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Over the years we all have come across various type of teas like Black Green, Masala and White teas, but have you ever heard of Blue Tea? Seems a bit weird for a tea to have that name, right? Made by infusing Butterfly Pea flowers, Blue tea (Aparajita or Neelkanth) is named after its beautiful azure blue hue. When infused in hot water with lemon in it, this flower gives the famous blue color to the beverage. This tea has a distinct floral aroma that gives it an earthy and woody flavour, similar to green tea in some ways.
This super beverage is also a caffeine-free herbal concoction packed with antioxidants and is also rich in Anthocyanins, which are compounds responsible for its unique blue colour. For this reason, manufacturers also use Butterfly Pea flower in cosmetics and as a natural dye for foods, drinks, and textiles.
The flowers are also commonly brewed into an herbal tea, often alongside ingredients like lemongrass, honey, and lemon. When the acidity of the Pea flower tea changes, the color changes as well. This quality makes butterfly pea flower a popular ingredient among mixologists for specialty cocktails. Recently, the flower made its way into the cocktail world, where it's used to make Blue Gin.
According to the Journal of Pharmacological Reports, Butterfly Pea flower is a common ingredient in rice-based recipes, such as Nasi Kerabu in Malaysia and rice cakes in Singapore.
Blue tea has been available in the market since long but now thanks to social media, food bloggers and travel bloggers, these teas are very popular and are widely available for consumption at retail stores, supermarkets and online market places. They are regularly used by tea aficionados across the globe for their various health benefits too.
According to Verified Market Research, the herbal tea market was valued at $3289.67 million in 2020 and is projected to reach $4877.80 million by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 4.89 percent from 2021 to 2028.
India is second only to China in terms of acceptance of teas that have been blended with spices, fruit bits, flower petals, herbs, and a whole array of botanicals.
Some of the health benefits of Blue Tea are as follow:
Blue tea is believed to aid in bringing down fever by dilating the blood vessels right beneath the skin. This would enable the air to cool the blood more easily.
High dosage of blue pea flowers has had beneficial anxiolytic effects in humans and has helped the body deal with stress.
The blue flowers are rich in flavonoids, which are powerful antioxidants with anti-inflammatory properties. They also help boost immunity.
Blue tea can help give relief from cough, cold and asthma, as it acts as an expectorant. In other words, helps clear the mucus from airways, lungs and trachea.
Blue tea has garnered a lot of interest across the world and this can be attributed to the memory-boosting properties it has. Studies have shown that the Blue Pea flowers assist the memory and brain function as they help increase Acetylcholine (a Neurotransmitter).
The rich color of blue tea indicates the high quantity of antioxidants in it. Antioxidants reduce the risk of cell damage, they are also known to slow down the effects of ageing on skin and hair.
Butterfly pea flowers help inhibit glucose uptake from food and thus, help treat type II diabetes.
The benefits of having blue tea are not just internal in nature, they have a number of external benefits too, like for the skin and overall beauty. Some of them are enumerated below:
At Golden Tips stores, both physical and online, blue tea has emerged as one of our bestsellers. It has overtaken our previous hot-sellers and this trend is here to stay. We have introduced other flower blends too in our product portfolio like Chamomile, Hibiscus, Rose, Jasmine, Lavender but have given them an 'Indian Spin'.
The article is written by Madhav Sarda, Expert Tea Taster and Managing Director of Golden Tips Teas.
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