Making A Color-Changing Cocktail with Blue Chai Tea

Tea in cocktails?

I know what your thinking: “That’s nothing new, teas have been used in cocktails for centuries!” Well, this tea is not your ordinary Earl Grey or Jasmine – this tea is from Butterfly Pea Flowers (No Butterflies were harmed in the making of this post 🙂 What’s different about it tea is when you change the pH, it actually changes color!

Special thanks to Blue Chai Tea for sending us a sample. This is where the inner nerd in me gets to have some fun!

Watch the Magic Show:

Start with the Taste Test:

Very subtle and slightly floral. When I added some simple syrup, it brought up some flavor but it’s still not very strong. The second batch I steeped doubled the amount of tea that I steeped and I increased the extraction time to 20 minutes, and I was starting to pick up a slight tropical fruit quality to the tea, but still very subtle.

For the love of Science:

I added a a few drops of lemon juice and the tea turned a beautiful shade of violet.
The more lemon juice you add to it, it turns lighter and lighter; from purple to pink!
Carbonating the tea also changes the color from blue to purple. (Thanks CO2!)
Adding Baking Soda changed it back to blue. This tea is definitely pH sensitive.

Abracadabra!

And Now to Use it In a Cocktail…

For the cocktail I made a simple Moscow Mule or in this case Houdini’s Mule with:

2.0 oz Vodka
5.0 oz Ginger beer

I alternated between regular ice and ice made from the Blue Chai Tea. The pH difference is the ginger beer and possibly the vodka was enough to begin changing the color of the drink as the Blue Ice began to melt.

I’m excited to try a few other techniques with this product- Coming soon: Sodium Bicarbonate Ice !!!