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🔌Review - Monster Energy - Ultra Paradise

Debuted in 2019, Ultra Paradise is yet another of Monster Energy's always growing ultra family of low calorie functional beverages. The can is a striking green with art featuring a volcano, palm trees, and inland river with lovely pacific island theme. 🛒 Price: $17.99/15  - Amazon with 40% subscribe and save coupon ✨Calories: 10 , 16oz. can 🍵 Caffeine: 140mg, slightly less than a cup of coffee 👅 Flavor: The official branding is Kiwi with Green Apple and I get lots of both, though the apple dominates. If you've had the Green Jolly Rancher, this isn't too far from that. There is a little bit of lime towards the finish and the mouthfeel is the customary prickly ultra pop with some effervescence. This is notably the lowest citrus of any Ultra I've had to date, so if the usual isn't your cup of tea this can be your can replacement. 🧪 Ingredients: Around the same as the rest of Monster's Ultra editions. Sweeteners: Erythritol & Sucralose (Standard Ultra ble...
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☕Review - Cometeer - Peak Season - Wake Up Call

Another of Cometeer's in-house brands, Peak Season focuses on coffees for cold-crafted use cases like iced coffees, iced lattes, or cold brews. With this product line, they're looking to maintain crisp clarity, sweetness, and vibrant fruit even when diluted with milk. In the broader coffee industry, "peak season" refers to the cyclical nature of the global coffee harvest. Since coffee cherries are the fruit of a tropical shrub grown across a variety of altitudes and latitudes, they do not ripen simultaneously worldwide. If you are not familiar with Cometeer's process, they use a precision brew system to make a strong coffee concentrate, 400lbs of bean at a time, at roughly 10x final strength that is then flash frozen at -321 degrees Fahrenheit. They typically work with Roasters individually to perfect the settings for each brew.  🌍 Origin: Washed Guatemala, Pulped Ethiopian 🔥 Roast Level:   Medium 🧪 Brew Method: Cometeer Pod, 5oz water added 👅 Flavor:  Soft...

🔌Review - Monster Energy - Ultra Violet

First released back in 2016, this purple retro themed can probably has you thinking "grape" and you'd be right! The can art is vaguely 1970s themed with paisley and kaleidoscope designs. Ultra Violet  seeks to combine the traditional citrus tingle and effervescence of the Ultra family with a sweet red grape. How does it hold up? 🛒 Price: $17.99/15  - Amazon with 40% subscribe and save coupon ✨Calories: 10 , 16oz. can 🍵 Caffeine: 140mg, slightly less than a cup of coffee 👅 Flavor: On the tongue, it is a lot of what you might expect from a Monster Ultra family member. The grape definitely takes a backseat and hits after the initial tangerine and grapefruit citrus tingle. It is reasonably bubbly but the conflicting flavors mute out some of the cleanliness of the experience. Most other grape beverages are sugary and syrupy, providing more of an illusion of body/thickness, which makes this seem unexpectedly lighter, a playful prickle with a purple fruit undertone. 🧪 Ingr...

Tinto De Verano - Better than Sangria?

  Pretty much everyone has heard of Sangria, the extra sweet wine and chopped fruit combo beverage, but it seems that few are familiar with the more balanced an infinitely crushable alternative, Tinto de Verano . I had the pleasure of attending some friends' wedding in Spain recently and my group fell in love with the drink, it's name meaning the "Red Wine of Summer". What is it and is it better than Sangria? What is Tinto de Verano? Tinto de Verano made of equal parts table red wine and soda, often a semi-sweet lemon flavored variety. The traditional soda brand, Sandevid, is very lightly sweetened which results in the combined beverage being relatively low calorie. It is often served over ice with a slice or lemon or orange as a garnish. A 1.5L bottle of Tinto De Verano can be found at most grocery stores in Spain for less than two euros. I drank a full bottle in one afternoon and felt neither tipsy nor over-sugared. The invention of the drink is commonly credited to...

🔌Review - Phorm Energy - Orange Fury

An new energy drink powerhouse, Phorm Energy is a partnership between 1st Phorm Nutrition, UFC's Dana White, and beer giant Anheuser-Busch. The brand focuses on a patriotic and blue-collar segment with slogans like "We do the work". 1st Phorm performs extensive product testing for an energy drink brand and all Phorm products are produced only in facilities that are FDA inspected, SQF Level-3 certified, & cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practices) compliant. Phorm is made and packaged in St. Louis Missouri from a global ingredient base. 🛒 Price: $1 at Kroger, typically $2-3 per can in most formats. Available in 12 oz can 4-packs and 16oz. singles or 12 packs.  ✨Calories: 15 , 16oz. can 🍵 Caffeine: 200mg, on par with Celsius (little less per volume), naturally sourced from green tea extract. The 12oz. format has 150mg of caffeine. 👅 Flavor: A relatively thick and indulgent soft orange with some light tangerine that stops short of a bite and subsides into a candy a...