Energy Drinks Thread

The thing with coffee (and a lot of other things, tbh) is that you just keep drinking it/trying new varieties until you develop some sort of taste for it? I started drinking it around 15 and i would drink virtually anything and now i'm picky as fuck :')

SOON

I'm worried about what your pee is going to look like.

ILL-ADVISED ENERGY DRINK REVIEWS
SUDDEN DEATH: THE AGENGUEST IMBIBES

Scale ranges from 0 to 10, with 10 being THE DEFINITIVE ENERGY DRINK EXPERIENCE

Having been in totality absorbed by the power of the Schapitalist Schoverlord, I'm dipping my toes into this clusterfuck of energy drinkage. Also, I'm stealing the format from Schaz and by proxy Dini, yay! So let's roll up our sleeves, uncork our nose plugs, and say hello to...

~V LIMITED EDITION X-MEN APOCALYPSE EDITION QUICKSILVER EDITION~

Aside from the ridiculous number of promotions going on here ("Prizes MUTATE every hour!" Jesus fuck, are you gifting me biohazardous samples?), this indigo cauldron of bubbles has the dubious honor of also being filled with fucking glitter, which if anything adds even more credence to the 'Quicksilver is massively gay' theory I've always held in my headcanon with no evidence whatsoever.

Upon interviewing Eli about the provenance of this drink, they raised the excellent point vis-à-vis glitter quoted above, to which I had only the answer that we would have to find out, wouldn't we? Also gleaned from Eli was the info-nugget that this purple concoction is meant to taste like passionfruit. Despite not having ever actually tasted passionfruit in my life, I will do my utmost to uphold this passionfruit assertion right up until it impacts with my tongue, to which I will probably cease to taste anything but passionfruit-signifying fructose flavorings for a week.

When pouring this drink into the proffered glass (a nice double-walled one, designed for drinking tea without having to wear heatproof gloves to hold the goddamn cup, and also basically the only nice glass we own) the glitter became excited as hell, swirling through the drink like a fucking lava lamp. Or like, um, paaaaarticles of quiiiiicksiiiilver, let's pretend we're getting mercury poiiiisooooniiiiing. Maybe it also tastes really fast as well, and will fill me with renewed love and innocence for the X-Men movie franchise (it won't).

In any case, down the hatch it goes.

I fully expect to poop glitter for a week. Is that shit even digestible?

Regrets

The following statements will be live-blogged with that first glittery purple swig inside of my mouth, because I am nothing if not dedicated.

T-minus 30 seconds: Well, it definitely smells like passionfruit flavoring, which I feel is a flavor that should be orange.

7: oh jesus what is this in my mouth?
16: the passionfruit flavor cloys, it's... it's sticking to my mouth, oh god
40: it's still /here/ like some fucking unwanted guest
1:02: it fucking /slithers/ down your throat, and there's this... weird undertaste of bubbly bitter glitter(?) It's like impinging on my senses
1:42 oh wow the sweetness is uh, really setting in. there's like, slime all over my tongue
2:12 it's sort of like... medicine that's been flavored to taste like candy? but the body still knows it's fucking medicine?
2:58 still tasting it
3:20 the glitter is... hypnotic. the glitter is inside me
4:00 i'm still not...sure what i've decided this tastes like... it's not really passionfruit is it
4:39 there's glitter sticking to the bottom of the glass, jesus
5:00 ok that's a good enough benchmark

One second, I suddenly feel the need to put on some assless chaps *removes shirt*

Okay, so postdrink thoughts (I tell a lie, there's still a glass sitting in front of me). Whatever the fuck this tastes like, it's probably not passionfruit. I'm feeling significantly less passionate about anything isn't being snarky about this drink. Also according to Eli, my tongue is positively coated in glitter.

I would also like to point out that the natural carbonation of this purple mess makes the glitter slowly swirl counterclockwise in a little whirlpool vortex of queer, queer shininess. There's fucking taurine in this! AND guarana! AND caffiene! I'm surprised I'm not bouncing off the walls right now, though I suppose that's the intention with making a drink themed off of Quicksilver the Pretty Boy. Wonder what an Apocalypse drink would be like? Blue and chunky? Wow, I think I grossed myself out a little here.

