These drinks appeal to a certain kind of person, the kind who adds 20 packs of flavored creamers and extra sugar and cocoa powder to their cheap coffee before guzzling. These people don't care if their drinks come loaded with chemicals or preservatives or calories, as it usually tastes best when you are eating a Twinkie and smoking a cheap cigarette with it. If you drank this stuff every day I am sure you would come down with cancer or mutate or get superpowers, but for an every-once-in-a-while treat, these drinks can be fun. Boyds Coffee makes a bunch of flavors of this, including a Maple Bacon one, a Salted Caramel one, and other flavors which seem like they might be found more on a Ben and Jerry's ice cream than a coffee drink.
The problem I have always had with these not-quite-real coffee treats, besides the feeling like they were born in Muppet Labs is that historically they have had very little, if any, caffeine in them. These drinks are so far removed from coffee that whatever buzz they might have once had has been seared off by the chemical burn and scientific process. On my last trip to a Conoco, I found a Boyds machine which has fixed this problem by adding the pure anhydrous caffeine back into the powdered coffee mix! The result is Hi Rev Mocha Cappucino, with the slogan of "No Wimps Allowed" emblazoned on the front of the machine, the signage and even the cups. It seems that Boyds has been making this stuff for a while - since around 2003, and has been a big seller.
They also make an extra caffeinated coffee which tastes like regular decent convenience store coffee, and just made more caffeinated by their special brewing process. While many C-Stores seem to be selling a version of high-test coffee (for a while both Circle K and 711 had coffee with guarana in it - but tasted a bit like drinking your coffee through a plant stem), this version actually tasted like coffee. However, getting just a coffee is completely missing the point. I mean - you are buying your food at a gas station already - it is not like you are going there for your Fair-Trade organic specialty roast stuff. So just get a cup of instant freeze dried astronaut coffee flavored drink and deal with it.
Packaging:8
While of course you can get these in any cups you happen to bring, they have special "No Wimps Allowed" cups - which are basically those cheap styrofoam cups that all convenience stores have, but have their crazy screaming dude on it. This in itself would not be that remarkable, except for two things - I love the screamer, and they have all sorts of contact info on the cup if you want more information.
In my case, I really wanted to know the caffeine content, as well as the ingredients list so I knew for sure that all the chemicals I thought was in here, was in here. Their website let to a customer service number which led to a super nice person at their main office who helped me get all the info I was looking for in my inbox.
Taste:8
Firstly, you have to know the right way to get a drink from one of these machines. If you don't plan on it just right, you can end up with evil looks from cashiers, cups half filled with water and half nasty foam or even end up scalded. When the drink is coming out of the machine, for some reason the instructions tell you to stop 2/3 of the way from the top, where the machine just pours water into your cup and makes for a foamy mess. To get a great cup of Hi-Rev Cappuccino, the trick is to go almost to the top - then quickly pull the cup from the machine, move subtly enough that you dont make a hot mess that someone will see , but keeps you from getting a watered down drink. Sometimes the clerk will mess up and leave the lid of the machine a little off, and you can scoop some of that sweet sweet powder right in your cup and make your drink extra gooey!
The Hi-Rev Mocha Cappuccino tastes just like it should, and not at all like it has anything to either real chocolate or real coffee. At one point in time it might have had something close to Tasters Choice with chocolate mix in it, but there is that layer of preservative and fake milk powder which give it all a slight tin can edge. You can not taste the caffeine over all the other chemicals in here too - and all around tastes like a yummy fake coffee-like drink.
Buzz:9
For Just Buzz, Boyds does a great job of wiring you. An eight ounce cup has 105mg of caffeine, 1 and 1/2 times the amount of caffeine in Red Bull. If you get this in a bit 24 ounce cup you can get seriously over-caffeinated with 420mg of caffeine - or more than most energy drinks on the market. You can really feel it too - as almost immediately you can feel the sugar and caffeine hit your bloodstream. It is a serious dose of energy - and will leave you jittery and wide-eyed for a long time.
If you absolutely have to know the ingredients in here I did find them out - although like canned Cheez Whiz, some things are probably best left to the imagination. In this case there is both sugar and HFCS to sweeten things, along with corn syrup solids. While there is no actual milk in here, there is Whey, which is a milk derivative, along with Sodium Caseinate. Don't forget the oil needed to make it seem creamy, which is represented by Partially Hydrogenated Coconut Oil. While full of the mysterious Artificial Flavors and Salt (mmm salty coffee...). Way down in there I did find instant coffee and Dutch Cocoa, along with Carboxymethylcellulose (a thickener also found in products like KY Jelly and toothpastes) , Silicon Dioxide (ground up quartz, also used for making glass, keeping new shoes smelling fresh and keeps powdered foods from getting clumpy in large masses) and Dipotassium Phosphate (used a bunch in evaporated milk and creamers to keep it from coagulating).
Really, it is just best if you forget about it and just enjoy the sweet creamy buzz...
