that coffee plus additional energy would do the trick, which I did since I'm alive to write this review and now sitting in a ditch upside down off the QEW.

Was it an enjoyable experiment? It was "fine." It was strangely smooth. It seems that all of the sweetened coffee drinks from the United States lost all the edge or the bitterness of coffee, lately. Maybe it's canned, sweetened coffee. It all is starting to taste like thinner, melted, coffee iced cream. I don't want that. I don't think that I expected a high quality roast since Rockstar is not a coffee company first, but this seems like they cut a lot of corners and just bought "coffee flavor." This did not taste like an energy drink which I appreciate.

It did its job and that's what's important. I suppose that it was just "OK" was secondary. Strange, but secondary.

Even though they are never anything special and also not very good in the traditional sense I am a complete sucker for local farm/store brand iced teas. They are generally mostly sugar water with a bit of tea mixed in, but something about them that is incredibly endearing too me. They are so full of sugar that there is no way they are healthy, yet they seem so wholesome. They are a piece of what Americana was to me as a young teenager.

Stewart's output is fairly similar to what a lot of the dairies in PA produce. The name from any of those companies is pretty interchangeable with the contents of the bottle. It's water, sugar and a green tea premix and honey. It tastes like an over-sweetened green tea, Just as you would expect, and just as I wanted it to be.

What we have here is a fairly standard classic energy drink. It seems wrong to call it a classic, but this year marks the 30 year anniversary of Red Bull (even though it didn't become popular until much later). I mean according to Google cars are considered to be classic if they are over 20 years old. By those standards this flavor is an antique. The passing of time is a very strange thing indeed.

If you've had energy drinks you have an idea of how this tastes, and it's a flavor you initially probably did not care for, but if you're like me you grew to love it. There's nothing wrong with making similar products at a lower cost. Save yourself some cash and bypass the bigger brands for a can of this. It tastes the same and gives you the same boost. I mean you can still buy that Red Bull if you want to be a fool.

While Sunny D is fine for children to drink, I fully believe that it is completely unacceptable for adults to consume it. I didn't even realize I had that stance until I found this can of Sunny D X and realized that we had never reviewed the original. You know what, I'm fine with that.

I dreaded drinking this. It is the Dread Pirate Roberts of sparkling beverages. I expected it to be as thick as the original but with bubbles. I don't even know how you can carbonate something so thick, and I guess I never will as this is just slightly thicker than a normal pop. Actually everything I anticipated about this beverage was out the window” it wasn't thick, it isn't really an energy drink (it does have B vitamins in it though), and it didn't taste like the sludge I remember this company putting out.

Take a classic lemon lime soda and add a little bit more lime to it. Okay, now put in a little grapefruit for good measure. Actually you might as well throw in some orange and tangerine as well. Somehow the lemon and lime stay at the top and the rest of the fruits mingle in the background. They are just extras in this made for TV movie. Now add some bubbles and the result is shockingly pretty decent. For some reason it almost has a malt taste to it, which I don't understand, but I don't hate. Actually I kind of enjoy it way more than I feel comfortable admitting. I mean I'm still not going to go back and try the fake juice original version, but this is something I would possibly drink again. It's too bad the can looks so budget though. It looks like a beverage you would find at the Dollar Store.

What do you mean you are exhausted? It's only noon, and you are a 12-year-old on summer vacation; you're not allowed to be tired. I understand it's hot and humid, but back in my day we didn't let a second of this glorious freedom go to waste. Even when it was pouring rain we were out sliding in the mud. Now don't get any muddy ideas, I've already done the laundry and I don't want to have to do another load for your gunky summer clothes. You know what I blame TV and those video games you're always playing. I might just make a house rule that video games can only be played during the winter months in the house; maybe it will be when it's below a certain temperature. I know what you're thinking turning the air conditioner up all the way won't help your cause. We're going by the temperature on the news.

Seriously though, go outside, have adventures, maybe get into a little trouble (a very little trouble). You should be living for these 2.5 months every year. Fine you're tired I get it. You know what, if you mention this to your mother you're grounded for a month, and by that I mean you will be doing all the gardening this summer with no TV, no video games and no cell phone. I know you kids play games on your phones. Okay here it is. I picked a couple of these up at 711. They are a limited edition summer version of Red Bull. I know kids shouldn't be drinking these, but you know what, the memories of an exciting childhood summer are more important than any negative effects this could have.

