# Butterfly Blue Pea Tea

> Caffeine-free Clitoria ternatea flowers — brews vivid blue, turns magenta with lemon. The visual centrepiece of the Sampson tea shelf.

- **URL:** https://sampsonecoshop.com/products/butterfly-blue-pea-tea
- **Type:** tea
- **Brand:** THE METROPOLITAN TEA COMPANY LTD.
- **Price:** 18.99 CAD
- **Availability:** check store
- **Tags:** herbal&wellnesstea, replenishable, tea

## Description

🌺 Floral Tisane🦋 Color-Changing☕ Caffeine-Free🌿 Loose Flower

The colour-changing cup — vivid blue flowers that turn magenta with a squeeze of lemon. The Sampson tea shelf's only piece of edible chemistry.

Butterfly Blue Pea (Clitoria ternatea) is a Southeast Asian flowering vine traditionally grown in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. The dried buds are used as much for colour as for flavour — they're the natural blue pigment in nam dok anchan, butterfly-pea lemonades, and rice dishes across the region. Steeped alone, the flowers release a deep cobalt-blue infusion.

The trick is the pH shift. Add lemon juice (or any acid) and the anthocyanin pigments rotate through the spectrum — first violet, then magenta, then almost pink. The visual is the primary attraction; the flavour is gentle, slightly earthy, faintly floral. This is a tea you serve to people who haven't seen it before.

 🦋

Real Pigment

Anthocyanin colour from the flower itself, no dye

 🍋

pH-Reactive

Lemon shifts the cup from cobalt blue to magenta

 ☕

Zero Caffeine

A flower infusion, not a tea leaf

 ✨

 **The Sampson Promise**

We only put ingredients in our products that we would use on our own family. Every ingredient has a purpose. If it doesn’t need to be there, it isn’t.

Type

Floral Tisane

Caffeine

None

Origin

Thailand & SE Asia

Format

Loose Flower

Steep Time

5 min

Servings

~30 cups (50g)

## Tasting Notes

💙

Cobalt First Pour

Aroma

The dry flowers smell faintly green and herbaceous; the brewed cup is what surprises — a deep, saturated blue that doesn't look like food.

🍋

The Magenta Switch

Reaction

Squeeze a quarter-lemon into the warm cup. The infusion shifts through violet, settles at magenta. The change happens in seconds and reverses if the acid dilutes.

🌿

Earthy-Floral Finish

Body

The flavour is mild — closer to a wet hay or alfalfa note than to a perfumed flower. Sweetened or paired with citrus is where the cup actually drinks well.

## How to Brew

01

Measure

One heaped teaspoon of dried flowers (about 2g) per 8oz cup. The flowers are light; they take more spoonfuls than you'd think.

02

Boiling Water

Bring water to a full boil. Pour over the flowers in a glass cup or teapot — you want to see the colour develop. The infusion turns blue within 30 seconds.

03

Steep 5 Minutes

Five minutes gives a saturated cobalt blue. Strain into a clean cup. To trigger the colour change, squeeze fresh lemon at the table — the show is part of the cup.

Water

100°C

Time

5 min

Per Cup

1 heaped tsp

Brew strong, let cool, then pour over ice with a slice of lemon balanced on the rim. The drinker stirs and the colour changes — that's the cocktail-style serve.

## About the Tea

🦋

Butterfly Pea Flower

The Pigment

Whole dried buds and petals of Clitoria ternatea, a flowering vine native to Southeast Asia. The blue colour is anthocyanin — the same pigment family that gives blueberries and red cabbage their hue.

🍋

Lemon (Optional Partner)

The Trigger

Not in the bag, but central to the cup. Half a lemon's juice rotates the anthocyanin pigments and changes the colour. Lime works the same way; orange does not (not acidic enough).

💧

Glass Vessel

The Stage

Worth using a clear glass cup or teapot. The colour is the point — opaque ceramic hides what makes this tea what it is.

In the tin

Dried butterfly blue pea flowers (Clitoria ternatea).

Origin & Sourcing

Butterfly Blue Pea is harvested from cultivated vines across Thailand and neighbouring Southeast Asian countries, where the flower has been used as a natural food colorant for centuries before the West discovered it. Dried whole-flower grade for the Sampson shelf.

## Images
- https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0571/5319/2067/files/butterfly-blue-pea-tea-1054487.jpg?v=1780653428
- https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0571/5319/2067/files/butterfly-blue-pea-tea-9895723.jpg?v=1780653428