Monster Energy

Least best for last, I guess?

This was still drinkable, but also the sweetest of all three flavours and the most artificial tasting to me. It started more juicy and realistic but the aftertaste was just a little too fake-y and not necessarily in the more fun “peach candy” kind of way. Since I also couldn’t taste the “tea” in this drink I feel like it would be more worthwhile to just drink straight peach juice or mix peach juice with my own steeped tea.

I do get why people like this, though! Like, even when it tasted more artificial it didn’t taste nasty. In fact, of the small handful of other peach flavoured energy drinks I’ve tried this was probably the best one. I’d just personally reach for either of the other flavours over this one…

The few people who I know that really like Monster are big fans of this particular flavour, so perhaps my expectations were too high!? I feel like the Wild Berry flavour is quite spot on because it did have that juicy and slightly tart mixed berry flavour that can only be described as “purple tasting” but it wasn’t anything exactly special either. You know the purple Skittle in the berry flavoured Skittles bag? Kinda like that. In terms of sweetness level too.

As a flavour I enjoyed it (though I wish it was 1/2 as sweet), but as a tea I felt like it was a noticeable decline compared to the Tea + Lemon flavour I’d had just the day before. I expected to taste the black tea like I had with the other one. Also, I really don’t know what’s up with these energy drinks because this one also has like 160+ mg of caffeine in it, but like half an hour after finishing this can all I wanted to do was have a nap…

I’m not at all a big energy drink person, though I’m also not anti-energy drinks either. However, I have to admit that I’ve been curious about Monster’s “Rehab” sub-line since all of the drinks are supposedly tea based. I finally saw them when grocery shopping a few weeks ago, so I picked up all three…

Of the three this was my favourite, as expected. It’s essentially like an Arnold Palmer with a mix of sweet black tea and lemonade. Unsurprisingly it is very sweet. I would put it in the same camp as drinks like Brisk/Nestea. However, I will say I do find this preferable to both the Half & Half Brisk flavour and the classic Nestea (which is lemon-y). I thought I could actually taste a distinct black tea flavour more in this drink than in either aforementioned RTDs. And the lemonade was both bright and slightly sour, in addition to the sweetness.

Now, would I get it again!? Maybe. I’m not going to seek it out the way I do some other RTD flavours but, as long as your expectations are in check, it’s also perfectly fine in a pinch. I will say that there’s like 180mg of caffeine per can (the max you can have in an RTD here in Canada) and I didn’t feel like I felt it AT ALL. I don’t know if that’s good or not. Like, I don’t exactly want a caffeine spike and then crash but I haven’t had an energy drink in a long time and I just expected to have a more noticeable reaction to drinking one…

I don’t know if this is luck or not, but I managed to find another “Dragon Tea” from Monster, so of course I just HAD to try it. I still really hate the forced Chinese style dragon motif on the cans – I mean, white tea and China? Sure. Dragonfruit though?? That’s a stretch, guys…

And leave it to Monster to bring fucking virgins serving tea to Chinese Emperors into their copy writing. That honestly got the biggest eye roll from me.

All of that said, this actually is the best tasting flavour of the three though. It’s sweet and fruity, and more like a lightly tangy dragon fruit flavoured punch than a tea but at least it doesn’t taste like ass or cigarette ash. There was something a little uncomfortably familiar and not entirely normal tasting about it though, and it certainly took me a while to land on WHAT that thing was but eventually it clicked to me that some aspect of this flavour tasted really heavily like some type of lipstick that I’ve owned in the past. Not BAD, but cosmetic for sure…

Still probably preferable to me over something like a coffee if I’m in an energy pinch but otherwise this is a pass from me.

I thought the Green Tea flavour of Monster was bad, but this one is much worse…

It tastes thin and watery, but with a weird sourness to the top of the sip and a finishing note and aftertaste that reminds me too heavily of cigarette ash. Don’t think I can finish this one.

Also, is it weird to anyone else that they chose to STILL use the stereotypical Asian dragon motif even though Yerba Mate isn’t Asian? Or just me?

Saw this while grocery shopping today and couldn’t resist picking it up.

The marketing is just… yikes.

It looks like a very stereotypical Westernized take on something “Asian inspired”. Plus, the other flavour they’re carrying as part of this line up is a yerba mate blend, and it uses the same weird dragon motif. When I looked this up on the Monster website, to add it to Steepster, I did the BIGGEST eye roll because the copy writing for the product description references the tired “Shennong discovered tea with a leaf blew into his cup” myth. Ugh.

Flavour wise, this is unsurprisingly not good. You know when you get “green tea” scented perfumes/body washes and things of that nature? There’s a very specific kind of scent that those products usually have that isn’t really accurate at all the the real flavour of green tea; it’s hard to describe but if you’ve ever smelled one of those products I feel like you probably know EXACTLY what I mean. This tastes like how that fake sweet/floral and cosmetic green tea smells. Like, fake green tea…

It’s actually a LOT more light and refreshing that I would have ever pictured a Monster energy drink to me – and if you’re not a green tea drinker and you’re sort of wanting that idolized commercial green tea type of profile I imagine this could be dangerously chuggable. Especially because so many energy drinks just taste like ass. That was the primary reason I stopped drinking them years ago – they just NEVER tasted good.

I picked up the yerba mate flavour too – so I’m very curious to see how they approached that flavour profile…