The Early Bird Morning Cocktail – Helping You Make The Most of Your Mornings [A Review]

Let’s be real, waking up early sucks.

Sure, remedies like coffee, tea, and other caffeinated beverages can help remedy the sleepy, groggy state a lot of us are in first thing in the morning, but nothing beats just staying in bed and sleeping without a care in the world.

Unfortunately though, most of us don’t have the luxury of sleeping in during the week – not with commitments like work and getting kids to school on time requiring us to wake up earlier than we’d like.

But if we have to wake up early, we might as well make the most of it – and this is where Club Early Bird might be able to help.

Especially if you’re looking for a more natural, less jittery, source of morning energy than coffee.

Early Bird’s Morning Cocktail combines electrolytes, antioxidants, caffeine, and other supplements into a morning beverage you can drink to get your day started on the right foot.

It’s also carb free and has 0 calories, which is always nice.

Overall, if you’re looking for a coffee substitute to get you moving in the morning, I could see the Early Bird Cocktail making a lot of sense, but I don’t think it’s going to be for everyone.

In this review, I’ll go over my first hand experience with the Early Bird Cocktail and after reading, I think you’ll have a better idea as to whether or not it’s worth trying.

The good folks at Early Bird were kind enough to send me a sample of their Morning Cocktail so I could try it out for this review. I haven’t been compensated in any other way and this review is based solely on my experience.

The Early Bird Morning Cocktail

 

Full disclosure, I’m not a coffee person.

I don’t drink it now and I never have, not even when I was staying up late studying in school.

Everyone else in my family is, so I appreciate the need for a hot cup of coffee first thing in the morning, but as for me, I’m a tea guy.

Regardless, I still hate getting up first thing in the morning Monday thru Friday.

I have to wake up at 6 am to start packing snacks and getting stuff ready for the kids to go to school and even though I know a lot of people out there have to wake up a lot earlier than this… I’m still gonna complain.

Especially in the fall, when it’s pitch black and cold outside – it makes it reallllly hard to get out of bed when that alarm goes off.

So I was intrigued when Early Bird reached out to me to see if I wanted to try their Morning Cocktail.

The idea of having a morning beverage ready and waiting for me when I get out of bed sounds great and if it delivers on what they say it does, I’m all for it.

It works like this – the night before, you fill the shaker (included with your purchase) with water and a scoop of Morning Cocktail powder, shake it, and put it on your bedside table.

When you wake up in the morning, you give it another shake and then drink it.

That’s when it’s supposed to give you an energy boost and help you focus to get your day off to a productive start.

Done and done.

Well, I tried it, but before I share my experience, I think we should start with the ingredients.

Pros

• Increased morning energy
• Contains electrolytes
• Contains antioxidants
• No sugar
• No calories
• May help with focus and concentration
• Potent source of caffeine
• Shaker included
• Free shipping
• Tastes pretty good
• May work well as coffee replacement

Cons

• A little too sweet (for me anyway)
• Shouldn’t be used with other caffeine containing beverages
• Powder a little messy

What’s In The Morning Cocktail?

The Early Bird Cocktail comes in powder form and is designed to be mixed with 8 – 12 oz of water. They include a convenient mixer with a screw on top that makes it really easy to mix the drink first thing in the morning too.

And it’s really easy to drink from mixer too, so you don’t have to pour it into another glass.

Anyway, here’s a review of what’s in the powder.

Electrolytes

The Morning Cocktail has calcium citrate (40 mg), sodium chloride (120 mg), and potassium chloride (100 mg).

These electrolytes are meant to help aid in hydration, similar to the electrolytes you’d find in Gatorade, electrolyte water, or any other sports drink.

We wake up dehydrated in the morning (going 8 hrs without drinking anything will do that), so the idea of ingesting a few electrolytes first thing in the morning makes reasonable sense.

Energy Blend

These ingredients include L-tyrosine (an amino acid involved in the formation of neurotransmitters), caffeine from organic green coffee beans, antioxidants (blueberry powder, broccoli extract, green tea extract, turmeric powder, and tart cherry extract.

There’s also dicaffeine malate, a form of caffeine that’s combined with malic acid, that’s suppose to help prolong the effect of caffeine and reduce the crash that can occur as it wears off.

Speaking of caffeine, each serving of Morning Cocktail is packing 150 mg of caffeine, or the equivalent of roughly 1.5 cups of coffee.

There’s also some L-theanine, an amino-acid found in tea, that’s suppose to help with focus, improve mood, and reduce stress.

Be Happy Blend

These ingredients are suppose to help promote calmness and eliminate the groggy feel a lot of us experience first thing in the morning.

This blend includes Ashwagandha, an herb used in Asia and Africa to reduce stress and improve concentration.

There’s also theobromine, an alkaloid found in chocolate that may be able to help reduce blood pressure and improve cholesterol levels (although I doubt the quantity in Morning Blend is high enough to have any real effect on these).

