Amazing Starbucks Sweet Vanilla Cold Brew Copycat Recipe

Last updated on November 4th, 2023 at 15:55

Making a Starbucks sweet vanilla cold brew copycat recipe at home allows you to save some bucks and make an excellent coffee that is exactly how you like it as you can start to customize it as per your own personal taste.

Keep reading to find out how to make this awesome and rich tasty cup of coffee.

What Is Starbucks Sweet Vanilla Cold Brew?

This is a tasty beverage that is brewed by being steeped in cold water with a tasty vanilla sweet cream topping that cascades beautifully down through your beverage.

It is an iced coffee drink that tastes rich and creamy – one you will likely try again and again.

Read: Whats in Starbucks vanilla sweet cream

What Does Starbucks Sweet Vanilla Cold Brew Taste Like?

If tasty rich, creamy sweet coffee with a vanilla tang to it is what you love, then Starbucks sweet vanilla cold brew is something that you will enjoy. It is not as sugary as other drinks on the menu and has a richer and creamier taste than a vanilla latte.

A lot of coffee gourmet beverages have a sweet foam or cold foam topping, which is often heavy cream based. The cold brew coffee itself is unsweetened and when you drink this coffee through the sweet vanilla cold foam topping it gets stronger as you drink it.

This drink is designed to be taken as a “two-tone” flavored coffee with a sip of the topping and the coffee together and not stirred and mixed. It has a more consistent flavor when you drink it as it.

So, if you need it to be sweetened, request a shot or two of simple syrup or brown sugar simple syrup when you order your drink as this will sweeten your drink and save you from adding sugar.

Word to the wise, from one coffee lover to another I advise the use of syrups be they sugar based or sugar-free to sweeten your drinks as they produce a better and more even distribution of sweetness than sugar or any other solid sweeteners.

Read: Vanilla sweet cream cold foam

Can You Customize Your Drink?

Yes, you can easily customize your drink in a lot of different ways. Although this drink does not particularly need to be sweetened or milk to be added. If there is ever an understated way that alters how your drink tastes, then it is undoubtedly the sweetener and type of milk used.

• Experiment with different types of sweetener.
• Try alternative milks like coconut milk, soy milk, oat milk, almond milk.
• Try different types of syrup like hazelnut toffee nut, both of which work well with cold-brewed coffee.
• You can opt to have your drink dusted with a sprinkling of cinnamon or cocoa powder.
• You can opt to have a mocha sauce or white chocolate sauce or dark caramel sauce.

These options are available for all drinks and not just cold brew drinks or the sweet vanilla cold brew.

Starbucks Sweet Cream Vanilla Cold Brew Recipe

This refreshing creamy, rich cold brew coffee is easy to make with this Starbucks copycat recipe. It’s tasty, brilliant and saves you a lot of bucks…and time visiting your Starbucks outlet.

Ingredients Needed To Make This Drink

• High Quality Coffee Beans. Suggestion: A good Colombian blend or single origin. Alternatively, consider Costa Rican beans.
• Sugar.
• Vanilla Extract.
• 2% Milk.
• Heavy Cream.
• Water – either mineral water or filtered water.

How To Make Your Cold Brew At Home

You can replicate Starbucks cold brew at home easily by buying your cold brew directly from Starbucks premade. This, though, defeats the purpose of learning how to make an excellent cold brew at home.

Getting the exact flavor as the base cold brew is easy – you can buy Starbucks RTD (Ready To Dilute) cold brew coffee from Amazon. All you need to do is make sure it is nice and cold.

Making your own, it is just as easy and, in my opinion, well worth the effort as I simply know, not think, but know that most people will make a better cold brew coffee at home as long as fresh high quality coffee beans are used.

Starbucks brews their cold brew coffee at room temperature and stores it at room temperature. When you brew with ice-cold water and brew it in your fridge, you will get a better quality extraction of the low temperature flavor compounds than brewing at room temperature.

Check your coffee beans and ensure that they were roasted no longer than 7 days ago by checking the roasted on date and grinding your beans to a coarse, even grind size.