You know how normal Red Bull tastes like liquid Wonka candy? Well this is a grapefruit version of that. It's like someone took a bottle of Squirt and added that candy element to it. I know that as an adult I'm not supposed to like super sweet things like this, but I absolutely love it. To be honest I have a case of the stuff hidden in the fridge in the garage behind that beer your uncle brought over for the Christmas party that I will never drink, but you probably will sneak when you get a little older. The joke will be on you though, because by then they will be old and gross. Seriously though, son this stuff is great. After you drink this one, ignore everything I said, and never drink another one until you're away at college. For now chug-a-lug apple of my eye and get out there and explore the woods a couple streets over. I heard some kids found an ear over there last week. Think how cool the kids at school would think you were if you found an ear over summer vacation! If they only found one that means there's it's pair just waiting to be found.

I know that Gatorade is meant to be consumed after some sort of physical activity in order to quench your thirst and replace lost electrolytes, but I'd also like to think that the person doing the drinking had burned off enough calories during said activity to counteract the sugar in the drink. These low calorie versions of theirs are borderline undrinkable. The thing that confuses me is that it's not that they taste diet, they just taste gross. This is sweetened with erythritol and Reb A as well as some sucrose. Normally a match up like that is the best you can get with zero calorie sweeteners, but it just tastes wrong here. I blame one of the other ingredients, because it has an aftertaste like I've never experienced. The initial taste is a general citrus flavor that's a tad diet, but that aftertaste just taste the drink on a weird turn and all of the passengers are thrown from the vehicle. It's just ghastly.

Obviously the first thing I am going to mention here is the totally rad container this comes in. It's a can/plastic bottle hybrid that is just really cool for some unknown reason. The only time I've come across this combo before was on some drink in an Asian supermarket. I don't even remember what it was because the taste was forgettable, but the container was rad. In case you can't tell from the picture this is a plastic bottle, shaped similarly to a Red Bull can, but it still has the normal can top. Metal up top plastic on the bottom, like some sort of dumb mullet joke.

Container aside, this tastes pretty much like I expected it to. Like most energy drinks it is flavored like some liquefied Wonka candy. In this case it just happens to be blue SweeTarts. It also tastes like a Slush Puppy. I believe the flavor I'm thinking of is called Bahama Mamma. Due to these two comparisons I would say that if there ever was an energy drink designed to please the taste buds of children, this is it. I'd like to make it clear that I think children have no place drinking energy drinks, and that in the future people are going to start having heart attacks a lot earlier in life because they drank energy drinks all the time when they were in their developmental years, because they had terrible parents. Seriously though, kids would love this. It's too bad they shouldn't be allowed to have it.

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!

Paint then caulk. Paint then caulk. Paint then caulk. That's all Francis was doing. He had just moved into a new house and had to caulk and paint the whole house himself. He had some time off and just wanted to knock it out as soon as he could. Paint then caulk. Such a time consuming process. Paint, wash brushes, caulk. Over and over. He knew he could spice it up a bit so he took a break for lunch and saw a new energy drink that he hadn't had before. SuperSours sounds like something he would have drank as a kid. As an adult with a fresh mortgage, he now looked back fondly at his day of youth filled with just playing with friends until the sun set night after night. Now it was just office work day in and day out. Wearing heavily starched shirts with ties, khakis, and dress shoes every day just to sell office supplies. In hindsight, it was not the life that he ever thought that he would lead.

He took a drink and it took him back to those days. He took another sip and just closed his eyes and reminisced about playing in the pool with friends, playing hockey in the street, and football in people's front yards. It was a sour that was somewhere in between a Warhead and a Jolly Rancher. It was a familiar taste that he hadn't had in years. He took another sip and it seemed more and more childish and less like it was a good idea to buy it. What was he doing? It was an energy drink that didn't taste like an energy drink, which was good, but it was a sour, sour apple drink. That was kids stuff. Why would kids drink an energy drink? Kids are filled with energy. Francis was feeling more like an adult with every sip. He said to himself, "Hey, kids can't fix a sink like me. Kids can't crunch numbers to make deals like me. I was a dumb kid. Now look at me. I've got a great haircut, a semi-babe as a girlfriend, and a sweet new house. Who needs this kid stuff? I'm a friggin' adult!" People looked at him like he was crazy. He slowly got up and walked back to his house. He grabbed the tube of caulk and started again and though to himself, "Oh yeah. This sucks. I wish I was a kid again...again."

Part of having a special drink is to make it special, right? Otherwise it's just a regular drink. There is nothing apparently special with this aside from the bottle, a bottle that only energy drink nerds and computer programmers would give two rips about. It tastes like a grape, Jay says "white grape" Monster. It's not terrible, but it most certainly isn't worth the five dollars I paid for it.

Want to see what we really thought? We thought you would so we made a little video of ourselves. Please to enjoy.

I believe there is a flaw in the basic nature of this beverage. How I see it is that you would want to drink an energy drink prior to doing strenuous activity that would require hydration. Wouldn't you want that extra boost to help you push through whatever it is that you're doing? Does added hydration do anything previous to any sort of workout? I suppose you could sip this while you are in the process of whatever it is that you are doing. Would the energy boost hit you in time though? I certainly don't get it.

