Review: Organic Energy - Citrus

Inko’s recently retooled its energy drink line. The new approach is a USDA Organic offering that has 100 calories and 165mg of caffeine per can. This seems in line with current beverage trends, although as a non-carbonated tea-based offering, it’s certainly not your typical energy drink. Sweetened with a blend stevia and sugar, the product has a pretty drinkable flavor that tastes like black tea with lemon. It has added ginseng, but Inko's has eschewed many of the other functional ingredients that you’ll find in other energy drinks. This results in a much cleaner flavor -- there’s no energy “bite” to it at all. However, the quality of the tea flavor is definitely not up to snuff with what you’d find in other organic ready-to-drink teas, so you are effectively taking a step down in flavor to get the added benefits of the added caffeine. We’d say the same for all three varieties, which derive their fruit flavors from flavorings and don’t taste super accurate. On the outside, the product is packaged in a 16 oz. tall can. It has a white background and an accent color at the top of the can and on the flavor name (each flavor has its own). The packaging doesn’t say a ton, which leaves most of the good information on the back of the can. While we appreciate the intention of keeping the front of the can clean, it definitely feels as though this might make people confuse the product with a standard energy drink. Having a callout for at least the non-carbonated aspect of the product seems like something that would be very helpful. Overall, this is a nice update for Inko’s Energy line, but we feel as though improved package design would enhance it further.

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