Butterfly Pea, Blue Matcha and Blue Spirulina: What Is the Difference?
Butterfly Pea, Blue Matcha and Blue Spirulina all make striking blue drinks, but they are not three names for the same thing.
Butterfly Pea flowers
Butterfly Pea is a flowering botanical, Clitoria ternatea. We sell it as dried flowers for steeping as a herbal infusion.
The colour can shift toward purple when you add an acidic ingredient such as lemon. The flavour is fairly mild, which is why people often blend it with other teas or use it when the colour is part of the fun.
Shop Butterfly Pea Flowers 50g.
Blue Matcha
Despite the name, Blue Matcha is not green tea Matcha. Our Blue Matcha is a finely milled Butterfly Pea powder.
That means you use the whole powdered ingredient rather than steeping and removing flowers. It works well in lattes, smoothies and baking where you want an even blue colour.
See Blue Matcha / Butterfly Pea Powder.
Blue Spirulina
Blue Spirulina is a completely different ingredient. It is a blue pigment-rich spirulina product rather than a flower or tea.
It is commonly used in smoothies, bowls, lattes and recipes where a concentrated blue colour is useful. Because it is not Butterfly Pea, it has a different source, taste and use.
Which one should you buy?
If you want to brew a floral herbal tea, choose Butterfly Pea flowers. If you want Butterfly Pea in a powdered form for lattes or recipes, Blue Matcha is the straightforward choice. If you specifically want a spirulina-based blue ingredient, choose Blue Spirulina.
None needs a dramatic wellness claim to be interesting. Sometimes an ingredient is useful because it tastes good, works in a recipe and makes a lovely bright-blue cup.