Energy drink is not the best way to describe this concoction. I'd rather describe it as a conveyor of loathsome, glittery slime from cup to mouth, like some kind of biologically active science fiction maintenance goop. On the whole though, it doesn't actually taste so bad. Kind of like biting into a pineapple, actually. A passionfruit-flavored pineapple, run through a blender with some various energy compounds and left to dry(?) in the sun. Left for some reason in the sun, anyway, in order to ferment and mature the flavors to the point of unpleasant tangibility. It almost feels like I could fucking chew the back of my tongue out and glitter would squish out.

8/10, would drink more in order to be more snarky about it

Incredible. You're the real superhero, Agen. Drinking these so that we don't have to.

So, tangentially relevant:

I don't drink energy drinks. It's sort of a thing with me. It all started at one point when I realized that I had never had an energy drink, and it seemed sort of neat at the time to have this streak going. Since then, I've kept up, and it's just been an Ongoing Fact about me that I don't drink energy drinks. I don't have anything against them or anything, it's just... I've got this streak going of 25 years of no energy drinks, so why not try to keep it going?

So anyway, last night I had a weird dream where I dreamt I was drinking an energy drink (some sort of flavoured Monster, I think?) and halfway through I realized, "Wait, this ruins my streak. ...Well, shit!" It felt really kinda shitty, to be honest. I don't know why I'm so attached to this streak of mine?

<DragonFogel> But what's your review of the dream energy drink, we need to know this.
<Pinary> Oh right sorry, hang on

I think it was basically Mountain Dew: Voltage, but Monster and in a can.

10/10 for having a surprising emotional impact for an imagined beverage, 2/10 for originality, 8/10 for being a flavour I enjoy.

I drink regular V but my lovely stepbro is concerned for my health and told me to stop. He's a (recovering) stoner so he knows his stuff.

okay, sorry, i don't like reviving dead threads but i think this one's worth it + i have something really good to add to it

yesterday i went grocery shopping with my dad and he saw some energy drinks and got curious and was asking about them (i guess i realized i drink them sometimes?) and so i read the advertised ingredients on a can of NOS to him

you know, the stuff like taurine and guarana, the stuff that apparently gives you the energy

and then he winced and said "that's chemically similar to methamphetamine"

that's it that's the story

Tell him that hydrogen peroxide is chemically similar to water so they're obviously equivalent substances so he should just replace all his fluids with peroxide

Is your dad the source of all stupid chain emails in the world or does he just read them all?

taurine and gaurana are naturally produced by your body anyway.

and according to a source used by wikipedia, "The amounts of guarana, taurine, and ginseng found in popular energy drinks are far below the amounts expected to deliver either therapeutic benefits or adverse events"

Lord help me for I am back on my Rufous Bull Shit with your favorite Desultory Drink Review Thread

ILL-ADVISED ENERGY DRINK REVIEWS

(as always, the scale ranges from 0 to 10, with 10 being THE DEFINITIVE ENERGY DRINK EXPERIENCE)

Today I'll be disappointing everyone, myself included, with MΦNSTER Energy THE DOCTOR


(I copied the image URL for this and closed the GIS tab four times over before I finally properly pasted it in here instead of ctrl-Ving some other nonsense on the twenty minute saga to write up to this point of the review.)

I dunno about all you fine less-caffeinated readers out there, but I've been sitting at my desk for six hours trying to get through grading of forty first-year students' speeches. My sheer petty outputoutedness (like outrage, but more in line with my comfortable emotional range) at being asked to give comments when "practice the damn thing next time so you're not reading word-by-word off your script and losing points for Eye Contact and Fluency" would have sufficed for 90% of students was making focusing for any duration Many Sorts Of Hell. (For a taster of how I was doing this morning, try parsing the previous sentence. It'S garbage. I just managed to slam the hotkeys for "Inspect Element and Google Chrome told me "Schaz this Element is not a part of a balanced and productive work day." I told Google Chrome to shut up and fat-fingered my way to the Options page instead.)

Score breakdown

Taste (3): Shitty shit shitrus garbage. Designed by a race car driver, or perhaps modelled after his adrenaline-laced racingtime perspiration. Not bad enough to avoid plunging into the Unforgettable Geological Feature Of Who Gives A Fuck Actually. 1 point.

