Castle & Cairn

  This lovely pink edition from one of Cometeer's own house brands is designed to show off the competence of their internal roasting capabilities. Bonfire Espresso seeks to maximize versatility, performing similar to a high-viscosity espresso shot while remaining balanced enough for a casual black cup.   If you are not familiar with Cometeer's process, they use a precision brew system to make a strong coffee, 400ish pounds of bean at a time, concentrate at roughly 10x final strength that is then flash frozen at -321 degrees. They typically work with Roasters individually to perfect the settings for each brew.  🌍 Origin:  Blend of Jaen from North Peru and Huila Columbia 🔥 Roast Level:   Dark, they did a great job with this one. It's a very sturdy dark roast and has plenty of the biting flavors that you'd expect from an espresso roast but still retains enough of a fruited aspect to be interesting. 🧪 Brew Method:  Cometeer Pod, 6oz water added, also tr...

With can art depicting raging speakers, skateboards, skulls, and lightning, Monster Energy's Punk Punch is part of the low calorie Ultra lineup and brings with it a fruity flare, semisweet and still with that classic Ultra bend tingle. It's basically a zero-sugar version of the previous "Pacific Punch" offering, a deeper cut favorite of many. Monster rolled out Punk Punch in early 2026 and anecdotally sales seem to be pretty solid. 🛒 Price:  $3.75  - Academy Sports and Outdoors ✨Calories:  10 ,  16oz. can 🍵 Caffeine:  150mg, slightly less than a cup of coffee 👅 Flavor:  About what you'd expect for fruit punch plus a bit of the underlying Ultra Citrus to which we're all accustomed. Pineapple, Orange, Apple, and some sort of red fruit, perhaps cherry or strawberry. It's a little less bright and and has less bite than the standard Ultra, closer to a carbonated Hawaiian punch.  🧪 Ingredients:  Around the same as the rest of Monster's Ultra editio...

Produced by Cascade Hollow Distilling Company in Tullahoma, Tennessee, George Dickel is a Diageo property and this 12-year-old bottled-in-bond has consistently challenged expectations for what 10+ year whisky should cost. This offering as well as a number of high-age single barrels were the brainchild of one Nicole Austin who became the general manager and lead distiller of Cascade Hollow in March 2018, having previously worked in Ireland and in New York as a master blender. Dickel first introduced this offering in 2019 and it quickly amassed some reasonable hardware across multiple spirits competitions. George A. Dickel, a German immigrant, was an successful Nashville merchant when he entered the whisky wholesale business, garnering a reputation for selling some of the smoothest, most mellow spirits in the region. Dickel always spelled whisky without the "e" believing that American brands should strive to the excellence of producers in Scotland. of  When the Cascade Hollow ...

Released earlier this year in 2026, the Kirkland Sparkling Energy Drink lineup features three flavors: Orange, Tropical, and Peach. The style, ingredients, and caffeine content seem to be talking aim directly at recent CPG success, Celsius Energy. It echoes that brands "clean" veneer with no high fructose corn syrup, GMO ingredients, or artificial colorings.  🛒 Price:  $16.99/12 ~$1.42/each - Costco. Celsius is normally around $20 without sales, so figure around 25 cents savings per can vs. full sticker which is around 15% savings. I'm seeing Celsius sales prices that match or are cheaper than the Kirkland pricing which does make me wonder a bit about the relative value of going generic.  ✨Calories:  10 ,  12oz. can 🍵 Caffeine:  200mg, around a third more than a cup of coffee, more than Monster and Red Bull - similar to Celsius. 👅 Flavor:  Very effervescent, I get tons of bubbles - close to Red Bull and more than Celsius. It does have a thinner mout...