BlueChai

The blue-ness of this tea is simply amazing, most exotic tea I ever had with a very pleasant taste.

When someone told me there was a tea that changed colors (from brilliant blue to shocking pink) when you added an acidic ingredient like lemon or lime juice I thought they were pulling my leg. I’d never heard of such a thing, but it does exist and even though it sounded a little gimmicky I knew I had to try it out (if only to say that I had.)

It was a lot of fun to play with. In fact, my son and I spent several hours steeping up batches of tea and dropping in lime juice so we could watch the colors change from blue, to purple, and finally to bright pink. It was the perfect way to spend an cold, overcast day. I just hope that I don’t need lime juice for anything this week because we ran through two bottles of it.

You can read the full review on my blog:
http://www.notstarvingyet.com/index/2015/1/20/tuesday-tea-organic-blue-tea-blue-chai

Do you know why my handle here is Indigobloom? Can ya guess? I dare you to guess…
It’s partly because indigo is my fave colour. Seriously.
Actually, its the colour the the sky on a cloudless (usually summer) night right before true night blue sets in, right after sunset. Kindof a royal blue but darker, and some light behind it. I don’t catch it often, but oh my it is gorgeous. The sunrise version is even more breathtaking but lets face it, I’m rarely up that early and outside – but when I am its a real treat.
Anyhow, this tea has me excited given that with a full cup, it matches my fave colour precisely. I could just sit here and stare at it forever. But then I’d turn into a pretty boring person so here I am writing the review while I steal occasional glances at my mug.
As for the taste, I find it relatively pleasant. A little earthy in a flower like way. Sweet but not overly. A tad vegetal as well though not in a way I can pinpoint. Yes I do indeed like it! Not love, but definitely not too far from it. High marks for the colour.

I love this tea. I can’t help it.

The flavor is not amazing. If you’ve ever smelled pea flowers, then you’ll be able to picture the flavor. They taste just like they smell.

But the tea is purple! It’s not lavender, or a deep plum that’s almost not purple at all, but electric purple! It’s gorgeous and I’ll be honest, I just like looking at it.

I made this hot, and that was ok, but I love it as a cold brew. I let the flowers steep overnight and it’s ready to take to work in the AM. A little squeeze of agave and it’s just right.

Since I don’t love the flavor all on it’s own, I’ve been planning out ways to incorporate a small amount of flowers into other teas, just for the color.

This tea is just the butterfly pea flowers alone, but Blue Chai does make a blend with lemongrass. More on that soon!

This tastes like creamy-sweet peas and musky earth leaves, accented with lemongrass. The flavour is not dynamic or complex, but peas are good and so is the novel colour blue.

I plan to have a lot of caffeine-absent, blue-dyed fun with this, although I wish it didn’t cost $13.49 for 40g.

This was shared with me by keychange.

This actually brews up blue. Also, it smells like boiled asparagus. What do you know, it tastes like asparagus too.

Thanks keychange!

Ugh, today is so not how I planned it going. I ended up trying to help my moms friend get Anti virus ware on her computer. Long story short Vista is evil and I will get service pack 2 on there. Got some awesome new Asian ware though from her. She has the coolest things.

Well I had this sample and decided to give it a whirl. The smell of the leaf kinda smelled like earthy dirt; sweet earthy dirt. Or like when you are out gardening flowers…. it is a good thing.

The brew itself is ridiculously blue! I mean it almost looks like it was full of blue food coloring. I can see how this was used for dying.

The flavor is kinda different. It isn’t what I was expecting. It taste a lot like peas, and earthy taste. There is a sweet forla bit, but it isn’t very strong; not like most perume floral teas. Now I don’t like peas….. AT ALL! Seriously I hate them, but this taste kinda good. The texture is very smooth too.

I then put some honey and a bit of orange juice in it (had no lemon). It turned from deep blue to an indigo purple color. I don’t know what science makes it down that, but it was cool. I liked it a bit more. It kinda filled out the flavor and made it taste less earthy. I tried it iced but I like it more warm; it looses that smooth texture and some flavor when it is iced.

Apparently this stuff helps with eyes, which I definitely could use. Ever, since late October my eyes have not been the same. They get itchy, irritated and sore easily now. It’s not allergies. I wish I knew why they do that now, but at least since I got computer glasses they have not been as bad.

Overall I enjoyed it. I would be nice to mix in my herbal teas to help with my eyes.

Jebus, this tea is such a gorgeous color. If I don’t like the flavor, I’ll have no trouble using it up to color rice and for my wife to dye yarn.

And thank god for that. Cold isn’t doing this tea any favors. It tastes musty. I get the sugar snap peas comparison…maybe I need to rinse it more than once.

The fact that I bought this on Etsy for $20 CAD (including shipping) for 40 grams blows my mind. What was I thinking? I wish I could have bought a smaller bag, but that wasn’t an option. When it arrived, it was packaged in a manilla envelope and a fair number of flowers had been crushed to bits. The flavor is faint and far overshadowed by the mustiness of the tea. It tastes like a mug full of dusty old snap peas.

