The local convenience stores are flooded with new SoBe products and there are many deals to give people an incentive to try them. I picked up two of the the SoBe Energize products today from the local Mac's store for $3. The one I am having today is the Lemon Mint flavoured Green Tea for which I have high expectations because I love mint in my drinks.
The first surprise was the amount of liquid in the bottle - it was more than the bottle could handle. The bottle was overfilled because the moment I heard the cracking noise from the seal breaking, my hand was covered in liquid and so was my shirt and a part of my desk. Thanks for the extra green tea SoBe, but I would have been OK without it. Once I cleaned myself up, I had a sip and I said goodbye to my expectations. The green tea is way too sweet. Why is it so sweet? I checked the nutrition facts only to find that per 250 mL, there are 25 g of sugar. Holy crap, the entire bottle is 59.1 g of sugar which is as much as 1.5 cans of Coke. For a green tea beverage this one is not very healthy.
OK, enough about the sweetness, lets continue with the review. You can't really taste the green tea from all the sugar and the lemon taste is subtle, but noticeable. The mint is there, but is killed by the sweetness and there is no bite from it so the beverage is not as refreshing as I expected it to be. There is a weird undertone from the guarana/ginseng combo which I think the makers tried masking with sugar but it didn't do much. Not much else I can say about the taste other than if less sugar was added, the beverage would have been better. I think if the company had started with one of the Korean unsweetened green tea beverages and added mint, the final product would have been a killer...but of course not easily marketed to the local population which likes its sugar and fake green tea.
I think the reason why this product is called Energize is because of the sugar. It is in a sense a source of energy. The guarana/ginseng don't do much and if they did something, it was overshadowed by the sugar boost I got, which died quickly. One flavour down, 3 more to try.
Edit: According to Pepsi's Product Information site, this drink contains 10 mg of caffeine. The given caffeine content is for an 8 oz serving so don't forget to multiply by the correct factor to obtain the content for the entire bottle. In this case the factor is almost 2.5.
Ingredients: water, sugar, natural flavour, citric acid, vitamin c, green tea extract, caramel color, guarana seed extract, rose hips extract, panax ginseng root extract.
Scores:
Cost - $1.99 each or $3 for 2
Taste - 6.2/10
Overall - 6.2/10...too sweet, lacks flavour, the only thing that can be tasted is sugar
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