These Blue Butterfly Flower Tea Lemonades Taste Good, Look Amazing and Won’t Break the Bank
I'm a sucker for gorgeous drinks, so when I found out that Lemonade restaurants were featuring ombre lemonades and teas in their latest batch of beverages, I knew I had to try a couple out.
Though the chain has a few new lovely refreshments to offer, I opted for two flavors of their new Skinny Lemonade T's. They're lemonades layered with colorful teas to create stunning gradations in the drinks. In addition to looking really cute, they also have 30% less sugar than their classic lemonades.
While I'd heard a lot about color-changing butterfly flower tea in the past, I'd never tried it myself, so I opted to try the old-fashioned and blood orange lemonade drinks paired with this blue butterfly tea. On its own, this unique tea is a deep blue color, but when mixed with lemon juice, a chemical reaction transforms it into a pretty purple.
I was curious to see this reaction take place in person when I ordered, but I didn't get a good view of the process, as the server's back was turned to me while she worked on my drinks. First, the cups were filled two-thirds of the way with the lemonade before a deep blue tea was carefully poured over them. The ombre effect looked impressive on both, but I didn't get to see the tea in the drink as anything but purple.
Next came the taste test. First, I took a sip of the blood orange Skinny T. With the straw all the way at the bottom of the drink, I didn't notice any difference between this and their standard blood orange lemonade. I decided to pull the straw out a bit to get a purer sip of the butterfly flower tea. The tea hadn't mixed with the lemonade at the top and it had a very subtle, slightly earthy taste.
I didn't dare mix the drink together and ruin the appearance to find out what they tasted when they were more combined, so I took a few deep sips from the center of the drink where the colors fused. It mellowed out the flavor of the blood orange a little without totally watering down the taste. Overall, it tasted as good as it looked pretty.
My experience was much the same with the old-fashioned lemonade Skinny T. The pure lemonade at the bottom tasted like classic lemonade, and the tea floating on the top was the untouched tea I was expecting. When I sipped from the mingling flavors in the center, it simply tasted like a subtler, less sweet lemonade. Because I typically prefer the old-fashioned lemonade over the blood lemonade, I favored the flavor of this drink. I found the contrasting colors more stunning, too.
The drinks cost $3.95 each, which I think is totally worth the taste (and the chance to share gorgeous pics on Instagram). Because their regular lemonades are only $3, upgrading to add butterfly flower tea isn't too much of a price increase. We'll definitely be back in the future to order them again.
If you want to experiment with your own cute layered drinks, click HERE to find out more about the color-changing butterfly tea.