If you love going to
Jump to:
- ❤️ Why you'll love this recipe
- ❓What are Starbucks Refreshers?
- ❓What's in a Strawberry Acai Refresher?
- 🗒 Ingredients
- 🍓 How to make strawberry acai base
- 🥤How to make Strawberry Acai Refresher
- 💡Modifications
- 🥣 Other ways to use base
- 🕐 How to store
- 💭 How to make more
- ☕️ Do Refreshers contain caffeine?
- ☕️ More Starbucks copycat recipes
- 📖 Recipe
- 💬 Comments
You have NO idea how excited I am to bring you this recipe today! In part, because it's absolutely delicious. And in part, because I need a little break from drinking Strawberry Acai Refreshers.
Let's just say I did A LOT of testing to bring this recipe to you. And I'm happy to say that I think I've created a copycat recipe as close as can possibly be to the original
In finally creating the best Strawberry Acai Refresher recipe possible, I also had to go back and revise my Starbucks Pink Drink recipe. Because the Pink Drink is essentially just Strawberry Acai Refresher base with coconut milk mixed in.
I might need a slight break from Refreshers and Pink Drinks, but I'm so thrilled to have these two
❤️ Why you'll love this recipe
If you're a fan of
I've tried a lot of different copycat recipes and none of them taste quite like what you get at
It's easy to make and once you make the base, you can keep it in your fridge and easily whip up a Refresher whenever the craving hits!
❓What are Starbucks Refreshers?
Refreshers are iced
They're a great alternative for anyone who wants a
Strawberry Acai is the most popular Refresher flavor, but other flavors include Mango Dragonfruit and Pineapple Passionfruit (the Kiwi Starfruit Refresher was recently discontinued).
The bases are combined with water to make Refreshers. But they can also be combined with coconut milk (for the Pink Drink, Dragon Drink, Paradise Drink, and Star Drink) or with lemonade with a sweeter drink. I have copycat recipes for almost all of them!
Contrary to what many think, Refreshers are not tea. They're listed on
❓What's in a Strawberry Acai Refresher?
When developing this recipe, I first looked at exactly what is in a Strawberry Acai Refresher.
The ingredients include a strawberry acai base, ice, and freeze-dried strawberries.
And the ingredients for the base are listed as water, sugar, white grape juice concentrate, citric acid, natural flavors, natural green coffee flavor, fruit and vegetable juice, and rebaudioside A (which is basically a form of Stevia).
Since sugar and various forms of sugar were listed, the first time I made the base, I used strawberries, white grape juice, and granulated sugar to make a syrup. But it ended up being way too sweet. I find the Refresher to be a bit more on the tart side and since I was using real strawberries, which have sugar, and a sugar-y white grape juice, it was too much.
So, I decided to omit sugar from the recipe and just uses the white grape juice instead. This worked perfectly and gave me the base I was looking for.
However, if you like a sweeter drink, you can certainly add additional sugar to your base as you're making it.
🗒 Ingredients
To make this drink as close to the original as possible, you will need a few special ingredients that can easily be purchased online. If you don't want to purchase them, I do share some modifications later in this post that will allow you to still make a delicious drink without them!
Here's everything you need (be sure to check out the recipe card at the bottom of this post for ingredient amounts and full recipe instructions):
- White grape juice (I use Welch's)
- Strawberries
- Acai berry powder
- Passion fruit extract powder
- Green coffee extract powder
- Lemon juice
- Freeze-Dried Strawberries
- Water
🍓 How to make strawberry acai base
The base is very easy to make. And once you make it, you can keep it in your fridge and have a Refresher whenever the urge hits!
To start, combine white grape juice and sliced strawberries in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.
Lower to a simmer and let mixture simmer for 10 minutes, until strawberries are broken down.
Remove saucepan from heat and strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a heatproof bowl.
Press down on strawberries with a wooden spoon to extract as much liquid as possible.
Discard strawberries or use them for something else.
Pour syrup back into saucepan and return to low heat.
Stir in acai powder, green coffee extract powder, and passion fruit powder until powders have dissolved as much as possible.
Most acai powders don't totally dissolve into liquid, so you will have some granules in your mixture. This is normal, but if it bothers you, you can probably try adding a dash of acai extract instead (I haven't personally tried this).
Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.
