Monster tierlist, a year later

What started out as a fun joke challenge turned out to be a genuinely interesting experience. At the start of last year, I was skeptical. Would stay interested in drinking a Monster every week? After all, I wasn't that big on energy drinks. Yet, a year later, I'm still excited about writing new entries and updating the same page.

Technical challenge

Rating a drink is relatively easy; you take a sip, gather your thoughts and form an opinion. Recording that thought is the hard part.

As the list grew and I gained more experience in both judging and recording, I found that the way I judge and record changed over time. What started out as a simple list grew into a comprehensive document with specific requirements. Keeping track of a handful of reviews is easy, keeping track of 50+ is not. Worse is that halfway through I decided that it would be nice to leave a taster's note, meaning I had to drink some twice, and not all were in the Great+ tier.

Keeping track of the flavours and understanding the somewhat complicated business that is Monster was a challenge in itself as well. Learning that, for example, Rehab Peach Tea and Dragon Ice Tea Peach are the exact same flavour despite having completely different names and designs was fun! Or the subtleties of the name changes between regions. There's quite a lot to it and I probably know far more about Monster than I should. The rabbit hole goes deep.

Review

Having drunk 50+ flavours, I think it's fair to say I have a pretty good sample size and can therefore state that, on average, Monster Energy is awfully mediocre. (Monster) Energy drinks just don't taste that good! I'm an avid coffee drinker and don't shy away from caffeine, but if I was forced consume caffeine, I'd stick with coffee still. I think (Monster) energy drinks are probably targeted at an audience who enjoy artificial / sweet flavours, given most of the more popular drinks (based on supermarket stock) seem to be of the Ultra / Juiced variety, and I'm not part of that audience.

Despite the mediocre average, there's a couple that are genuinely delicious. Aussie Style Lemonade, Ultra Gold and unironically Ultra are genuinely delicious drink I would happily drink again (though it's a shame there's no non-caffeine variants)!

Equally, Absolutely Zero and Juiced Rio Punch are undrinkable and probably not safe for human consumption. And Juiced Rio Punch seems to be everywhere. Truly a mystery.

Conclusion

It's rare for me to commit to long-term projects; I typically grow bored of things quite quickly and have a habit of leaving things unfinished.

I think the novelty of searching for cans, not drinking them frequently (I only drink these on weekends) and updating the ever-increasing post has kept my attention. It was a fun project, and I think I'll continue it for as long as I can.