Welcome again to FTW’s Beverage of the Week sequence. Right here, we principally chronicle and evaluate beers, however fortunately broaden that scope to any beverage (or meals) that pairs properly with sports activities. Sure, even cookie dough whiskey.

I used to be a little bit afraid of Pink Bull at first. Granted, this was 2002 and I’d simply been recognized with a coronary heart murmur that stored me from working cross nation in faculty (not anyplace good, thoughts you). There was a priority, behind my mind, that the caffeine might brief circuit me, result in palpitations, no matter.

This was, after all, foolish. Pink Bull might have pioneered the power drink market, however it’s not excessively energetic. Its 80 milligrams of caffeine per can feels quaint subsequent to the 300 milligram payloads of rivals like Rockstar or C4, although these are available a bigger serving measurement.

This shifted my concern about Pink Bull elsewhere; to its calorie content material. In my early 20s I traded common Coke for Weight loss program Coke, understanding I not had the metabolism to fireplace down a pound of sugar every day with out spilling excessive of my cargo pants or stretching the boundaries of no matter already-thin Nineteen Eighties-era t-shirt I’d occurred to seek out on the thrift retailer that week. Pink Bull solely had one sugar-free choice for a very long time, and it was within the basic, ground-up SweetTarts taste.

Lastly, there’s rain in that desert. Pink Bull debuted new sugar-free choices this summer time, a standby power drink taste (watermelon) and a brand new twist I haven’t seen earlier than (strawberry apricot). Collectively, they promise a coffee-adjacent jolt with out the disgrace of dropping 4 Splendas right into a cup.

So do these new, fancier Pink Bulls reinvent the style? Or are they the unreal tasting, barely acidic and completely poundable monsters we’ve come to like and admire? Or are they, in actual fact, unhealthy?

Properly, just one option to discover out.

It smells and appears precisely such as you’d anticipate a watermelon power drink; like sweet and neon crimson. There’s clearly worth in having flavors which are true to the supply, however in relation to jump-starting my day with caffeine and taurine I’m not searching for natural backyard flavors. I desire a drink that tastes like somebody blended up a bunch of bitter gummies.

Pink Bull completely crushes it on that metric. The sweetness right here is full bodied regardless of the reliance on sugar substitutes. There’s a delicate acidic tartness that snaps that off earlier than it will get overpowering, leaving you a pleasant steadiness that retains you coming again for extra.

That’s sorta all there’s to it. The carbonation helps improve that steadiness between candy and bitter. It’s precisely what I’d hoped.

Strawberry Apricot: A-

A brand new challenger emerges! Apricot is a really underserved fruit within the beverage enterprise — particularly one which continually tries to make ardour fruit a factor despite the fact that it tastes like outdated rubber.

This additionally smells and pours acquainted — although as a substitute of sweet, that is strawberry Fanta all the way in which. The brilliant pink liquid is each troubling and reassuring, and I gotta hand it to whichever meals scientists dealt with the dyes for this spherical of sugar free drinks. They give the impression of being superior.

The style, just like the odor, is far more strawberry ahead than apricot. However you do get that peach-adjacent taste towards the top, including a pleasant twist on the finish of a easy sip. There’s no mitigating citric acid right here to steadiness issues out, so that you get sweet-on-sweet earlier than there’s a little bit little bit of earthy apricot to spherical issues out.

I drank the watermelon and strawberry apricot back-to-back on a coffee-less morning and actually really feel kinda nice. 160 milligrams of caffeine is my candy spot — sufficient to brighten my eyes, not sufficient to low cost one other power drink or Coke or no matter afterward.

I’m unsure it qualifies as “wings,” however I’m much less drained and never jittery. I simply really feel like I obtained the additional hour of sleep I missed out on after I wakened at 4 am to consider whether or not or not my highschool crush ever preferred me again and I used to be simply too oblivious to note it.

I feel the reply is that she did. I’ll by no means know. Drink Pink Bull.

Would I drink it as a substitute of a Hamm’s?

It is a cross/fail mechanism the place I evaluate no matter I’m consuming to my baseline low cost beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the query to reply is: on a typical day, would I drink Pink Bull’s new sugar free flavors over a chilly can of Hamm’s?

I’d drink it on the way in which to the tailgate to make sure I’m alert for the eight Hamm’s I’m about to drink earlier than UW-Platteville and Wartburg kick off, I can inform you that a lot.