Still As Life

As with many other products that Coles do their own brand of, Coles have brought out their own energy drink, “Coles Zu Energy”. It is available in two flavours, today I will be reviewing the Sublime flavour. If you are looking for the Ballistic flavour, have a look at my “Coles Zu Ballistic Energy Drink” page.

Coles have really been pushing these drinks, at market day back in week 1 of uni, Coles had a stall setup where they were giving out heaps of cans of both flavours for free. There was no other energy drink company present at market day at all, so Coles pretty much had a free reign.

The Sublime flavour is meant to be a lime flavour similar to the taste of the standard V flavour. However, in my opinion it is far better. The regular V flavour doesn’t sit too well with me, but Coles Zu Energy Sublime is very nice. It doesn’t taste anything like lime, but it is good.

Each can is an average size of 250ml and as you can see from the photo, the colour of it is not that appealing, but it does taste much better than it looks.

They are currently $1.49 a can at Coles.

Coles Zu Sublime Nutritional Information

The label indicates the following per 100ml:

It is recommended on the can not to drink more than 2 per day which is a pretty standard warning.

Coles definitely did something right with this one, it tastes great and has a similar level of energy additives to the more expensive energy drinks. It does seem to sometimes coat your mouth with what I assume is a layer of sugar, I suppose this is something to be expected from a cheaper drink though. It doesn’t always happen, just sometimes, most often when I am eating pizza as well. So it may be something to do with that mix somehow.

Coles Zu Sublime Ratings

Quantity - 250ml
2.5/5

Price - $1.49
4.5/5

Flavour
3/5

Overall
3/5

Popularity: 44% [?]

Rhi and I have been trying a few different, more obscure energy drinks lately instead of the usual Red Bull or V. The reason for this is mainly because Red Bull is so expensive, it costs $10 for a 4 pack of cans, or $4, give or take depending on where you get it, for a bottle. V on the other hand just makes me feel sick these days.

So there you go. Yesterday I decided to try out Rockstar’s Juiced Energy Drink. I couldn’t convince Rhi to give it a go. She’s not a fan of fizzy juice apparently.

As you can see in the photo, the unusually sized 473ml can fits perfectly in my 500ml glass. So one of them is telling lies.

According to their website, Juiced is:

“…a mix of amazing tasting, all natural mango, orange, and passion fruit juices packed with the potent energy blend of Original ROCKSTAR. JUICED is scientifically formulated to provide an incredible energy boost for those who lead active and exhausting lifestyles–from athletes to rock stars. Enjoy this fully refreshing lightly carbonated beverage super chilled.”

The can has much the same blurb on it.

It is based on fruit juice concentrate, and tastes very much like the orange and mango fruit juice concentrates you buy at the supermarket.

It is in my opinion, very nice, especially cold. It’s good to have an energy drink that actually tastes like fruit. Especially, the fruit that matches the colour of the drink.

According to the ingredients, the 50% fruit juice is made up of 23% apple juice concentrate, 23% pear juice concentrate, 2% mango juice concentrate, 1.5% orange juice concentrate, and 0.5% passionfruit juice concentrate. This isn’t a very big surprise since pretty much every fruit juice is mostly apple, despite what flavour its meant to be, and the pear balances out the apple flavour so it isn’t the dominant flavour.

Rockstar Juiced Nutritional Information

The label indicates the following per 100ml:

Most of this is the same sort of things you expect to see on the composition information of all energy drinks, though in varying quantities. There is one I recognised but couldn’t link a purpose to, inositol. It is in other energy drinks as well. I went and looked it up, now that I have, I remember learning about it in science in year 9 or 10.

It’s a type of sugar that is used in cells to form the basis for secondary messengers.

It is recommended on the can not to drink more than 1 per day.

I quite enjoyed this one and found it a refreshing change from some of the other ones that don’t resemble the taste of any fruits I can think of. As I pointed out, it does taste like made up fruit juice concentrate, so if you don’t like the taste of those, then you probably won’t like this. If you do though, then I would bet you find this quite pleasant.

They are currently $2.43 a can at Coles.

Rockstar Juiced Ratings

Quantity - 473ml
4/5

Price - $2.43
3.5/5

Flavour
4/5

Overall
4/5

Popularity: 38% [?]