Another thing that I don't get is the flavor. Grape has got to be one of the easiest flavors ever (right along side orange), yet they have somehow messed it up with this. What little non-diet/energy flavor that is present almost tastes more berry than grape. Whatever it is, it's not very pleasant. It's certainly doesn't taste good enough to denote a 24oz can.

I'm going to stick to the one serving out of the three that are in this can, and introduce the rest to the drainage system in my house. It has no place in my person.

I got into a bit of an altercation earlier today. Words were said, threats were made and now it's going to be me and Julio fighting it out down at the school yard. I should really learn to watch my mouth. I mean this guy is a professional boxer and he's obviously going to cream me. I picked up this energy drink that he's the spokesperson for in hopes that it would give me some sort of edge in the fight that is likely to be a one sided blood bath.

Well here it goes…€¦ugh…€¦this tastes like Red Bull mixed with kola champagne and a little jigger of cherry mixed in. It's not really any sort of enjoyable to my palate. I love chewing bubble gum, but I don't like drinking anything that tastes like it. It always makes me feel like I'm drinking the concentrated spit of a dozen people what have been chomping on gum for hours. Gross. Along with the regular energy drink ingredients this also has green tea (as an antioxidant) and L-Carnitine (as a fat burner). I don't see how either of those are going to help me when I get down to the elementary school though. What grown adult wants to fight you at a school for young children anyway? That's just weird. I guess I should have not told him “la vaca es mas azul prque los monos bailan en su marmalade.” I never thought it would set him off so much.

ps. That sentence is all that remains in my brain from three years of high school Spanish.

In a world where bigger is deemed as better in almost every regard, it is nice to see a company scaling things down. Monster has created a 5oz beverage that “packs a 16oz punch.” This is essentially the same amount of ingredients that give their larger canned beverages the energy kick that the world so desperately craves these days. They just decreased the other ingredients in the formula. The most appreciated decrease is the amount of sweetener used.

One would imagine that the result of this concentration would be a beverage that was so strong it would taste like you were downing a bottle of toxic chemicals. Monster somehow worked out the kinks and while the flavor is a tad stronger, it basically tastes like the classic, or original Monster flavor with the green packaging. I had expected an intense sludge from this but was pleasantly surprised by what I was presented with. I can assure you that the energy aspect of this certainly worked and it made me feel as crazy and jittery as ever.

Does anyone else have second thoughts about drinking a beverage that pops when you twist off the cap and an eerie smoke pours out of the opening? I feel like I should be wearing a has mat suit with some thick gloves that you can handle uranium with. Essentially it makes me feel like this beverage should not exist outside of some lab somewhere.

Being as I am a scientist, specifically one with a degree in drinkology (no , not like some pretentious mixologist, I had to spend eight years in college to get my degree), I through caution of radioactivity to the wind an dove in head first. By that I mean I took a small tentative sip. I can safely say that this does not taste nuclear, and I have no fear of my pee coming out glowing later.

The strange thing about this beverage is that it is made with real orange juice (it's the second ingredient, but it's only 3% of the whole), yet it still tastes like Tang. Have they ever thought of marketing this as an energy drink for astronauts? I imagine that is exactly what space explorers do not need though. They're stuck up in orbit for months at a time with, what I expect is little to do for a good portion of their days. Why would they want to be all hopped up on energy drinks? I think I would like to sleep through as much as that experience as possible. So yeah, nix that idea.

As part of the recovery line this beverage is meant to give you energy as well as hydrate you. Think of it as Rockstar meets Gatorade with sexy results!!! Wait, that's not right. There is nothing sexy about this. It tastes like Gatorade made a Tang flavor and then they added a bit of an energy compound to it. It doesn't taste too much like chemicals, but it's there around the edges. Actually it's there in a way that makes it taste vaguely diet, even though it's sweetened with sucrose.

On a side note, while I do like the idea that it is in a resealable can, I have to say that about a third of the sips I took resulted in some sort of splash back that got on my clothes. Either they need to work on the design a bit, or I need to learn how to drink properly.

Right off the bat I would like to, like a solid jerk, stay on both sides of this fence. On one side, the one with the greener grass, hotter women, and more delicious hot dogs, this is a good energy drink. It tastes like alright lemonade but that's good because it doesn't taste like uber-sweet energy drinks. It doesn't have that offensive diet taste unless you let it sit there and drop to room temperature. That's when the sucrose rears its ugly head. These are all good with a little asterisk next to it what with it being a diet energy drink.