Productivity (2): This morning, I needed about four passes to actually get through a 90-degrees-off-upright video and make comments in each category. With THE DOCTOR's ministrations I'm able to get through each speech with only two views, and I managed to write all that bullshit up top. Handwriting on comments is not appreciably worse than it was in the morning, which is a moot point cuz Stand-of-Fish-Sensei is not going to bother criticizing me for my abysmal penmanship at this stage of my soon-to-be-concluded job. 2 points.

Other senses (3): I was initially drawn to this thing for the packaging, thinking it was some kind of Nintendo-ish collab. I presumably got to thinking The Doctor was Doctor Mario? ????? Whatever essence of Notable Racecar Man went into this thing, the actual Good Shit clearly went into the guy's logo suite. I guess it's like this stuff will keep you up all day and night??????
The yellow "background" of the can is textured like a lemon peel if all its pits were inverted, which flavorwise makes a fucked up amount of sense actually. The untextured "normal" parts of the can are almost offensively smooth in comparison. Trying it out in both hands I think this is a can for right-handed people who drink stuff with their off-hand, it feels nicer in my left hand? Smdh. 2 points.

Volume (2): Yyyes? On a quantity-to-quality-of-experience ratio though I think my students' speeches still win in this category. 2 points.


Total Points and General Comments: It's half an hour from socially-frowned-upon Official Qutting Time and forty-five minutes from Sohcially Hacceptable Hollying Hout Hour (the h's are silent). I don't give enough of a shit about this beverage to to dedicate commentary to it, but apparently give enough to give a commentary about the value of doing commentary for it.

I still have a bottle of V Quicksilver in the fridge, hopefully I can feed that to Mirdini this coming week

Final score: 7/10

Next week, we'll be sampling the ultimate energy drink: Human Blood! The very life force of our species, this is packed full of energy. Stay tuned!

I thought it was Doctor Mario too. It's Official Licensed Super Mario World Font and everything.

That would make more sense if half of the can were red or blue.

I have an intense hatred for Lift Plus.
Like, i have never drunk gravel.
But if gravel was a liquid and it was mixed with Caffeine it would be this monstrosity of a liquid.

However, its super cheap.
i rate it a D/10

Welcome back to:

THE DEFINITiVE ENERGY DRiNK EXP:erEIEN CE

Now re-featuring V energy drink: but in the new BLING EDITION



"You can't buy success but now you can buy what it tastes like"

-actual quote on can

Why did I decide to inflict this on myself without any forewarning? Because 1) I hate myself and 2) I didn't, I had Eli try this first:

It tastes like some kind of honey wine concoction mixed with I don't know what

And here's what it looks like in the glass (extra slice of lime for freshness)



In the words of hydraulicpresschannel: AND HERE WE GO





---

Maybe it's my lack of functioning smell sensors, but this drink was actually not that bad! The expected aftertaste of guarana and taurine slimily coating the back of my tongue before crawling its reluctant way down my throat was tempered a lot by the honey overtones, and the usually toxic citrus flavor of V was nicely countered by a sweet, all-rounded bubble sensation. Seems like they might have overcarbonated the batch to make it taste more like champagne? There's no bitter wine taste but there's a hint of grape, which I think Eli spotted before me. The slice of lime actually helped a lot by adding a bitter zest to the overly sweet energy drink as a whole.

More discussion on whether it actually gives you energy in a bit, but the screen is slowly starting to lose focus around the edges so I think there might be more to this 500ml(!) can than I was expecting. The two coffees beforehand didn't help either.

---

Final rating:

2/10 for the Definitive Energy Drink Experience by being actually halfway decent to drink

---

Update: WREN DRINKS

I don't know how well this is going to go, I can't even describe the smell
nnnnnnnnn
It's so sickly sweet and so sour at the same time
I feel like Dave just played a prank on me

I love you but you torment me

after spitting into the toilet: the aftertaste is cough medicine

it's pretty good for something you have to be coerced into drinking

cass added: its pretty good, but i wouldn't drink it voluntarily

Hey squad! What's a wondrous chimera of non-traditionally-chimeric parts to do when they hit up a midnight screening of star wars, woke up at Reasonable O'Clock in the morning to go get a haircut, then wants to either embrace death or get a big ol chunk of their Teacher's College application done that afternoon?



Cutting my teeth on this pillar of folly is what!!!!

