Another season, another new limited-time Red Bull flavor. Unlike my favorite Summer Edition to date (2021’s Dragonfruit, which was renamed Green Edition when it was made permanent in 2022), the flavor profile on this one is a lot more specific. Red Bull Summer Edition 2024 is supposed to taste like—drumroll please—“Curuba-Elderflower.” Before we get to what exactly that means, let’s cover when and where you’ll be able to find this new obscure flavor.
Per the energy drink newshounds over at STACK3D, this year’s Summer Edition will be available from May through October of 2024. While my knowledge of the seasons may be limited to Bath & Body Works inventing a new one every three weeks, I’m pretty sure summer isn’t usually six months long—not yet, anyway. At this time, there are no plans to release this Edition in a zero-sugar format. It’ll be sold anywhere you normally find Red Bull’s limited-edition flavors: groceries, gas stations, convenience stores, pretty much everywhere.
What is curuba? What is elderflower? Can they coexist!?
Curuba is a fruit commonly found in the Southern Hemisphere. Curuba is also known as banana passionfruit because, you guessed it, it tastes like a mix of banana and passionfruit. I guess “Banana Passionfruit Elderflower” was too wordy for a flavor name.
Elderflower is a little more common here in the United States, at least. Much like Curuba, it has a flavor that seems to only be described in comparison to other things. Elderflower is often described as floral, sweet, and…a little musky? It’s like Red Bull ran out of all the flavors we know and decided to just grab around blindly inside an international market’s produce section.
So, to summarize, this year’s Red Bull Summer Edition should taste something like a flowery, herby mix of banana and passionfruit. I have no idea how to combine all those concepts in my brain. Did you know Red Bull Japan names their flavors things like Mystic Magic, Groovy Fizz, and Ocean Blast? If we’re going to get incomprehensible flavor concepts from Red Bull, the least they could do is pick cool names that sound like Street Fighter attacks.
