Strawberry Acai Lemonade Refresher (Starbucks Copycat)

Make your own Starbucks strawberry acai lemonade refresher right at home with this simple recipe! This version uses easy-to-find ingredients and makes for a much healthier and cheaper refreshing drink than the store-bought one.

This new recipe is for all Starbucks fans!

I love making any kind of fruit-flavored water, such as this strawberry kiwi water, but this healthy lemonade recipe might be my new favorite! 

My pineapple slush is definitively another regular in our house, but whenever we feel like a lemonade, then I make this strawberry Açai lemonade refresher recipe. It is very appetizing with a bright red hue and carries a nice tart flavor that's well-balanced with sweet fresh summer fruits.

This recipe is also another pursuit to copycat some of Starbucks's popular refreshing favorite drinks. Just like this dragon fruit lemonade, I got inspired by one of their lemonade refreshers, but also decided to give it a healthy twist with ingredients that are easier to find.

And what's so great about preparing this lemonade yourself is that you can make it as fruity, sweet and lemony as you wish! Once you have the freeze-dried acai powder, then you are just a blend away from making your own Starbucks strawberry acai refresher drink right at home!

This strawberry lemonade combines amazing sweet strawberry flavors with a mild tartness from the Acai and freshly squeezed lemon juice, plus sweetened to taste. Makes for such an amazing caffeine-free drink to cool off on a hot summer day.

Hope you give it a try! ❤️

More homemade lemonade recipes!

• Coconut water lemonade
• Dragon fruit lemonade
• Blueberry lavender lemonade
• Matcha lemonade

What's to love about this drink

• Healthy and free of refined sugar, simple syrup or juice
• Caffeine-free
• Made using real strawberries and other natural flavors
• Easy and quick to make your own strawberry acai refresher
• Only 4 ingredients!
• Can be made ahead
• Super refreshing and flavorful
• Easy to customize to your taste
• Tastes just like Starbucks' strawberry acai lemonade from the coffee shop, but at a fraction of the cost!

Starbucks strawberry acai lemonade refresher copycat recipe

The Starbucks strawberry acai lemonade drink is made with sugar, white grape juice (which means more sugar), freeze-dried strawberries, green coffee flavor and natural flavor. It does make for a fun refreshing drink, but definitively could be made much healthier. So, I changed slightly the ingredients when I made it at home and realized how much the flavors were still very similar to the drink from the store. 

So instead of sugar and concentrated juice, you can add just enough maple syrup (or use agave nectar if you don't want any maple flavor) to sweeten it slightly. Also, I think that using fresh strawberries in place of freeze-dried fruits boosts the flavor, adds volume and enhances the color of your drink. 

It is not clear online what ingredient brings the acai flavor, but I found that freeze-dried acai powder was amazing to give this drink amazing acai flavors!

What is Acai 

Acai berry is a small dark-blue fruit the size of a small grape that comes from the acai palm trees growing in countries like Brasil, Ecuador and Venezuela (native to the rainforests of South America). This small fruit recently gained more popularity for its much-praised health benefits, including powerful antioxidant effects.

What kind of acai to use for this recipe

To help keep the nutritional values from the fruit as intact as possible during exportation, the acai berries are usually either sent freeze-dried (powder form) or frozen into a purée (the fresh fruit tends to go bad with long-distance traveling). 

I find the acai powder to be more convenient and easy to store than the frozen one. I add spoonfuls of it into my smoothies, oatmeal bowls and desserts and don't need to add much of it to turn anything into a beautiful purple with a nice fruity flavor. The frozen acai purée works great for smoothies and is better for making the popular frozen acai bowl.

I tested this lemonade with the freeze-dried acai powder from FGO Organic and loved how well it blended into the drink. If a frozen purée is all you have, then I believe it would work well too, just make sure nothing else was added to it, especially sugar.

Ingredients you will need

• Fresh strawberries: give the lemonade such a great fresh flavor. You will need a whole cup of fruit for this recipe.
• Freeze-dried acai powder: easy to find online and can sometimes be found in your local grocery store.
• Fresh lemon: freshly squeezed lemon juice will give the lemonade such better flavor compared to store-bought juice. 
• Sweetener: like maple syrup or agave. You can add as much as you want depending on how sweet you want your lemonade to be.
• Water

How to make this strawberry acai lemonade refresher

Step 1: Blend the fruits

Clean and hull the strawberries, then transfer to a blender along with the acai powder and ½ cup of water. Blend until very smooth, it should give you a thin strawberry puree. This is the strawberry acai base.

Step 2: Strain the strawberry acai syrup

Place a fine mesh colander over a bowl and pour the strawberry mixture over. Use the back of a spoon to help the fruit purée drain into the bowl and discard the remaining tiny seeds and thick pulp stuck in the colander. You can use the refresher base right away or store in the fridge for later.

Step 3: Combine and finish up the lemonade

In a pitcher, combine the filtered strawberry acai purée with the remaining 2 ½ cups of water, lemon juice and sweetener. Stir well and taste to see if you would like a sweeter drink. Feel free to add more lemon juice too if you enjoy tart flavors. I recommend transferring the lemonade to the fridge until ready to serve so it has some time to chill first.

Helpful tips

• Straining the strawberry purée can be skipped, but I found the texture of the lemonade slightly better when doing so (most of the tiny seeds are removed during that simple step).
• I highly recommend to chill your lemonade until ice cold before serving for the best refreshing effect. If you want to serve it right away after making it, then pour over a glass filled with ice cubes.
• If you have lemonade, then use it instead of the water and skip on the freshly squeezed lemon juice (might want to skip of the sweetener too if your lemonade is already sweetened).
• You can make a pink drink by adding some coconut milk to it (yum!).

Serving suggestions and storage tips

Keep the lemonade in the fridge for up to 5 days in a sealed jar (such as a mason jar) or any airtight container. Stir well before serving.

When serving, pour the lemonade over a glass filled with ice cubes and add some fresh strawberries and lemon slices for a nice look.

Favorite adds-on

This Starbucks pink drink is so easy to customize with more ingredients. Here are a few ideas:

• Frozen lemonade: blend the lemonade with a handful of ice cubes to make a slushie consistency! Or, blend with frozen strawberries!
• Passion fruit: for a nice boost in tropical flavor, then add some passion fruit syrup! If doing so, then add less of the maple syrup.
• Mango: use this mango coulis to add more flavor to your favorite drink.
• Sparkly lemonade: if you like fizzy drinks, then pour some sparkling water into your lemonade as well.

FAQs

Other refreshing drinks

• Chia seed tea
• Coconut milkshake
• Pineapple slush
• Vegan horchata
• Piña colada mocktail
• Virgin strawberry mojito
• Ginger turmeric glowing juice
• Oolong peach iced tea
• Cranberry orange mocktail
• Mango water
• Lemon chia seed water
• Watermelon mojito mocktail

I hope you enjoy this strawberry acai lemonade refresher as much as we do! If you try it, please leave a comment below and rate the recipe to let me know how it was. Your feedback is so helpful!

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