ILL-ADVISED ENERGY DRINK REVIEWS

(where we rank these rank dranks from 1 to 10, 10 being THE DEFINITIVE ENERGY DRINK EXPERIENCE™)

I don't know what the actual title of this energy drink is at this point so take the following phrases and put them in whatever order sounds nice:

DOUBLE HIT

GUARANA ENERGY DRINK

V®

LIMITED EDITION FLAVOR

Containing a respectable 76% of my daily sugar intake in a sturdy half-liter can, tastes like sucking on a pencil in deep contemplation except the pencil was for some godforsaken reason designed to taste good. While still tasting like pencil. It's not even as much of a taste sensation compared to other V flavors like The Blue One and The Black One, which have a miasma-like air of mystery in their aromas and aftertaste, and by mystery I mean depressing noir film where you know from the start the good guys all come out dead or worse and justice is most certainly not served. My mouth is a grim port, flush with dirty deals and the proverbial red carpet to the town crime rolling into the metropolis of my meat chassis. It's the city that doesn't sleep enough.

Actually I think there's a hint of passionfruit in there. Or feijoa, if feijoa didn't have a smell (which totally negates the point of feijoa).

It's gotten me through re-entry into no less than four different websites I haven't signed into in several years in the quest to get all my deets lined up for enrollment. I no longer fear making phone calls, or heed the insistent voice of self-doubt who reckons my credentials will be found lacking and why am I bothering with all this anyway. That voice is taking a nice nap at the bottom of a guarana-laced river. The city keeps turning and my eyes keep rolling at this metaphor I'm dragging out in lieu of answering the essay prompt "Why do you want to be a teacher and what makes you a successful candidate?"

This can is a candy-date. With myself from a darker time, sickly-sticky rivulets of hair running down her sides and my tongue and hidden modestly elsewhen in a comicbook-panelled shell.


Much like all these action lines, I have no idea where this narrative is going

I'm going to leave the rating for this drink Unresolved for the time being; I'll judge it based on how many of the 1600 words I've gotta knock out by tomorrow for assorted essay questions look like complete crap garbage ten minutes after I've submitted them.

Final rating: ?/1600

Hot on the heels of Schazer's latest inspiring report, here's SeaWyrm grabbing the mic to present his own very first installment in

ILL-ADVISED ENERGY DRINK REVIEWS

What I have for you today, coming to us all the way from my very own hometown of Denver, Colorado, is:

[reflective=1000000]Bing Crisp[/reflective]

Made with apple AND cherry juice, for twice the juiceness. Let's decant a can and see how it looks:

*KA-chkkk!*

SpoilerShow

(Real apple provided for reference.)

Colored a charming shade of Traditional Champagne Gold tinted with Standing Chemical Waste Red, this beverage entices the viewer to consider the benefits of sipping gently from a puddle on the ground in some abandoned industrial park. Just like a real apple, the drink is highly carbonated.

As every true conoisseur knows, our next stop after inspecting the visuals should always be the Nutrition Facts™ and "ingredient" list, so let's take a gander and see what we find:
Thanks to the demon-magic that is sucralose, this entire can is a mere 30 calories + 8 grams of sugar. 8 grams of sugar? What a cop-out! Gonna have to dock it some points just for that. Besides, sucralose is for chumps. (Everyone knows erythritol is where it's at.)
Weirdly enough, Bing Crisp also boasts 100% vitamin C, alongside a couple of other vitamins, which arguably means it's... actually sort of healthy in a way? Blasphemy!

But how does it taste?

*sip*

The first impression is that I've taken a sip of good old-fashioned apple juice. There's a vague and familiar sensation of smoothness, wetness, thin froth, and sugary acidity. But then, just when I expect to taste the actual apple juice flavor, nothing happens.
A moment later, I'm caught totally off-guard by the sudden taste of "apples", which is to say the taste of batteries, but watered-down. There is also a hint of "cherries" tuned way low in the mix - just present enough so you can find it if you're looking for it, like the sports team mascot that followed your car home after the game and now lurks somewhere in the bushes behind your back porch.
Don't get me wrong, both fruit flavors are in the beverage for real, but presenting as their punkest selves: They refuse to be a part of your corrupt system and are outta here at their earliest convenience. Meanwhile, the gutters run thick with the sharp, gritty tang of "energy"-themed food-adjacent chemicals. By the time the fluid reaches the back of your throat, the facade of fruit juice has been ripped well asunder, and the acid-scarred visage of the creature stands revealed. Or to put it another way, the fruit and energy drink flavors mix about as well as the metaphors in this paragraph.

