17 Best Starbucks Cold Foam Drinks
What’s better than the smooth creaminess of Starbucks’ Cold Brew drinks? A Starbucks Cold Brew drink with a topping of delicious foam! However, Starbucks offers so many varieties of flavor, you could wonder: what are the 17 Best Starbucks Cold Foam Drinks?
Starbucks’ Cold Foam, introduced in 2018, is made with a base of Vanilla Sweet Cream, which is formed with Heavy Whipping Cream and vanilla and whipped into a semi-solid foam. Any of Starbucks’ 16 syrup flavors can be added to this foam to create delicious Cold Foam Cold Brew recipes, both official and invented by customers.
In this article we’ll cover some of Starbucks’ most popular Cold Foam recipes, not just for Cold Brew, but for some of their more classic favorites!
The Top 17 Best Starbucks Cold Foam Drinks
Starbucks has several Cold Brew recipes featuring a variety of Cold Foam toppings, each with a unique flavor. However, some of the best Cold Foam options aren’t on Starbucks’ menu, but were created by customers who couldn’t get enough of that tasty foam! The best Cold Foam recipes are listed below:
- Salted Caramel Cold Foam CB
- Violet Drink with CF
- Iced Americano with Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Foam
- Honey Almondmilk Nitro Cold Brew
- Cold Brew with Cascara Cold Foam
- Iced White Chocolate Mocha
- Dragon Drink with Cold Foam
- Iced Mocha with Raspberry Cold Foam
- Iced Caffe Mocha
- Iced Cinnamon Dolce Latte
- Iced Matcha Tea Latte with Cold Foam
- Iced London Fog Tea Latte with Cold Foam
- Vanilla Sweet Cream Nitro Cold Brew
- Pink Drink with Cold Foam
- Nitro Cold Brew with Cascara Cold Foam
- Salted Caramel Nitro Cold Brew
- Iced Starbucks Blonde Cappuccino with Cold Foam
Let’s get started on looking more closely at each of these delicious recipies, how to order them, and what they include!
1. Salted Caramel Cold Foam CB
The Cold Brew with Salted Caramel foam is Starbucks’ second-ever official Cold Foam recipe, and it has stood the test of time since being introduced as a seasonal beverage! Topping Starbucks’ year-round, highly-caffeinated Cold Brew, the Salted Caramel Cream Cold Brew is sweet but delicious.
The caramel content is actually not in the main body of the drink, but is found exclusively in the foam, along with Starbucks’ special sea salt mixture. The only sweetness in the Cold Brew is the vanilla flavoring pumped into the bottom of the cup. The drink is not meant to be stirred up, but enjoyed by sipping the robust Cold Brew through the layer of sweet, salty foam!
2. Violet Drink with CF
The Violet Drink is an official placeholder on the Starbucks menu. However, adding Cold Foam to make a killer recipe was the customers’ idea! The Violet Drink is made by combining Starbucks’ Very Berry Refresher recipe with a splash or two of coconut milk.
This means that not only does the Violet Drink contain blackberries, Green Tea, and coconut milk, but an ice cream-like topping to sip it through! It looks lovely, as well, colored brightly purple.
It is important to note that the Violet Drink’s original recipe is dairy-free thanks to the coconut milk; adding Cold Foam makes it compromised and unsafe to drink for those with a dairy allergy.
3. Iced Americano with Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Foam
The Iced Americano features Starbucks’ regular Espresso (though the smoother and more-caffeinated blonde variant can be requested!) over a little ice water and chilled for warm days. Typically, the drink is not very sweet on it’s own and is meant for those who like a strong, bitter coffee flavor.
However, the Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Foam transforms this drink into a sweeter, milkier delight that tastes something like dessert!
4. Honey Almondmilk Nitro Cold Brew with Cold Foam
The Honey Almondmilk Nitro Cold Brew typically doesn’t get any Cold Foam in it’s classic form. Instead, all of the sweetness of the drink comes from the Honey Blend Syrup on the bottom, the natural sweeter notes in the Cold Brew roast, and the light sweetness of the almondmilk.
