I have to admit that I felt a little foolish buying Crunk Energy Drink for the first time. It’s tied to hip hop and rap music by its name and its co-founder, Lil Jon. And that’s about all I know. So it’s the same sort of poseurish feeling one might get purchasing Pimpjuice when one is not a pimp nor does one want to know how a pimp is juiced.
The thing about Crunk is that…well, it seems to work. For me, anyway. Is it the caffeine? The ginseng? Or is it some sort of weird placebo effect you get when you drink something that has horny goat weed as an ingredient? Good question. Regardless, Crunk is always a good source of energy. Your mileage may vary.
Still, now I get to feel foolish just saying “Berry Crunk.” Because that to me is like taking this subgenre of music and flavoring it not unlike a General Mills cereal. The main thing about Berry Crunk is that it, like regular Crunk, works. But the taste is interesting. At first, you get the regular Crunk underpinnings, which I can’t quite explain to you except that it’s different–to my palate, at least–than most other energy drinks that appear to be Red Bull clones/wannabes. But the flavoring they’ve laid down on top of it reminded me of the horribly sweet drinks from childhood that had some form of “Aid” in the title. Kool-Aid, figured I. Flavorade, figured Doc. It tastes fake–but it’s real enough, apparently, as the drink has natural flavors, along with real acai and grape juice. If there’s an artificial flavor in there, I overlooked it.
[ad#longpost]And not to see that the grapey flavor is a bad one…just a bit shocking, like a bit of nostalgia just stepped from the shadows and clubbed you when you were expecting someone else.
Now, what’s in this thing? The proprietary blend of stuff spells it out–and from what I can tell (cross referencing with our friends at Energy Fiend) the blend list is per serving and there’s two servings in this 16 oz. can. So you’re talking 192mg of caffeine (nice), inositol (I can’t tell if this is the B8 variety or not), green tea leaf, guarana, licorice, horny goat weed, ginkgo biloba, panax ginseng, grape seed extract, skull cap (a plant, not something you wear), white willow, ashwaganda and milk thistle. It’s sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, and the whole can will give you 100% of your RDA for Vitamin C, 50% of E, 50% of B1, and 190% of B2, B3, B5, B6, and B12. Also in here are damiana (used as an aphrodisiac–hello), l-tyrosine (an amino acid), and n acetyl l-cysteine (an immune system assistant).
How well does all of that mess work? Well, all I can vouch for, as I said, is the overall kick, which is substantial. And the berry taste is strong but not unpleasant. I finished this one and would definitely have another.