Aftertaste, on a lighter note, is minimal, and mostly just tastes of lingering, semi-artificial sweetness.

Okay, I have to admit, this stuff actually isn't so bad. If you don't pay too much attention to it, it's quite drinkable. Given my lamentable dietary choices, it's also currently the main thing standing between me and scurvy, so that's nice.

At 100mg caffeine, it's energizing without being overwhelming - a good morning pep-up. I like to drink it alongside my breakfast cereal.

RATING: 4/10 - IT CAN'T HIDE ITS TRUE NATURE, BUT IT TRIES VERY HARD

Final thought:
Is it just me, or is there something horribly perverse about making a cherry-themed beverage, and then making it taste like apples? They should get their story straight, is all I'm sayin'.

I found a gross looking pop and decided it was time for

ILL-ADVISED ENERGY DRINK REVIEWS

Guest Starring Reyweld

SpoilerShow

As I pour Barq’s Cream Soda into my fancy mug, a nice 5 centimeters (2 inches) of foam rise up and dissipate, escaping the capture of my readied camera. The elusive drink’s colour has also presumably vanished during the manufacturing process, leaving a colourless fluid that makes me feel that Barq didn’t even bother disguising the nasty syrup he created.

As the soda passes my lips and onto my tongue, my first thought is “this is wrong”. It doesn’t taste like cream soda, but I can’t quite place it. Another sip. Oh god.

It’s mixed berry yogurt.

My head is pounding after I take my first substantial gulp, and I wonder why I’m putting this fluid into my body. Despite not being a true Energy Drink per se, it’s 10:00 pm and I can feel the caffeine course through my buzzing tissues.

I’m about a third done when I get that tingling down my body, the sudden wave of sensation that sweeps from the bottom of your neck to the small of your back and makes you want to shiver. My legs have started to sweat a little despite being in a cool room and my right leg twitches twice, antsy to use up the forbidden energy it has been bestowed. I have always liked fruit-on-the-bottom better than the stirred yogurts this drink evokes.

Two more consecutive gulps and I don’t get the point. It’s not very fizzy, it’s not very sugary, it doesn’t even taste like cream soda. I take another small sip and swish it around in my mouth, trying to unlock its secrets. My mouth feels oddly dry.

My next sip unlocks another flavour layer--it tastes similar to children’s toothpaste. The kind that tastes sugary nasty (versus all-business mint) and teaches kids not to eat toothpaste while bearing the face of some cartoon creep or the yellow sponge himself. My eyes barely water but I blink it away as I shiver. I am not cold.

I think I’m beginning to understand why the drink was made colourless. I feel that, if coloured pink, it would have just tasted like pink. In grade 9, I was the subject of a psycology experiment where the “researchers” gave you four unknown samples of pop that you would later have to identify. They tasted, in order, like cola, root beer, orange soda, and another dark pop. The thing is, we learned later that the “orange soda” was actually water with food colouring and carbonation. By colouring the drink pink, they would have washed away the subtle displeasures brought forth by carefully considering the flavours Barq’s Cream Soda has to offer.

I near the end of my drink, a second-to-last tasting leaves my mug with a slurp of drink and my mind with a rush of possibly-a-headache-but-maybe-my-imagination buzz. My body feels another wave of sensation just before I take in the last of it. Maybe, just maybe, that last sip tasted of overripe pears. All of the overpowering sweetness without the gross texture accompanying. I have downed the full 355 milliliters and the bubblegum aftertaste of these three elements combined (yogurt, toothpaste, and pear) make me want to plunge my brain into a basin of fresh water.

RATING: 3/10 - I wouldn’t drink it again even if it was my sole option for hydration while stranded at a full-day family reunion hellscape with distant and vaguely judgemental relatives giving me the stink eye.

...

And yet, I can’t deny that I finished drinking it.

I just drank another. Sugar.

Do it taste good

No...

Oh Here's A good place to Drop A Horror From My Past

Suffering