On Sugar-Free Monster Energy Drinks

Being diabetic, I generally don’t get much in the way of drinks. If I go to a restaurant, normally my drink choices consist of water or sugar-free pepsi. There’s very, very rarely a second option that is sugar-free. However, outside of restaurants, my options do expand quite a lot. Not only can I get diet pepsi, I can get diet lemonade too. But even then, there aren’t that many options, there’s often no sugar-free fanta or anything like that. So, if I can, I tend to turn towards sugar-free energy drinks. And not one brand has as many options as sugar-free Monster Energy drinks are.

That being said, there definitely are different brands. Hell, a local-ish brand, has three great sugar-free flavours, but two of them are hard to find. On the flip side, I seem to be the only person who likes the sugar-free strawberry flavour, so those are almost always in stock. Shark and Red Bull also have a couple of sugar-free variants, mostly a normal sugar-free drink and a sugar-free drink that tastes as close to the non-diet version as possible. Shark is alright but I don’t like Red Bull in general.

But if I want variety, there’s definitely hope. Monster energy drinks have a LOT of options. There’s the default sugar-free version of the main Monster drink and that’s absolutely fine, but what I like are the many different sugar-free flavours I can buy. Now, I don’t get every single flavour, sadly. I’d love to do a taste test of all the sugar-free flavours, but I can’t get most of them where I am.

The main flavour that I can almost always get is the Zero Ultra, which I just call the white one. The can is white and silver and looks pretty nice. The flavour, I’d kinda describe it like a cloudy lemonade, but with extra caffeine. It’s not my favourite, but I’m always happy to see it if it’s available. Perfectly nice and tasty.

The other flavours that I can get most of the time are the green and blue flavours. Ultra Blue and Ultra Paradise are also somewhat common. At least, if a shop does have more than one flavour, it’ll most likely be those two flavours. I think Ultra Blue isn’t very popular since it’s generally the flavour left over when stocks are low. The green one tastes a bit like apple-flavoured Tango, but the blue one, I can’t quite place it.

And then we have other flavours. Ultimate Mango Fiesta is a sugar-free version of the Mango Fiesta drink, and tastes basically the same, of mango. In my local kiosk, I discovered a new flavour, called Ultra Watermelon, which tasted somewhat faintly of watermelon, despite smelling a LOT like watermelon. There was also a Lewis Hamilton flavour that tasted like candy, but that flavour disappeared a couple of months ago. It was tasty but not the best.

All that being said, there’s actually quite a few sugar-free flavours I’ve never tried. Apparently there are Ultra Red, Ultra Violet and Ultra Citron, and I am curious about all those flavours. I also really wonder what Ultra Black tastes like, especially since black is a weird colour for a drink name.

At the end of the day though, I am glad to have some options. Most drinks tend to not even bother with sugar-free flavours.