Mountain Dew Liberty Brew & DEW-S-A

                  

Products circa: various years after 2016

Liberty Brew- Supposedly this is 50 fruity flavors all in one recipe; it certainly tastes it.  There are some interesting but unknowable flavors that pop up here and there on the tongue, but ultimately this just ends up taste blue, like its color.  But this is one of the sweetest Dews I’ve ever tasted.  After this product was released, it was re-released in subsequent years as Liberty Chill.

Dew-S-A - This product is a mix of the Code Red, White Out, and Voltage products, to match the red, white, and blue theme of the American flag.  However, this formulation was the 2017 version, which had zero calorie sweetener in addition to sugar.  Aside from this awful sweetener combination, the tastes of Code Red and Voltage combine to provide an overall berry taste, but it's further ruined by the pepperiness of the White Out.

Red Bull Summer Edition (2017)

Product circa: summer 2017

In addition to the rainbow-ification that Red Bull has seen over the past year or two with all its new colored versions, Red Bull has also been issuing Summer Editions of their beverage for several years now.  I'm not sure if the flavor is always different for each summer, but it was for this vintage.

Red Bull went with grapefruit in 2017, one of my favorite flavors, bar none.  Grapefruit can be fairly polarizing, however, and they didn't pull any punches here.

Despite the fact that this product uses sucrose as a sweetener, it's short-lived on the tongue.  You'll get the sweetness first, and then it disappears, never to return.  Sourness pushes back against the sugar, making you forget it.  The flavor, however, is great; it's like biting into a fresh grapefruit.  It is at this point that the caffeine-driven bitterness makes itself known, and it's considerable, though not inappropriate for a grapefruit product.  Finally, the sourness kicks back in and lingers endlessly on the aftertaste.

This could be called refreshing if it weren't a bitter, caffeine-dense energy drink.  It's a great attempt, but I think a little more sugar would bump it up to 3 NOMs.


Red Bull Summer Edition 2017:- Good
Original Red Bull (for comparison):-Passable