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By Energy Drink Ratings6 min read
I spend a lot of time thinking about what tastes good together. Usually that involves wine, cheese, dinner, or some specific conversation about why one bottle works better with roast chicken than another.
Today I’m doing it with energy drinks.
I grabbed a GHOST Welch’s Grape and five completely different snacks from 7-Eleven to see which one actually worked best with it. I wanted to taste them all side by side because sometimes the pairing that makes the most sense in your head is absolutely not the one that wins.
GHOST Welch’s Grape has 200mg of caffeine, zero sugar, and tastes exactly like you’d expect it to. It’s intensely grape, sweet, tart, and pretty candy-like. There’s also enough acidity and carbonation that it doesn’t feel heavy, which turned out to matter a lot once food got involved.
Some of these were really good and one was significantly worse than I expected.
My favorite one basically turned the drink into a gas-station PB&J.
| Snack | Pairing score | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| RXBAR Peanut Butter Chocolate | 9 / 10 | Turns the grape into the jelly in a PB&J. The winner. |
| SkinnyPop Original Popcorn | 8.5 / 10 | Salty, simple, easy to keep eating. |
| Chex Mix Traditional | 7.5 / 10 | The drink acts like the sweet half of a sweet-and-savory mix. |
| Cheez-It Snap’d Jalapeño Jack | 7 / 10 | The surprise: sweet, salty, spicy and cheesy, a lot at once. |
| Takis Fuego | 4 / 10 | Too much acid on both sides. Neither one backs off. |
Scores are one person’s opinion from one tasting, not a lab test.
This was probably the easiest pairing of all five.
There isn’t some crazy flavor transformation here, it’s just salty popcorn and grape, but that simplicity is exactly why it works.
The salt makes the grape flavor pop a little more, while the popcorn gives your mouth a break from how intense the drink is. Then the carbonation cleans everything up and you want another handful. The light salt in this really makes me think of crackers in between a wine tasting to reset your palate.
I kept going back to this pairing while I was trying the others, which is usually a pretty good sign.
It might not be the most interesting combination, but if I were actually driving somewhere and wanted an energy drink and something to mindlessly snack on, this would probably be one of my first choices.
Pairing score8.5/10
This was better than I expected.
There’s a lot happening in Chex Mix between the salt, seasoning, toasted cereal pieces, pretzels and all the different textures. I thought that might make the grape taste weird, but the sweetness actually works nicely against all of those savory flavors. Sort of like chocolate covered pretzel vibes.
The best bites were definitely the saltier ones too with some of that cheeeese flavoring.
A heavily seasoned Chex piece followed by the GHOST was much better than one of the more neutral cereal pieces. The drink almost acts like the sweet part of a sweet-and-savory snack mix.
Would I specifically run to 7-Eleven because I desperately need to experience GHOST Welch’s Grape with Chex Mix again? Eh, probably not, but if I already wanted Chex Mix, it works surprisingly well.
Pairing score7.5/10
I expected this one to work, and it absolutely did.
The first sip after a bite of the RXBAR immediately made the grape flavor taste more like jelly than candy. The peanut butter brings salt and richness, and suddenly the whole thing starts making sense in a way that’s almost annoyingly obvious.
It’s peanut butter and grape...of course it works.
The chocolate worried me a little because chocolate and artificial grape doesn’t exactly sound like something I’d intentionally put together, but it wasn’t nearly as noticeable as I expected. The peanut butter dominates enough that the chocolate stays in the background.
The other thing I liked is that this feels like an actual snack you’d want with an energy drink. It has some substance to it instead of just giving you caffeine and a bag of chips.
Pairing score9/10
I would absolutely get these together again.
This was the surprise for me, and not just because I don't enjoy spicy that much.
I thought there was a decent chance this would be awful because there are a LOT of flavors happening at once but Zak grabbed it, so here we are.
Grape with cheese, jalapeño, and salt with carbonation was a lot.
The grape tastes sweeter after the jalapeño, which takes the edge off the heat for a second, and then the cheesy, salty flavor makes you want another sip.
It reminded me a little of why fruit and cheese work so well together in general. Obviously nobody is putting Welch’s grape flavor next to a cheese board, but the same basic sweet, salty, fatty thing is happening.
The only downside is that both the snack and the drink are pretty intense. After a while my mouth needed everyone to calm down. For the first several bites though, this was really good.
Pairing score7/10
Not sure I’d buy this combination again, but I'm glad I tried it.
I knew this was going to be chaos, but I did it anyway because they're Zak's favorite and I knew he would eat the leftovers.
The first bite actually fooled me into thinking this might work. The sweet grape hits right after all that chile and lime and gives you this brief sweet-spicy thing that isn’t bad at all. Then I ate another Taki and took another sip.
Nope, sorry Zak.
There’s just too much acidity happening. The Takis are sour and spicy and the GHOST is tart, sweet and carbonated. Neither one backs off enough to let the other one taste better. Instead of balancing each other, they basically just keep turning the volume up.
It wasn’t disgusting, it was just overwhelming me. I finished testing this one significantly faster than I tested the others.
Pairing score4/10
I’ll eat my Takis and drink my GHOST separately.
The winner was the RXBAR Peanut Butter Chocolate.
I thought it probably would be before I started, but I didn’t expect the grape flavor to shift quite as much as it did. With the peanut butter, GHOST Welch’s Grape genuinely starts tasting less like grape candy and more like the jelly part of a PB&J.
It was easily the most complete pairing.
The SkinnyPop was probably the best option if you just want something easy to snack on, while the Jalapeño Jack Cheez-It Snap’d were the pairing that surprised me the most.
The Takis can stay on the other side of the convenience store.
There are hundreds of energy drinks sitting a few feet away from hundreds of snacks in convenience stores, so I think we need to keep doing this.
Next time I might grab a completely different style of drink and see if the rankings change.
In the meantime, if you’ve tried GHOST Welch’s Grape, rate it on Energy Drink Ratings and tell me what snack I need to pair with it next.
Snack selection can vary by store.