The other side of the fence filled with gross, wet hot dogs, women with poor teeth and even worse personal hygiene, and dead, dog urine soaked grass, come the bad parts. My gosh I would like these heart palpitations to stop. I ate a full lunch. A big old Greek-ish wrap filled with delicious fixins. Still, about a half hour after I started I'm having strange heartbeats. I thought this would be different because I ate but nope. I felt like I could run up and down the stairs a trillion times or that I should to work off the bad beats my ticker was making.

So there you go. Take your side. If you and your heart can take a punch, you are in luck. If you are sensitive to energy drinks I ask you to stay away and just drink coffee for your jolts.

Dear Energy Drink World,
I know your secret, your big, dark secret about your lineage that you don't want the world to find out about. You know what, I'm going to tell the world, and expose you for what you are. I know who the father of energy drinks is. He was once a boy who found a golden ticket that granted him and his conman grandfather access to the world's greatest candy factory. Once they were inside they tricked the kind, gentle owner/operator of the factory into signing the deed for everything over to them.

At first it was business as usual, making all of the candy the factory always produced, but in secret that boy who was quickly becoming a man performed savage experiments with the candy and added chemicals to them for various results. It wasn't until the original owner of the candy factory passed on that the boy who was now a devious man unleashed his new creations upon the world under various names so it couldn't be traced back to him and his lucrative candy business. He took the world by storm with what he called energy drinks.

You see when he was young he realized that sugar candy made kids go bonkers so he decided to up the ante and add taurine, caffeine and various other ingredients to make a beverage that would be the same to adults, but with greater effects. He started various companies, each of which used a different candy base for the energy chemicals to be added to. They all had similar but unique flavors.

One such company was Icon. For this formula he added the usual suspects of energy infused ingredients to a base that was made primarily of blue raspberry sweet tarts, heavy on the blue aspect of it. The result was very similar to his other companies, but it had a slightly different candy flavor to it, that actually stood out more than was expected. It was essentially a blue raspberry version of his flagship energy company, Red Bull.

Now you see the world knows your secrets, but I fear I am too late. Your drinks have been embraced by society and they consume and enjoy them to such an extent that they won't even care that you bastardized a wholesome candy company. It look like you win this time Charles.

I want to hire a sweet MC and have him say, "This is a 7-11 exclusive" in that voice that they do on mixtapes. You know the one. The arbitrarily placed, out of time, over lyrics, poorly recorded, mostly yelled tagline that someone like Don Cannon would do so you know you can't get it anywhere else and more importantly, partially ruins it so you can't get a decent recording of it without some dude yelling over top of it.

Now that my mixtape fantasies are looming through my head, we can get down to brass tacks. You know what Gatorade tastes like, right? You know what lemonade tastes like, right? You know what strawberries taste like, right? Well, if you can draw a line through all of them, you get this. It's good, not too sweet, but no Gatorade is really too sweet now, is it? It didn't have a sting that one might expect either. It was actually, probably due to the Gatorade core, a pretty smooth drink that I will come to again and again until it's gone.

Since I can't drink for pleasure and I don't play sports, I probably won't get another bottle, but it will certainly make me wish that I could shoot some hoops, toss around the pigskin, slap some pucks, or play soccer. "You forgot Baseball, you stupid idiot!" you say? No. I did not. Most baseball players could smoke and drink and it wouldn't change the game one iota. Only the runners on base deserve Gatorade and since, at max, four people at a time can drink it, it's not really fair to the rest of the players so no one in baseball can drink Gatorade unless it's pre or post game.

All right fellas, it's time to make a batch of our mixed fruit juice. What do we have extra laying around? Okay, we have guavas and red guavas. Well that's not very eclectic. Sure I love guava as much as the next guy, but we already have these cans printed up and they say mixed fruit. If we just go with guava, even though it's two different types, we should really just call it guava juice. So, what else do we have? Tomatoes? Seriously Bonny? Tomatoes aren't a fruit; they are a gross vegetable! What do you mean they are a fruit not a vegetable? You know what I will Google it! Well, would you look at that, tomatoes are officially considered a fruit…€¦ who knew? You're all telling me that you knew they were considered fruit and not a vegetable? You're all a bunch of dirty liars, that's what you are. Anyway it looks like tomatoes are the only other fruit we have, so throw it in with the guavas.

Well that turned out much better than I thought. We may have gone overboard with the sweeteners, but I really didn't want this to taste like V8 at all, and we succeeded with that. People will never know that the other fruit involved is tomato, as no one ever reads ingredients anyways. Taste wise this ended up being a really thick guava juice. Actually, I would say it tastes like sugar water with guava juice mixed in. It's not the finest work that we have done here at Hey Song, but it could have turned out a lot worse with the ingredients we were left to manage with.