All tagged No Added Sugar
Co-branding a milk product with Yoo-hoo isn't exactly aiming for the stars from a flavor standpoint. That said, the branding is eye-catching and I'm embarrassed to say I was excited to buy a flat (12-pack) of this and crack one open. And be careful when you do that-- this stuff is pretty foamy if opening after a brief shake. After the first sip, I was upset to have purchased a whole flat. It's nasty. there's an upfront chemical / metallic quality that stays with you, as does the chalky / astringent mouthfeel that plagues each sip. The 'chocolate' presence is oversweet and fleeting. Does it taste like Yoo-hoo? No. Yoo-hoo is smooth, sweet, watery chocolate fluid with minimal other baggage. This stuff is moving in for a few months and doesn't plan on doing much laundry.
Rather enjoyably creamy-- a pleasant, unexpected surprise considering the sterile packaging. It's got a decently balanced salty-sweet ratio, and while the sweetening is non-sugar (stevia), it's less-noticeable than usual given the whole milk base and ample cocoa presence. Despite the 'whole milk from European grassfed cows' claim, the UHT processing of it is still quite apparent in the flavor-- giving it a familiar 'cooked milk' note rather than a 'grassy' one. All things considered, this was a nice surprise, and mildly enjoyable to the extent that the 8-ounce box may leave you wanting more.
If you're into the 'churro-chocolate' (chocolate with cinnamon) flavor, I must say, this certainly delivers that. It's not something I particularly enjoy, and combined with the artificial sweetening, overall it's unique but very missable. The texture doesn't hurt the experience, and feels 'nice' for the protein-enhanced genre (not saying much). So another beefed-up, faux-sweetened, chocolate-adjacent milk product in the 'recovery' space... Yay for me.
My first impression was "Well, I've had worse." Not a shitload worse, but worse nonetheless. I'm a fan of under-sweetness for sure, but there's got to be some other decent flavor or aspect being revealed by the under-sweetness, or it's all for naught. I feel like the primary flavor is 'ashtray'-- in a world where there's chocolate tobacco. There's a lingering twang from the sweeteners as well, which dominates the aftertaste once the initial flavor shock wears off. Temper your expectations for taste when you buy a 4-pack of this stuff-- if you need collagen that badly, there must be more enjoyable ways of obtaining it.
Wow, they did it! They actually managed to make extremely bland chocolate milk even blander! In doing so, the 'cooked milk' flavor rises to prominence, sadly this is perhaps the best approximation of what it might be like breastfeeding from an A.I. wet nurse-- bland, sterile, soulless, inevitable?
Refreshingly salty-- which is an odd phrase to write, but the 'recovery' genre is replete with faux-sweet, severely under-salted, sludgy swill. And at least this stuff is neither under-salted nor sludgy. There's really no cocoa presence to be found-- it's a weird cake-batter-meets-sawdust flavor profile, that leaves a slightly malty and oily footprint on the palate (not as unpleasant as it sounds). I applaud the effort, and while I do have an enormous soft spot for cookie dough, this doesn't approximate it well at all, but it's unique enough to warrant multiple sentences of commentary, if nothing else.
Surprisingly punchy cocoa flavor, congruent with its attractive deep, dark brown visage. The sweetener profile is calibrated to an appropriate strength, but remains a little distracting and steers the overall flavor in a wonky direction. For the genre, this is quite palatable, but in the grand scheme of (chocolate milk) things, it's severely lacking in most of the scoring categories.
There's a sourness that is probably meant to simulate chocolate flavor, but it does nothing aside from highlight the other phony qualities going on here, mainly the sweetness and texture. It's a smooth enough way to get 32g of protein, I concede, but it's nothing that will please your tastebuds in the process, and you'll find yourself drinking this quickly, not out of enjoyment, but more to get it out of the way so you can put something else in your mouth that will be more satisfying. That said, this has a slight saltiness that the cookies & cream version does not, and that helps a little.
Refreshingly 'milky' for having come out of a can, and decently well-balanced in terms of the cocoa/coffee makeup of mocha. It's less sweet than average, which makes it feel more 'grown up'-- and there's minimal wonky aftertaste to contend with. For something that sports 30g protein, it doesn't feel bogged down and powder-laden. In short, I enjoyed this a fair bit more than expected, and it feels more intentional than most other chocolate-adjacent concoctions in the 'recovery' genre.
Tastes like sweet plastic, with a slight astringency on the back end. It feels smooth and glides down the palate pretty quickly, but the fugazi sweetener lingers a bit too long and taints any 'cookies & cream' flavor that there might be. And there might not be. This isn't good.
Initially feels more balanced from a salty/sweet standpoint, which is an improvement, but the sweetener doesn't age well over the course of the sip and it leads to a drying sensation in the third act. There is a modest cookies & cream flavor that you can find if you sift through its other components thoroughly enough-- though careful, intentional sipping of this stuff likely not intended, and certainly not recommended. If people are this desperate for 30g of protein, I guess they're willing to brave the elements in the name of... better health? Ok.
