Starbucks Doubleshot Energy Drink: A Review

Starbucks Doubleshot +Energy is a blend of Starbucks canned coffee with some of the typical ingredients of the standard canned energy drinks.

The "energy" content here is mostly provided by caffeine, sugar, taurine, maltodextrin and guarana, but there's a pretty hefty dose of vitamins as well. One can will nab you more than enough riboflavin, niacin and vitamin B6 for the day, as well as hefty doses of vitamin B12, vitamin C, calcium and potassium. The unhealthy overhead here consists of 52 grams of refined sugar per can (roughly the amount of one smaller can of high-sugar soda such as Mountain Dew or one of the various orange flavors.) Calories are more reasonable here than with other drinks at about 200 per can. There's also a surprising amount of protein here at 12 grams per can.

The drink comes in four flavors - cinnamon dulce, vanilla, mocha and regular coffee. I have yet to actually see the cinnamon dulce sold anywhere and thus cannot comment on it. The other three flavors taste very much like McDonalds iced coffee equivalents - fairly dark coffee with a heavy splash of flavored syrup, basically. You won't mistake it for a "real" iced coffee but it is fairly palatable. There's kind of an unpleasant artificial "finish" to every sip but it doesn't linger as an aftertaste.

The energy rush is pretty much comparable to a large coffee or the other, lighter energy drinks - maybe two to three hours of high energy followed by a slowdown. I didn't find there to be a total "crash" like with some of the other drinks that really bomb you with sugar and taurine, but I'm also a heavy coffee drinker outside of this so your mileage may vary. The high caffeine content helps with mental clarity and focus more than many other drinks, but the rest of the energy mostly comes from the 2000mg of maltodextrin, which is basically a fast-acting and fast-burning sugar very comparable to glucose.

If you already have a latte or cappuccino habit, the $3 per can that these normally retail for will actually likely be a step down in price. You'll get significantly more vitamins and nutrition with this drink, but at the price of a pretty hefty amount of sugar, and the overall energy burst isn't all that much longer or better than just having a large, strong coffee minus all that sugar. I don't think I like it quite enough to buy it regularly at full retail price, but if Grocery Outlet gets some cases of it at a discount (as they usually seem to do with various Starbucks canned drinks) I'd probably swoop in for a case or two.