Starbucks Strawberry Acai Refresher, reviewed

One of the new additions to the Starbucks summer lineup is the Strawberry Acai Refresher. I am a big fan of the Refreshers during the summer because they are both fruity and thirst-quenching, sometimes moreso than regular iced tea, but still offer a little bit of a pick-me-up thanks to the green coffee extract that is in them. One hot afternoon last week, I noticed this new refresher flavor on the menu boards at my local store. Most of their signage was dedicated to the Mango Black Tea Lemonade (delicious, by the way) and this drink wasn’t getting hyped as heavily. The drink actually starts with a strawberry acai juice concentrate, which is diluted with water and shaken with ice and dehydrated strawberries. The strawberries plump back up while they’re in the drink, giving each beverage a fun look that reminds me of sangria.

The drink tastes very similar to strawberry lemonade, with a subtle tartness and a lot of berry flavor. I loved it at first sip and thought it was a great addition to the current roster of Refreshers. It seemed a bit sweeter than the Berry Hibiscus refresher, but that could just have been due to how intense the strawberry flavor seemed. If you don’t like strawberries (for some reason), you can go ahead and skip this drink because that is the dominant flavor.

Since strawberries are a versatile fruit, this drink base is a good one to mix and match with other flavors in the summer lineup. For instance, you could ask to add mango syrup to your strawberry Refresher or strawberry acai to your passion iced tea for another fruity summer drink options. Or, like me, you could simply enjoy as many of these as possible while they’re around.