An even grind size is important as having a slight mix of different sizes of grinds will result in an uneven extraction.

A good coffee to water ratio for cold brew is 1:8, one part coffee and 8 parts water. For an ample amount of coffee, use 100 grams (3.33 Oz) and 800 ml (27 Oz) of water.

Add your grounds to a glass container with an airtight lid. It is important that your container is not a plastic container as coffee is acidic and will extract the xeno estrogens and petrochemicals into your coffee, it is just not healthy at all.

Add your ice-cold water to your grounds and store your coffee grounds and water container in your fridge for 12 to 16 hours. It makes very little difference if you shake your grounds or even shake them every few hours.

It is best that you simply leave your grounds to extract and set a reminder on your phone to alert you when the brew time of 12 to 16 hours is complete.

You will need a bit of TAFO here – Test And Find Out and give your brew a little taste test after 12 hours to check that it is as you like it.

If it is not to your liking and needs further extraction, you will need to let it brew for a few hours more and test it every couple of hours or so.

Once your coffee is to your liking, decant and filter out the ground coffee. This is important as your coffee will continue to extract and will eventually become over brewed.

Filter the coffee grounds using a metal filter or a sieve. A cloth or paper filter will remove some or all of the coffee oils. It is best that you have all the coffee oils for a full-featured and full-bodied coffee, which is why I suggest that you use a metal filter.

Due to the extraction time, which there is nothing you, nor I can do anything about it is best that have patience and, make enough coffee for a second or third cup. Just ensure that you calculate the amount of coffee and water needed by using the coffee to water ratio of 1:8.

How To Make Starbucks Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Foam

Making this sweet cream recipe is easy, and you can make it to your preference and health choice and make one that is healthier than what Starbucks has on offer and make it with whatever sweetener that you so wish.

First master making a regular simple syrup as it should be, or as it would be at Starbucks, and then you can go wild and use your culinary creativity and make any coffee syrup of any flavor that you so desire.

First Make The Simple Syrup And Vanilla Flavored Coffee Syrup

Making a basic simple syrup is easy. All you need is filtered water and sugar in equal amounts. Simmer your water and add the sugar and stir well. Let the solution cool and store in a clean, airtight glass container with an airtight lid.

You can see how easy this is to swap the sugar for brown sugar, stevia and add any flavoring item that you so desire like vanilla, French vanilla, coconut, or anything that you want.

To make the vanilla flavored simple syrup just add a fresh pod or two of chopped vanilla and add it to your sugar and water mix and let it simmer for a while until it extracts the flavor. Then let it sit and cool down for half an hour.

Use a sieve to filter out the vanilla pods.

How To Make The Sweet Cream Cold Foam

This is also very easy to make and requires very few ingredients to make it.

• Heavy Cream.
• 2% Milk.
• Condensed Milk (optional).

Condensed milk is an additional optional ingredient; it is your choice to use it or not. It is also your own choice to use the sweetened or unsweetened version. I use this extra ingredient because my own experiments found that you get a better quality and denser sweet cream.

Make as much sweet cream as you need. The ingredients must be made in equal proportions. Typically, 1 ounce (30 ml) of each is more than enough for a cup of coffee.

Add each ingredient into a bowl and stir them well together.

To give your sweet cream a nice vanilla taste, simply add a teaspoon of the vanilla syrup that you just made, stir well and taste. If you need a more prominent vanilla taste, add one more teaspoon of vanilla syrup and stir well.

Then taste test it again. Continue this process until you get a taste that you love.

It is that easy.

Putting It All Together

Pour your perfectly brewed cold brew coffee into a tall glass with ice and add your sweet vanilla cold cream. You can pour it directly over your coffee. I find that diffusing the pour with a tablespoon helps to create a cold cream that sits there perfectly and for a little longer.

Garnish with cinnamon or cocoa powder as desired.

Starbucks Sweet Cream Vanilla Cold Brew Calories

It is always good to know how many calories, fat, sugar and of course caffeine are in the coffee drinks that you enjoy.

