Homemade Starbucks Copycat Tropical Butterfly Drink

If you like the Starbucks new Tropical Butterfly Refresher, you’ll love our homemade copycat version that’s even more flavorful! Our version still has the mango popping boba, tropical passion fruit, and guava flavors, and the beautiful butterfly pea flower color on top.

My daughter and I recently tried Starbucks’ new Tropical Butterfly Refresher, and we were both excited to try it since it looked so pretty and sounded delicious. She had the coconut milk version, and I had the lemonade base, and we both found it… underwhelming.

I loved the concept, but it just wasn’t as flavorful as I was hoping (dare I say it was rather bland?). My daughter thought the same, and we both hoped for more flavor. So I decided to make my own homemade version of their summer drink.

Our version is really easy to make, it’s visually stunning, and I personally think our version is so much more flavorful and colorful! Our recipe still has the mango popping boba, guava and passionfruit flavors, and a hint of coconut water with that gorgeous purple-blue from butterfly pea flower powder.

Why we love this recipe

If you want to make this drink completely natural, you can leave out the popping boba for a drink that’s 100% juice, fruit pulp (if you choose to keep that in there), and butterfly pea flower powder. Nothing else!

Another great reason to make this at home: you can enjoy this drink any time of year, even when the Starbucks drink menu changes. Plus, this recipe is caffeine-free, so you can drink this in the evening if you want.

How to make a Starbucks copycat tropical butterfly drink

Our recipe is designed for single servings, so if you want to make more than one serving, you’ll want to still portion everything in multiple glasses, rather than mixing them in a big pitcher, so you can keep those beautiful color layers in the drink.

• First, add the mango popping boba to the bottom of your drink glass. I used one packet of the Yulu popping boba, but you can use 2 packets if you want more.
• Add the ice on top of the boba/popping pearls, then pour the passion fruit juice over the ice.
• Next, pour the pink guava juice into the glass.
• In a separate glass, use a whisk or frother to mix the coconut water and a pinch of butterfly pea flower powder. It will make a purple-blue coconut water.
• Pour the colored coconut water over the drink and serve immediately with a boba straw.

Starbucks offers a lemonade base or a coconut milk base for theirs, but ours is just the fruit juices. You can add a splash of coconut milk or lemonade to our recipe if you want, but we haven’t tried this ourselves, so I’m not sure how it would turn out.

What juices should I use for this recipe?

We used the Nilo brand juices for this recipe, including the pink guava juice, the passionfruit juice (which includes mango pulp), and their coconut water.

I’ve found the Nilo juices to be really good for drinks like this, they are delicious tasting and 100% juice, unlike “nectars” you can buy at the store that usually include added sugars. These also include pulp, so if you don’t want the pulp in your drink, you can strain the juice while adding it to your drink glass.

However, if you can’t find these juices, you can use guava nectar instead and other brands of coconut water and passionfruit juice. I used Kern’s guava nectar in one batch of these drinks, and it also turned out good, so canned nectars are an option, too.

Pin for later!