Ah, there’s also coffea arabica extract, which is another antioxidant from unroasted coffee beans.

Other Stuff

The above include all the primary players, but there’s also black pepper, citric acid (preservative), silica (anti-caking agent), natural flavors, and sucralose (artificial sweetener, aka Splenda).

Ok, I think I included pretty much all the ingredients here.

Looking at this stuff, you can tell that Early Bird made an effort to make their Morning Cocktail healthy, with the emphasis on providing energy and improved focus.

There are added electrolytes and antioxidants, but I can’t really speak to the effectiveness of these.

There’s certainly a fair amount of caffeine in this mix, which accounts for where the boosted energy comes from.

I also thought it was interesting that they used a few different ingredients derived from coffee and tea – just goes to show these beverages can be quite healthy when used on their own.

How Does it Taste?

Alright, so Early Bird has a lot of interesting, healthy supplements and some potent caffeine in it, but what about taste?

The Morning Cocktail is blood orange flavored and I would say it tastes very orangey.

Actually, it remind me a lot of Tang, the old school orange drink powder I used to drink a lot when I was a kid… ah, memories…

So, the flavor isn’t bad, but personally, I find it a little too sweet for my taste.

But I’ve gotten used to drinking unsweetened black tea and matcha (not to mention hoppy IPAs), so I really like bitter flavors.

For me, I wish the shaker was a little larger (I think it’s around 10 oz), so I could dilute the powder with a little more water, that way I could bring the sweetness level down a little.

I guess I could always skip the shaker and just mix it in a larger cup too, but the shaker is really convenient.

I also get hints of the black pepper at the end, which I do like.

Overall, I think the flavor is pretty good, it’s definitely drinkable. If you like orange and enjoy sweet drinks, I think you’ll probably like the Morning Cocktail.

Oh, I should also mention that this drink has 0 calories and no sugar, so it shouldn’t interfere with any dieting attempts.

But Does it Really Work?

That’s the real question.

When it comes to improved energy and helping me wake up, I would say yes.

I drank my Morning Cocktail in 2-3 gulps and I definitely felt a surge of energy shortly after.

I wouldn’t say I really noticed any improvements in mood or concentration, but the fact that I wasn’t yawning or shuffling around trying to pack my kids’ snacks is pretty significant in itself.

And again, I’m not a coffee drinker, so I’m not really familiar with the “coffee crash” or coming down from a caffeine buzz.

I drink a fair amount of tea and matcha, but the caffeine levels are so much lower in these it’s not really comparable to coffee.

Anyway, I didn’t experience any crash or anything after drinking the Morning Cocktail – I just felt energized after drinking it in the morning and then was awake and feeling normal for the rest of the day.

I like to get on the computer and write first thing in the morning after my wife takes my kids to school and I didn’t have any issues being productive after drinking Early Bird.

So, when it comes to improved energy and helping you wake up, I would say yes, the Morning Cocktail does indeed work.

Final Thoughts

Ok, overall, I like the idea of having a supercharged drink first thing in the morning to help me wake up and attack the day.

And I think the Early Bird Morning Cocktail has an interesting combination of ingredients, including antioxidants, electrolytes, and other supplements that may help focus and concentration.

But I’m thinking it’s the caffeine that’s really getting the job done here.

Not that that’s a bad thing, I mean that’s why so many people are hooked on coffee in the first place.

If you’re not happy with your coffee habit or you’re just looking for a different way to get your morning boost, I could see the Morning Cocktail being a good option.

It isn’t perfect (it does have preservatives, artificial sweeteners, and artificial flavors added), but as far as I can tell, it’s got some good stuff in it.

It’s also calorie and sugar free, which is nice.

With regards to cost, Early Bird isn’t cheap – at the time of writing this, a single tub is going for $68.

But that’s 45 servings and you get free shipping.

You can bring that cost down even more by buying more than 1 tub at a time, but I’d recommend trying it first before investing too much.

At that price, you’re looking at roughly $1.51 per serving, which isn’t bad, especially if you’re using this in place of coffee.

Something else worth mentioning – there’s a fair amount of caffeine in this, so you wouldn’t want to combine this with coffee or any other caffeine containing beverages.

You don’t want to be buzzing around like a hummingbird.

Oh, I also want to mention that you have to be careful putting the powder into the mixer – the scoop is pretty small and the powder is very dry and powdery, so it can easily go everywhere.

Especially if the little scoop is at the bottom of the tub and you’re trying to find it…

Overall though, I enjoyed my experience with the Morning Cocktail and I’d like to thank Early Bird again for sending me a free sample.

I think I’m going to stick to my hot teas and matchas for now, but I like knowing I have some Early Bird to use in case I need a more potent caffeine pick me up.

P.S. – use the code “THEHOMEGYM10” to save yourself 10%