Red Bull Can Energy Drink > Reviews (91)

The past few mornings I've been living off 3 or 4 hours sleep a night, not great, and have been feeling a bit worse for wear, especially when put into a working environment in which we speak to answer phones. So thinking in advance I picked up a can of Red Bull, something I hadn't actually tried before, as a product I knew was going to be needed to help give me a wake up call and having gone through a whole load of energy drinks I thought I might try what seems to be the most talked about one. I've tried isotonic drinks like Powerade, and despite being great for longer term replenishment and energising (often not realising it's helped until too late) they really weren't going to be helpful over the short term and is more about replacing the minerals lost through sweat than just feeling exhausted. Lucozade Energy despite being really nice was also not a really quick acting drink as the glucose took time to get into your system and I needed something that would kick in straight away. Relentless was a drink I refuse to try again after waking up to monkey based conversational interaction with automated messaging service, so Red Bull seemed as good as any.

So Red Bull huh?
Yeah I must have been one of the very few to have never tried the almost overly famous blue and silver canned drink that has been taking the world by storm in recent years. The drink was being sold at a reduced price (not sure exact price however) in B & M and seems to come ridiculously highly rated by people. Although it seems funny the ones that seem to rant and rave about it the most are those with claimed ADD who are in their mid-late teenage years, who naturally don't want to go to bed early and do want to stay in it once their their...funny that. In the past caffine boosts have usually been through pro plus, but sadly I never seem to notice the effect of them (unless I snort them, and snorting a white powder in work is just going to look wrong).

Upon opening the can (which had managed to stay cool for a few hours despite sitting a warm office) there was an immediate release of built up energy and pressure that was inside the can, as if a gasp for air. This was followed by what I'm dubbing “the tissues based colour test” (roll up a bit of anew fresh tissue and use it as a “dipstick” to see the result). The colour test proved that the drink WASN'T red, rather sadly it's a light Orangey-Yellow, more of a blonde bull if you will.

The taste of the drink was most certainly not what I was expecting but was very pleasantly surprised by it, for those that have a sweet tooth they will know all about the blue sour things that look a little bit like a bottle but aren't quite. Well the flavours incredibly similar to them, a sour but yet sweet combination with a taste of fizz, but not the bubbles or kick that you perhaps expect of something with that sort of taste. The drink managed not to have the fizzy anger that so many fizzy drinks seem bestowed with now a days due to the carbonated water that gives things like Coke it's bubbles.

The Bull that is Red is however as sweet as any carbonated drink on the market, though whether that is due to the Caffine, the Taurine or one of the sugars (the drink contains both Glucose and Sucrose) I'm not sure but it makes the drink very morish.

The drinks smoothness was also really unexpected, especially considering just what's in it, I expected a drink full of energy to be fizzy down my neck and making my stomach revolve like a washing machine. The fact was that this was amazingly easy to drink and to keep down, there was no fizz at all, their was just calm. In fact it was only the last mouthful that was even difficult to swallow and this seemed like a problem that would have been solved by shaking the can up before use as it just seemed like things had sank to the bottom.

The can contains a lot of long complicated chemicals that I never noted (as I couldn't be bothered to look them up, and I doubt I'd really want to) with complex names that look like they can't be good things. It also has a list of some of the “effects” of the drink that I have decided to translate.
“Improves Performance”- which surely means “Now you too, can be average in bed”
and
“Improves vigilance”- this ones even simpler “Now you too can be like batman...”or in my case fat man.

The nutritional values for the drink are oddly given in 100ml servings odd as the can contains 250ml
45 Calories
0.0g Protein
11.3g Carbohydrates (10.7g of which are Sugars)
0g Fat

Vitamins
8mg Niacin (44%)
2mg Pantothetic Acid (33%)
2mg Vitamin b6 (100%)
2μg Vitamin B12 (200%)...yes, there is 500% your RDA B12 in a can...

The can also contains 32mg of caffine for every 100ml of the liquid.

Overall a sweet and delightful energy drink, that may not be quite worth it's purchase value at full whack, but at a knock down price I'll probably buy it again. It did what needed to be done and helped keep me awake for 2 hours of answer phones, though I did start yawning, that was more at the tedium than the feeling of being tired.

Note:
The can broke my work pen as I tried to see if my pen would go through it, it did but lost the tip on the act of penetration.