However, adding Cold Foam to this beverage can bring the sweetness to the forefront of your palette. It is especially helpful for those who want the caffeine of the Nitro Cold Brew, but need a little something to disguise the coffee flavor.
It is, again, important to note that before adding Cold Foam this drink is dairy-free, but after adding Cold Foam it is an allergen to those who are lactose intolerant.
5. Cold Brew with Cascara Cold Foam
Like the Nitro Cold Brew, a regular Cold Brew can be given a much more mild and treat-like flavor with Cold Foam on top. However, a reason to order this instead of the Nitro variant is that a Nitro can only be ordered as a Tall (small) or a Grande (medium,) while a regular Cold Brew comes in the largest sizes, too!
The Cascara element of Starbucks coffee is no longer available, though it once made a great addition to Cold Brew. However, you can still achieve some of the same flavor by asking for the Cold Foam to be made with an affogato blonde shot of espresso. This will up your caffeine content, but may give you some of that long-lost cascara flavoring!
6. Chilled White Mocha With Cold Foam
The Iced White Chocolate Mocha is a long-standing official recipe of Starbucks. Offering the sweeter White Chocolate sauce, it otherwise follows the same recipe as the regular Mocha, incorporating milk, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream. The iced version is chilled.
Rather than whipped cream, consider adding even more rich sugary flavoring by topping the beverage with Cold Foam!
7. Dragon Drink with Cold Foam
Much like the Violet Drink, this beverage starts out by adding Coconut Milk to Satrbucks’ already-popular Mango Dragonfruit Refresher recipe. The Mango Dragonfruit is made with Mango tea base, dragonfruit pieces, and ice all shaken together until fully incorporated and a bright purple in color.
This drink is already sweet enough on it’s own, but by adding coconut milk and Cold Foam, it turns into something like fruit-flavored ice cream! This is, however, another dairy-free drink made dairy-filled by the Cold Foam element.
8. Iced Mocha with Raspberry Cold Foam
Perhaps one of the most genius recipes on this list is the Iced Mocha with Raspberry Cold Foam. Typically, this choice is much like a regular, chilled chocolate milk with espresso and whipped cream added in. However, by adding a pump or two of raspberry to vanilla sweet cream foam creates something that tastes like chocolate-covered fruit!
9. Iced Caffe Mocha with Cold Foam
Just like the White Chocolate Mocha, but with a hint more bitterness, the Iced Mocha with vanilla foam is a delicious choice. It combines dark but sweet chocolate with espresso and ice. If you’re not the biggest fan of raspberry or fruit flavors accompanying chocolate, simply ask for regular vanilla Cold Foam!
10. Iced Cinnamon Dolce Latte with Cold Foam
The Iced Cinnamon Dolce Latte is beloved for it’s hints of cinnamon and incredible-tasting dolce topping! The only thing that can make this espresso beverage better is the Cold Foam replacing the whipped cream.
11. Iced Matcha Tea Latte with Cold Foam
The Matcha Tea Latte is popularly ordered iced. Matcha is a green tea powder tasting something like sweet grass with multiple health benefits. Because it is a little on the strong and bitter side, customers are given the option to order the tea with sweetener.
Taking sweetness to the next level involves topping the beverage with CF, perfectly balancing the bitter taste with vanilla sugar! It is important to note that this beverage has very little caffeine.
12. Iced London Fog Tea Latte with Cold Foam
This drink is rarely ordered, so depending on the skill level and experience of your barista, you may need to be careful how you order it. The London Fog is created by first allowing English Breakfast Tea to steep in a hot cup for around 5 minutes, then pouring that over chilled 2% milk and adding ice and vanilla syrup.
The resulting milky tea is refreshing but manages to keep a warm, cozy flavor! It is only made better by the added notes of vanilla in a Cold Foam topping.
13. Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Foam Nitro Cold Brew
Be sure to add the phrase “Cold Foam” when ordering this beverage, or else you might simply get the Nitro Cold Brew with a pale splash of pure-liquid vanilla sweet cream. It may taste similar, but you don’t want to miss out on sipping Nitro Cold Brew through a nice, thick foam!
