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.

Locura

Discovered in a small duty-free shop on the main street in Gibraltar, this is another Red Bull clone. It’s nice, just unoriginal. It’s a Spanish drink which I’ve never seen sold anywhere else, but then again I don’t frequent Spain that often. It’s on the sweet side, comparable to the Aldi own-brand in taste.

Euro Shopper Energy Drink Tropical Orange

For only 39p it’s not too bad. More orangy than tropically I’d say, but still a little on the sharp side for my liking. It’s obviously a budget drink and both the can design and taste reflect that, but if you want something different to the normal energy drink taste then you can’t really go too far wrong with this one.

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.

Orange Power Booster

Woah, how much orange flavour can one squeeze in to a drink??!? Lots apparantly. This is the most orangy orange flavoured orange drink ever, and very sweet too. Imagine Tango, but concentrated loads and you’re nearly there. Nice though and despite the average caffeine content, it gave me quite a kick.

Power Booster Sugar Free

Much better (yes, I know I’m biased to sugar free drinks) than the full fat version, but not only due to the sweeteners. It appears to have a different taste to the sugary version –  slightly more sour but not too much. It’s still a Red Bull clone, and a cheap tasting one at that so probably not worth hunting down if you’re in to that.

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.