And pour mixture back into heat-proof bowl or into a large mason jar. Place in the fridge until it's cooled.
And your base is ready to be made into the Refresher!
🥤How to make Strawberry Acai Refresher
I like to start by putting freeze-dried strawberries into a cup and then filling the cup with ice.
Pour about ½ cup of the base and ½ cup of water into an ice filled shaker and shake well to combine.
And pour into glass.
At this point you should take a sip and see if it's to your liking! Some people like it sweeter and some people like it a bit more toned down.
But for me, a 1:1 base to water ratio is perfect.
💡Modifications
There are plenty of modifications you can make to this drink if you don't have all the ingredients or if you want to tweak it a bit. Here are some ideas:
- If you don't care about adding caffeine into the Refresher, you can skip the green coffee extract. It doesn't add any flavor, so it's really just a way to add caffeine.
- If you don't have acai powder or passion fruit powder, this drink will still be delicious. In my opinion, both powders add some depth of flavor and make it closer to the original, but you can still make a pretty tasty drink without them.
- The freeze-dried strawberries do add a bit of an extra tart and fruity flavor to the drink, but just add some sliced fresh strawberries if you don't have any.
- Some people say they've enjoyed making the drink's base with apple juice instead of white grape juice.
- If you want a sweeter drink, include ½ cup sugar in your white grape juice and strawberry mixture. This will turn the base into a thicker syrup and it will be sweet and delicious!
- If you've already made the base, but once you mix it, you want it to be sweeter without adding more base, add in a little simple syrup or another liquid sweetener like agave or honey.
🥣 Other ways to use base
If you love the idea of a strawberry acai drink, but want something a bit different than the typical Refresher, there's lots you can do.
Lots of people order the Strawberry Acai Lemonade, which is basically just this base combined with lemonade instead of water. If you don't think the Refresher is sweet enough, definitely try mixing the base with lemonade instead (and check out my recipe for the drink)!
Of course, the Pink Drink is also a form of this drink. All you have to do is replace the water with sweetened coconut milk.
Those are the drinks that
🕐 How to store
I recommend storing the Refresher base in a large mason jar in your fridge. When stored properly, it should last about 2 weeks.
💭 How to make more
If you want to enjoy a Strawberry Acai Refresher every day, you can easily make a bigger batch of the refresher base by simply doubling or tripling all of the ingredients in the recipe.
The base recipe I provide makes about 4 drinks total.
☕️ Do Refreshers contain caffeine?
Yes! Some people think that because the drinks are juice-based, they're caffeine free, but Refreshers actually contain a fair amount of caffeine (about 45 milligrams in a grande) due to the addition of green coffee extract.
The green coffee extract doesn't add any flavor to the drink, so if you're making it at home and would prefer to make a caffeine-free drink, you can certainly leave it out.
☕️ More Starbucks copycat recipes
I'm a big fan of treating myself at
- Pink Drink
- Mango Dragonfruit Refresher
- Dragon Drink
- Pineapple Passionfruit Refresher
- Paradise Drink
- Iced Toasted Vanilla Oatmilk Shaken Espresso
- Pistachio Latte
- Chocolate Covered Strawberry Frappuccino
- Apple Crisp Macchiato
- Iced Sugar Cookie Almond Milk Latte
- Shaken Watermelon and Passion Tea
- Strawberry Puppuccino (for dogs!)
- Green Tea Frappuccino (from Lord Byron's Kitchen)
If you're a fan of the Strawberry Acai Refresher at
📖 Recipe
Strawberry Acai Refresher
Ingredients
- ½ cup Strawberry Acai Base (recipe below)
- ½ cup water
- Ice
- Freeze-dried strawberries
Strawberry Acai Base
- 2 ¼ cups white grape juice
- 1 cup hulled and sliced strawberries
- ½ teaspoon acai powder
- ½ teaspoon green coffee extract powder
- ¼ teaspoon passionfruit powder
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
Instructions
- Add about ½ cup strawberry acai base and ½ cup water to an ice-filled shaker. Shake well to combine.
- Pour mixture into an ice-filled glass with freeze-dried strawberries.
- Feel free to make alterations based on your sweetness preferences. Add more of the base for a sweeter drink and less for a less sweet drink.
Strawberry Acai Base
- Combine white grape juice and sliced strawberries in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.