14. Pink Drink with Cold Foam
The last up in terms of Refreshers made with Cold Foam is the super-popular Pink Drink! A traditional Pink Drink is crafted by shaking Starbucks’ Strawberry Acai Tea and dried strawberries up with Coconut Milk. However, ordering it with Cold Foam adds a strawberry-ice cream-like element to the drink, though it does eliminate it as a dairy-free option.
15. Nitro Cold Brew with Cascara Cold Foam
As stated above, the Cascara part of the Cold Foam is sadly no longer available at Starbucks. However, just like wth the Cascara Cold Foam Cold Brew, a similar kick and flavor can be achieved by ordering the smooth Nitro Cold Brew with Cold Foam topped with a shot of Blonde espresso.
As before, though, watch out; you’re ordering a highly caffeinated, highly sweet beverage that is not for the faint of heart, however delicious it may be!
16. Salted Caramel Nitro Cold Brew
What’s better than the classic Salted Caramel Cold Brew? A Salted Caramel Nitro Cold Brew! The Nitro Cold brew is usually not served with any ice to amplify the beauty of watching nitrogen-infused foam cascade up and down the inside of the cup. Salted Caramel Cold Foam not only adds to this, but tastes incredible when combined with the smooth flavor!
17. Iced Starbucks Blonde Cappuccino with Cold Foam
It may seem odd to order a Cappuccino iced, since Cappuccino’s are marked by foamy, hot milk. However, Starbucks has found a way to foam their chilled milk, as well! Add to this the highly-caffeinated Blonde version of their espresso and the sweet, ice-cream-like component of their Cold Foam and you have a delicious drink sort of like a Coffee Milkshake.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, Starbucks’ Cold Foam, which is made with high amounts of vanilla and heavy whipping cream, adds a thick, fluffy topping much like ice cream to any of their cold drinks.
Some of these may already be sweet, such as the Iced Mocha, and some of them, like the Americano, may need their bitterness cut by Cold Foam. No matter what option you choose, Starbucks’ Cold Foam is a great ingredient to add to Starbucks’ wide variety of drinks!
10 Most Caffeinated Starbucks Drinks
Everyone loves achieving that much-needed caffeine buzz, and few places are more convenient for it than the worldwide chain, Starbucks! However, if you’re as passionate about coffee as I am, you may find yourself wondering: which is the most caffeinated Starbucks drink?
The most caffeinated Starbucks drink is a hot Blonde Roast, usually a Veranda blend, which has 475 milligrams of caffeine. The runner-up is a hot Pike Place roast at 410 milligrams, followed by Nitro Cold Brew. The Nitro ups the 360 milligrams of caffeine that a normal Cold Brew has by increasing the coffee-to-water ratio in the drink.
There’s more to Starbucks’ most caffeinated beverages than coffee and cold brew, though! In this article, we’ll not only provide you with a little information on how caffeine works but a list of the Top 10 Most Caffeinated Starbucks Drinks!
Top 10 Most Caffeinated Starbucks Drinks
The most caffeinated drinks in Starbucks are measured by how many milligrams of coffee the beverage has. This list won’t measure each beverage by the strength of flavor, but by how much of a caffeine buzz your body can get by drinking each! The list is found below:
- Venti Veranda Roast
- Nitro Cold Brew
- Regular Starbucks Cold Brew
- Iced Brown Sugar Oat Milk Shaken Espresso
- Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew
- Café Americano
- Quad Espresso
- Starbucks Iced Coffee
- Café Mocha
- Caramel Macchiato
Let’s take a closer look at each of the drinks on this list and what helps them pack such a caffeinated punch!
1. Venti Veranda Roast
With all of the highly-advertised drink recipes and sometimes complex names, it can be startling to learn that the most caffeinated beverage Starbucks serves is actually just plain drip coffee!
