Butterfly Blue Matcha

Whistling Kettle is my all-time favorite tea supplier. Unfortunately, this is the worst tasting drink I've ever made in my life. Unlike the pinned comment who INSISTS that matcha is just a processing technique, this is absolutely not true. Matcha is specifically shade-grown camellia sinensis leaves that are dried and powdered. Hojicha powder isn't called hojicha matcha, it's just hojicha powder. They say it clearly in the description: "100% pure butterfly pea flower is ground into a fine powder." THERE IS NO MATCHA IN THIS PRODUCT. Do not expect it to taste like, look like, feel like, or brew like matcha. It is NOT matcha. I knew this when buying it, but I wanted to make that clear because some of the reviewers here did not realize this.

As for the color, sure, it's gorgeous, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the actual flavor of butterfly pea flower is quite disgusting (through no fault of Whistling Kettle, obviously). Your best bet is to mix this into other things for the color, as thankfully the flavor isn't strong. I brewed this up using the ratio for matcha in tea ceremony (I'm a practitioner) and it was so awful my partner and I both had to spit it out and dump the rest down the drain. I experimented with adding milk or lemon, but it was pretty terrible. MAYBE in something like a banana smoothie I could see it working, simply to give color though.

The only thing I fault the company for here is daring to call all these powders 'matcha' when they have nothing to do with matcha. Powder + water does NOT. EQUAL. MATCHA. I'll say this as many times and as loudly as needed! Stop trying to make this a thing, it is clearly confusing to customers who expect green tea and are getting powdered flowers!

I see a lot of people saying they don’t taste much matcha, but matcha is just the way the tea is made ie- full tea leaf/flower ground into fine powder. The green matcha is specific type of leaf etc hence the “ceremonial” and other types. If you’ve never had butterfly pea tea, understand this is just that. It won’t taste like ceremonial matcha. Butterfly pea is UNBELIEVABLY good for you in so many many ways… and the color is GORGEOUS! I hope this helps anyone looking to buy!!

Strange color!

I adore all things matcha and I've been seeing all these beautiful blue drinks so I was so excited to try this. It delivered on color, the blue was so pretty to look at it but it didn't have much flavor. I thought maybe I diluted it too much so I tried a second one in a smaller cup with less milk, but it still didn't have much flavor and I couldn't really detect any "matcha" so I ended up adding a tsp of Blueberry matcha powder and a tsp of sugar free Blueberry syrup. I would purchase again for the color because its fun and whimsical.