Gone is the searing, face-altering, chemical spill in a can, in favor of a significantly muted, bland, and more pleasantly palatable version of Slate. This actually surprised me when I first tried it, in a positive, found-a-five-dollar-bill-in-my-pants-pocket way. They seem to have understood that when taste is bad, less of it is better, and they've righted the ship to the point where this is neither distracting nor off-putting. For high-protein, low carb, canned chocolate milk, this may be as good as it gets.
Watery and sweet with a mild upfront vanilla-ish cookies & cream flavor, but quickly washes out and retreats to a nigh-chalky astringent finish. It approximates what an artificially-sweetened vanilla Yoo-hoo would be, but with added caffeine. It's underwhelming, ghostly (ghastly?) white, and not out of place in the Spylt portfolio.
Strong coffee flavor that does a decent job of masking the monk fruit and Stevia leaf sweetener pairing-- this feels like it has a lot of caffeine (and it does-- 175mg per can). Fortunately, the sweeteners don't play a supporting role, and this is overall a few standard deviations less sweet than average chocolate milk. Texture-wise, you can feel the modestly starchy protein isolate throughout, and especially upon the conclusion each sip, where there's a noticeable but non-egregious astringency that lingers for a few beats. I don't get any of the 'cocoa' side of 'mocha'-- but flavor-wise, this is the most palatable chocolate-adjacent product I've had from Slate.
A pleasant change-up to the genre, I will say the mint flavoring here is both deftly executed and welcomed, even if it's only a limited edition release. It's nicely under-sweet, with equally discernible but not over-the-top chocolate and mint components. From a texture standpoint, sure, it suffers the same afflictions of the high-protein/low calorie genre-- a thickened/starchy/chalky body with a drying finish-- but some of that is mitigated by a nicely resolute cooling/minty presence on the back-end. It's not strong enough to call it a 'zing'-- but perhaps a more subtle and demure 'farewell.'
Poor balance of thickness-to-creaminess ratio very much in favor of the former, and strikingly undersweet in an almost avant-garde way, which I do appreciate. Much of the flavor is focused on chocolate-- a pleasant departure from the cloying, chemical sweetness that plagues the 'recovery shake' genre. A little salt would go a long way here, but what you're ultimately left with is a nigh-sludgy, unsweetened cocoa-forward and otherwise austere way to swill 30g protein.
As a chocolate milk reviewer, 'bad' is a word I go out of my way to avoid using. It's boring, one-dimensional, and a pretty 'basic bitch' adjective to employ in a food or drink review. But this stuff is just...bad-- not sure how else to say it. An almost violently bright/beautiful brown color overpromises to a fraudulent extent-- because as soon as this crosses your lips, a bolt of searing regret hits you right in whatever part of the brain registers searing regret, I think it's behind one of the ears somewhere. From the painfully cloying and flat-out weird sweetener profile, to the chalky yet somehow watery and unfulfilling texture, to the obtuse 'cocoa' flavor that just tastes like a foul 'brown' in the way that fruit punch tastes (somewhat pleasantly) 'red.' If you need 40g protein, eat a half dozen eggs instead. Raw, and still in the shell if you have to.
Shockingly cloying, fake-feeling sweetness on the first sip, but your taste buds acclimate surprisingly quickly to it. For the protein-enriched genre, it's got a thinner-than-average viscosity which helps drinkability and makes the inevitable chalky sledgehammer feel at least like a rubber-tipped one. There's a noticeable saltiness which also aids in keeping the sweetness more in the background than it otherwise would be. By the time I've gone through all 414mL, I've warmed to the flavor a bit, and find it to be a half-step above the typical 'high-protein/low-carb' offering from a taste and drinking experience perspective.
Interesting initial pop of flavor-- a punchy (faux) sweetness, then a cocoa hit, then somewhat of a watery washout. It makes you feel 'something'-- whether that 'something' adds to or subtracts from your experience on this planet is certainly debatable. The watery finish ameliorates some of the (would-be) chalkiness and astringency, but it accentuates the gimmicky sweetener combination of Sucralose, invert sugar, and Stevia. Do it if you need the protein. Don't if you don't.
Egregiously out of balance-- thicker than you expect for nonfat chocolate milk, with a gummy/slimy texture and slight astringency on the way out. Barely any flavor whatsoever, severely lacking cream, salt, sweetness, cocoa-- or anything remotely pleasurable. They took a paradigm-- chocolate milk-- and completely removed anything that anyone would enjoy about it. Even the color is a washed-out, ashen gray that further drives home the emptiness of this product. It's a husk. It's a failure. It's tasteless non-alcoholic beer that provides no buzz, yet a searing hangover.