Though espresso technically has more milligrams of caffeine per ounce when compared to regular coffee, there simply aren’t very many ounces of espresso in any Starbucks recipe. By contrast, a venti, hot Starbucks coffee is twenty-six ounces. At around 16 milligrams of caffeine in every ounce, a Venti Blonde roast from Starbucks can have up to 475 milligrams altogether!
You may be wondering: why blonde, in particular? A blonde coffee roast like Starbucks’ Veranda recipe may have fewer oxidants and less of a “coffee” flavor than a regular roast, but it is more caffeinated.
In fact, blonde coffee beans roasted at Starbucks, as well as blonde espresso beans, are roasted at slightly cooler temperatures than regular beans. In addition, they aren’t roasted for quite as long. All of this combines to make blonde coffee like the Veranda Roast more caffeinated by around 65 milligrams!
Pike Place Roast
If you find yourself missing the less-smooth, more prominently flavored regular coffee when drinking Veranda, you can choose to drink Pike Place, instead. The Pike is Starbucks’ original, time-tested coffee brew, and it is only slightly less caffeinated than the Blonde.
At 410 milligrams of caffeine, the classic Pike Place is a great, simple coffee roast to try without losing the buzz of energy! If either Veranda or Pike turns out to be too strong in bitterness for you, don’t worry: Starbucks offers a variety of flavors, from Vanilla to Cinnamon Dolce, to sweeten the coffee with! Don’t forget cream, which can take the edge off of the flavor.
2. Nitro Cold Brew
Second on our list is technically the Nitro Cold Brew! The reason it makes 2nd place on a technicality lies in Starbucks’ “Grande-only” size policy.
You see, Starbucks’ Cold Brew recipe includes a whopping 360 milligrams of caffeine, but only when it is ordered in the large or “Venti” size. The Nitro recipe, which adds nitrogen gas to the beverage recipe, cannot be sold in a Venti size. So instead of getting a 26-ounce Venti of the caffeinated liquid, customers are limited to enjoying a 16-ounce Grande of the Nitro.
Still, if 16 ounces of the regular Cold Brew were compared with 16 ounces of the Nitro version, it is the nitrogen-infused drink that would have the most caffeine! The reason for this difference? To answer simply: one gets more ice than the other!
A Nitro Cold Brew from Starbucks is designed to be smooth and dark in flavor. The nitrogen gas brings that flavor out more prominently, and turns the already-smooth Cold Brew into an aerated, cascading hit! To preserve the cool-looking way the aerated foam at the top of the drink “cascades” down, Starbucks baristas do not include any ice in the beverage.
This means that although both Cold Brew and Nitro Cold Brew are made from the same caffeine base, the Grande Nitro will always have more caffeine than a Grande recipe of regular Cold Brew.
Altogether, Nitro Cold Brew has 280 milligrams of caffeine when ordered in it’s natural, Grande size.
3. Regular Starbucks Cold Brew
Speaking of the regular Starbucks Cold Brew, it’s because of the size variance alone that it came in third place under Nitro Cold Brew as far as caffeine content goes! When ordered in it’s largest size, the 26-ounce Venti, the Starbucks Cold Brew has 360 milligrams of caffeine.
One of the advantages to drinking Cold Brew instead of Iced Coffee, besides the higher amount of caffeine, is the flavor. If you’re not a fan of the bitterness most coffee drinks have to offer, the Cold Brew might be for you! Noted for it’s “smooth” flavor, Cold Brew from Starbucks usually has fruity notes and can be augmented by vanilla or popular flavored foam toppings!
4. Iced Brown Sugar Oat Milk Shaken Espresso
Finally, Espresso makes an appearance on our list of Caffeinated Drinks! As stated above, the reason espresso is not more caffeinated than regular coffee or even cold brew lies in the size of the beverage. Simply put, espresso just isn’t consumed in large quantities!
A typical Starbucks drink, like the Café Lattes and Café Mochas, only get 3 shots of Starbucks espresso; and only if ordered in the largest sizes! This only takes up around 3 fluid ounces of the 26-ounce beverage.
The caffeine levels can be increased by switching to Blonde Espresso, which is more caffeinated, but the fact is, there just isn’t much espresso content in any of Starbucks’ drinks. None, that is, except the Iced Brown Sugar Oat Milk Shaken Espresso!