I am far from happy with this tea, but at least the color is pretty?

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I will add my voice to the others in saying that the blue of this tea is absolutely gorgeous. Think TARDIS blue.

I always sweeten my teas, and the back of the package says it goes well with honey, so I added honey instead of my usual sugar. I will not be doing this again. The honey makes it…I don’t know, it brings out the tang and the…funkiness of the tea. I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s very vegetal, and the honey makes it taste almost sour. Not lip-puckering sour, but kinda like milk gone off.

It’s not awful, but I need to try this without honey before I rate it.

First off, I love love LOVE the color of this. It’s such a rich and vibrant blue. I imagine that if I drank it iced the color would help convince my brain that I am tasting something amazingly refreshing.

I made this hot though. And it’s good. I wish it were more like a chai though – the spices seem fairly mild. Maybe I should have used more leaves? It said 5g but IDK how much that is and I guessed. It tastes like a flower, (but not perfumy) which is not surprising, with some interesting plant-like notes that I can’t really put my finger on. There’s also a nectar-like sweetener that lingers at the end of each sip.

It’s an interesting alternative to other non-caffeinated teas though, and for that I’m happy to have tried it!

First and foremost, the color of this tisane is awesome! A bright blue when first steeped, and then it becomes violet when you add lemon. Very cool!

At first taste without lemon I wasn’t crazy about the taste. I think with Chai in the name I was expecting more spice. But after drinking it a little more without the expectation of the spice I think it’s growing on me. It’s got a vegetably taste, I’d compare it to a mild corn. With a little bit of lemon juice I think it covered up the herbal taste a little bit.

Definitely interesting, I’m going to give it a few more steeps and see how it goes.

This is one of the more different teas I’ve had. The flowers come dried, and the steeping instructions are in flower amounts.

For hot tea, I went with 14 flowers dude to my size of teapot at 208 degrees. After letting it steep for 8 minutes the liquid was a dark blue. It looked wonderful in my glass teacup!

The taste is vegetal with a florally sweet aftertaste. It is very mild, even after an 8 minute steep. It’s a good taste and it is an interesting alternative to the usual teas.

Next, I decided to brew some and allow it to cool in my refrigerator. The I poured it into a clear glass and added some lemon juice. It did turn into an amazing dark purple! It was really cool! The taste of the tea now cool was very similar to the hot tea, but stronger. It was rather bland for my taste, perhaps interesting as a base for other teas. Adding the lemon juice and sugar gave it a sweet taste that pairs with the floral sweetness well.

Steepsterites, you need to check out the colour of this tea. BLUE! WILD! (oh, and it will turn colour if you add lemon).
The taste? A touch floral, kinda vegetal snap pea (but not grassy), sweet and pretty herby. A really neat alternative to other flowery herbals such as chamomile. I found the best flavor was adding lemon and it masked some of the herbyness.

Full review and photos on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/organic-herbal-blue-tea-bluechai-oolong-owl-tea-review/

Crazy part is that I just ordered some undyed wool – I’m gonna try some tea dying, with this fun herbal on the list!

i think this tea is at half mast for me.

the name, ‘blue chai’, with it having no spices let me down.
the dry smell was very mild.
the colour was striking! haven’t checked…. but i think my teeth may be blue, lol.
taste: peppery on the back of the tongue, strongly legume.

the artist in me loves the colour, but i do not know that i like the tea.
……… i have the strangest inclination the steep up the rest and do some watercolour painting.

not the right match for me.

still, thank you blue chai for the opportunity! what a beautiful colour!

2/7/14 I’m experimenting with several different things with this tisane, so this tasting note is just the beginning. My sample arrived basically powdered, which made figuring out how to use it difficult, because all the references I’ve found tell me to use a number of flowers. I picked out the six largest remaining fragments, and put those into my rice cooker to make blue rice with – that’s still cooking.

I weighed the remaining powder – it came to five grams on my little scale, which I am guess is about 10-20 flowers. I put it all into a paper filter bag, and put it in my four cup measuring cup, and brewed it with boiling water for 3 minutes. It is a rich opaque dark blue liquid, with a light beany aroma and taste. I’m sipping a cup hot now, and have put the rest in the fridge to try iced. I’ll also experiment with adding some mandarin juice to it — it’s supposed to turn purple when an acid is added! Lime would be traditional, but I only have mandarins in the house.

I’ll also try a second steeping of my bag, and see how that brews.

So far, a fun and pleasant drink.

BlueChai is a tasty, blue tea made from only the best butterfly pea flowers.

Since I don’t want to be the first to review our own tea on Steepster, I’d love to give away a couple of samples to the community!

If you would like to receive a free sample to review, please get in touch with us or visit http://bluechai.com/sample to place your order directly.

(Please leave a comment below once you’ve ordered, so we know who you are in the Steepster community)