Naturally,

the amounts of each vary depending on the drink size. Check the table below to find out how many calories are in Starbucks sweet cream cold brew for all the drink sizes available.

Drink Size	Sugar	Calories	Fat	Caffeine
Tall 12 Oz (360 ml)	12g	90	6g	140 mg
Grande 16 Oz (480 ml)	14g	110	6g	185 mg
Venti 24 Oz (720 ml)	24g	200	11g	275 mg
Trenta 31 Oz (930 ml)	26g	200	11g	320 mg

Starbucks Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew Caffeine

This is worthy of special attention on its own even though there is a table above telling you how much caffeine is in this beverage.

Both the Tall 12 Oz (360 ml) and Grande 16 Oz (480 ml) drinks are considered to have a reasonable amount of caffeine. But at the Venti, and especially the Trenta I consider to have a high amount of caffeine.

Frequently Asked Questions About Starbucks Sweet Vanilla Cold Brew

Is Starbucks Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew Sweet?

The Starbucks vanilla sweet cream cold brew coffee is sweet, very smooth and very creamy. It is a tasty beverage that is slow steeped and infused with vanilla syrup and is then topped with vanilla sweet cream that drizzles down through the drink in a beautiful cascading effect.

Can You Get A Sugar Free Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew?

Yes, you can order your vanilla sweet cream cold brew to be sugar-free by simply ordering it to be made with sugar-free vanilla syrup. If you feel the need to sweeten your drink, you can request any of their alternative sweetness.

How Much Sugar Is In The Vanilla Syrup At Starbucks?

There are 5 grams of sugar in each pump of vanilla syrup. This is the same for all flavored syrups at Starbucks. Each pump has approximately 20 calories, which means two pumps of vanilla syrup contains 10 grams of sugar and 40 calories.

What’s The Sweetest Cold Brew At Starbucks?

The sweetest cold brew coffee is Nitro Brew, which is a beverage that is sweet and creamy without the addition of milk or sugar. Nitro cold brew is enjoyed on its own or with a vanilla syrup.

Is Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew Strong?

Yes, the Starbucks vanilla sweet cream cold brew is strong both in terms of having a strong flavor and the caffeine content. Cold brew coffee is one of the most caffeinated coffee drinks.

hat Is A Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew At Starbucks?

A vanilla sweet cream cold brew coffee at Starbucks is a coffee beverage that is intentionally brewed at a low temperature and with a long brewing time to extract the low temperature compounds.

The result is a coffee beverage that is smooth, well-balanced and has up to 60% less acidity and not bitter notes at all.

It’s topped with a vanilla sweet cream that is made with 2% milk and heavy cream that is blended with vanilla syrup. The topping cascades beautifully into the coffee.

How Many Calories In A Starbucks Sweet Vanilla Cold Brew?

Starbuck sweet vanilla cold brew is available in 4 drink sizes and has the following amount of calories in each drink size:

• Tall 12 Oz (360 ml): 90 calories.
• Grande 16 Oz (480 ml): 110 calories.
• Venti 24 Oz (720 ml): 200 calories.
• Trenta 30 Oz (900 ml): 220 calories.

Is The Starbucks Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew Sweet?

There is natural sugar, lactose, for the dairy used in the topping. It also contains sugar from the vanilla syrup used to flavor the topping.

While it is sweet, it is not overly sweet.

Final Thoughts – Starbucks Sweet Vanilla Cold Brew

Following the instructions above and having fun with a Starbucks vanilla sweet cold brew coffee and making exactly as you like it and enjoying yourself making the simple syrup will help to level up your home barista skills.

While I do enjoy chilling out at a good coffee shop, I prefer to make my own coffee, experiment and get as I want it to be in my quest for the ultimate coffee.

Join our online coffee community on Facebook/Meta and introduce yourself and share your own tips, tricks and creations – perhaps even sharing a pic or two of your own homemade Starbucks sweet vanilla cold brew!