The Iced Brown Sugar Oat Milk Shaken Espresso is not only a complicated drink to say, but a complicated drink to make, too.
Instead of the common 3 shots of espresso in other Starbucks crafted beverages, the Iced Brown Sugar Oat Milk Shaken Espresso gets 4 when ordered as a Venti! Not only that, but these shots are the blonde variety. This means that the Brown Sugar drink gets as much as 360 milligrams of caffeine, altogether!
5. Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew
Though far removed from it’s other Cold Brew brothers at 5th place on the list, the Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew is still a highly caffeinated, sweet beverage in the Starbucks lineup!
When ordered in a Venti size, the Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew is made up of four pumps of Vanilla syrup, Starbucks Cold Brew, and topped with the sugary Vanilla Sweet Cream mixture.
It tastes very similar to pouring nice, smooth Cold Brew over a scoop of vanilla ice cream, without losing the benefits of 320 milligrams of caffeine when ordered in a Venti!
6. Café Americano
The Café Americano is not for the faint of heart, and is often offered by Starbucks baristas as a more robustly-flavored alternative to regular coffee. Simple to make, the Café Americano is mostly water with several espresso shots added to it.
In the largest size, which is technically the Venti iced version, a Café Americano has 4 shots of regular espresso and contains around 300 milligrams of caffeine. Just like regular coffee, the sharp tang of the espresso can be dulled or added to by one of Starbucks’ sweet syrups or cream.
7. Quad Espresso
If you are looking to have all the robustness of espresso flavor and caffeine with none of the water, ice, or milk products cutting it, order a Quad espresso! This is the fanciest way to say 4 shots of Espresso, poured directly into a Starbucks cup with no additional ingredients.
This amounts to 300 milligrams of caffeine, just like a Venti Americano, so all you’re really paying for is the purity of the espresso taste!
8. Starbucks Iced Coffee
Starbucks Iced Coffee is very similar in appearance, structure, and size options to Starbucks Cold Brew, with two notable exceptions. These are caffeine content and flavor! Starbucks Iced Coffee only has 280 milligrams of caffeine, and only that much if ordered in the whopping 30-ounce Trenta size!
The caffeine is usually diluted by the ice component of the drink, and is not as smooth as Cold Brew in taste.
9. Café Mocha
The Café Mocha is an incredibly popular drink among Starbucks customers, though it is not one of the more caffeinated on this list. If selected in the largest size, an Iced Venti, a Café Mocha receives 3 shots of regular Espresso, making it a 265ml-of-caffeine beverage. If, on the other hand, you prefer it hot, the largest Mocha will only receive 2 shots of regular espresso.
A Café Mocha from Starbucks is very similar to hot chocolate, being composed of chocolate sauce and milk with the added features of espresso and whipped cream. Sweet, but cozy, the Iced Mocha is a decadent choice!
10. Caramel Macchiato
Speaking of decadent, the last drink on our list is the famous Caramel Macchiato. A favorite among any Starbucks regular, the Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato is the most caffeinated way to order this beverage, coming in at 225 milligrams of caffeine!
This drink is famous for it’s pretty appearance. Instead of adding espresso shots at the bottom of the recipe, a Caramel Macchiato is what’s known as a “layered” drink. It involves vanilla syrup on the bottom, milk, and finally, a topping of Espresso and caramel drizzle that sit and trickle down from the highest point of the drink.
If you find yourself wishing this drink were less nice to look at but a little sweeter at first-sip, request to have it made “upside down.” This is a cool way of telling the Starbucks Baristas that you prefer the ingredients of the drink mixed together instead of layered!
In Conclusion
In conclusion, the most caffeinated Starbucks Drinks are actually plain old coffee, with Blond Roasts being more caffeinated than regular roasts. Closely following these are Starbucks’ Cold Brew beverages. To get the most caffeine in any Starbucks drink, order the largest size of your favorite recipe and remember that iced drinks usually get more espresso than hot ones!