- Lower to a simmer and let mixture simmer for 10 minutes, until strawberries are breaking down.
- Remove from heat and strain mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a heatproof bowl. Press down on strawberries with a wooden spoon to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard strawberries.
- Pour mixture back into saucepan and return to low heat. Stir in acai powder, green coffee extract powder, and passionfruit powder until powders have dissolved as much as possible (acai powder is tough to fully dissolve, so there will be some granules remaining).
- Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice. Return to heatproof bowl or pour into large mason jar and put in fridge to cool completely.
Notes
- This recipe for Strawberry Acai Base makes enough for about 4 full drinks if using ½ cup of base per drink.
- The base should keep in your fridge for about 2 weeks.
- If you don't want caffeine in your Refresher, you can leave out the green coffee extract as it doesn't change the flavor.
- If you don't have acai powder or passion fruit powder, the Refresher will still be delicious!
- Mix strawberry acai base with lemonade for a sweet, tart drink or mix with sweetened coconut milk for a pink drink.
Useful Products
View Web Story for this recipe.
Melanie says
I've tried a bunch of different recipes and this is the closest I've found since it's not made with tea like most seem to be. I like that I can make a big batch of it and then mix it with water whenever I want a refresher! I left the coffee extract out since I don't care about caffeine. Yummy!
R. says
Omg!!! This is the best copycat that I have found. Actually I like this recipe better than Starbucks because it doesn't have all the extra junk. Thank you! You made day with this one!
Amy Joslin says
This is amazing!! Easy to make and inexpensive. Absolutely delicious!
Megan Edgeworth says
This doesn’t show the amounts of anything
Sues says
Hi Megan- I’m not sure what you mean- the recipe card has everything you need to know for the recipe (you can click the “jump to recipe” button at the top of the post to be taken directly to it). I hope that helps!
Jada says
Any way around the expensive powders?
Sues says
Hi Jada- Yes, I mention in my post that if you don't have the acai and passionfruit powders, the drink will still be delicious! It won't have as much depth of flavor as the original, but will still be great. And the green coffee extract just adds caffeine, so if you don't care about that, you can leave it out.
Jeannette says
Can you use frozen strawberries to make the base?
Sues says
Hi Jeanette- Yes, frozen strawberries should work just fine!
Na says
I taste white grape juice and not much else. And grape juice is gross. I hate wasting food or money so Im trying to find how to fix it so I can drink it. The Starbucks original doesn't have white grape juice in it...
Sues says
Hi Na- I'm sorry to hear that! I don't love white grape juice either, but if your strawberries are sweet and juicy, they should transform that flavor. Starbucks does use white grape juice concentrate as a main ingredient in their Strawberry Acai Refresher, which is why I used the juice here. However, you can make more of a strawberry simple syrup by replacing the grape juice with water and a cup or so of sugar to eliminate that flavor all together. I hope that helps!
Bethany says
I think it would taste great, but the green coffee bean extract I got smells bad and tastes bad. I feel like it is flavorless in the real refresher. I bought Pure brand. Is the Bulk Supplements brand better? I’m making it for caffeine, so I don’t want to leave it out. I think this recipe has potential, but the green coffee extract powder is just so bad.
Sues says
Hi Bethany- That's so interesting! I actually don't notice the green coffee bean extract when it's added to the drink (I've had it with and without). I looked at the reviews for the Bulk Supplements brand and some people say it's flavorless and others say it tastes a bit grassy/earthy. I did a little research I guess it's hard to find a totally flavorless caffeine, but you might want to try a caffeine powder. It can add some bitterness, but maybe that's better than grassiness?
Kat says
Hey Queen,
I was wondering what is the best substitute for white grape juice?
I can’t find it anywhere! I just wanted your opinion on what else I could use.
Sues says
Hi Kat! I know some people have used apple juice instead. Let me know how it works for you!
Tamura says
Hello has anyone made a pitcher for a party? I am wondering if it looses or changes the flavor if everything was mixed together in a dispenser.
Kellie says
I like strawberry acai refreshers with lemonade, but my daughter is a huge fan. We made this exactly as stated and found that it was much closer to the refreshers that we are getting from Starbucks near us if we do a 1:2 ratio of base to lemonade as opposed to a 1:1. Thanks for the recipe!