Starbucks South Africa is excited to reintroduce the Starbucks Cold Brew range that features the Traditional Cold Brew, Cold Brew Latte, and Cold Brew with Vanilla Sweet Cream.

Cold brew vs iced coffee

Cold brew differs from iced espresso beverages like an iced latte or iced americano, which combine espresso shots with cold milk or water and ice. While traditional iced coffee is made by brewing double-strength hot coffee poured over ice, cold brew is coffee steeped using cool water for 20 hours to extract a smooth, full-bodied coffee without any bitterness. Starbucks Cold Brew is served unsweetened to highlight its smooth, naturally sweet taste — but of course, every guest can personalise their beverage however they like.

How its brewed

Starbucks took the time to perfect its cold brew recipe, looking at the diverse qualities of the various blends created and focusing on the specific flavours they wanted. By experimenting with roast levels, different beans, brewing styles and blind tastings, they discovered the perfect balance of rich, dense, and slightly sweet flavours.

The resulting unique Starbucks Cold Brew blend combines coffees from Latin America and Africa, offering a smooth, rich flavour with chocolate and light citrus notes.

“We are proud to offer our customers exciting options for their favourite brew,” said Starbucks Coffee Master Ishan Natalie. “We want to provide a unique and satisfying experience to all our customers, and our cold brew variants certainly deliver on what they promise.”

Starbucks Cold Brew, but make it sweet

Starbucks will also introduce the limited edition Salted Caramel Cream Cold Brew in March, topped with Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Foam blended with salted caramel. Embodying everything you love about a Starbucks’ signature beverage, the Salted Caramel Cream Cold Brew is a masterful mixture of bold but smooth coffee, rich caramel sauce, and velvety salted caramel & vanilla cream foam that melts in your mouth. This new variant to South Africa is sure to be a hit with cold brew fans.

But Syllable, you don’t drink coffee!

Well, I drink decaf, which I know people look down their noses at. But your girl doesn’t metabolise caffeine. However, I made an exception to try this. As one of those girlies who like milky cold coffee (the iced latte was made for me), I looked at my little taster cup of black coffee with scepticism. I’ve given up sugar in my coffee, but milk? After tasting it with milk, I was surprised by preferring it black. It’s not as bitter as hot brewed coffee and has a very smooth mouthfeel.

I also chatted with Ishan, who’s clearly very passionate about Starbucks Cold Brew. We both prefer cold drinks since we run warm, and the taste we had of the limited Salted Caramel Cream Cold Brew had me wanting more. In fact, I called dibs on the feature drink (a grande poured by Ishan to the delight of the assembled content creators). Subsequently, I spent more than 24 hours wide awake, crashing in a teary puddle around 10:00 the next day. Do I regret that decision? Well, I regret drinking the grande, but not the tasters.

Can I have cold brew decaf? Not commercially. There’s not much demand for it. But am I going to try it myself at home? You better believe it. But there will be a caffeine trade-off. Decaf is not completely caffeine free. And the cold-brew process extracts more caffeine. However, it’s unlikely to have the same effect as the full-on caffeinated version. I’ll try it once and decide if it’s worth repeating.

Starbucks Cold Brew at home

Yes, you can try this at home! Check out the recipe below. And rush to your nearest Starbucks on 2 March to try the Salted Caramel Cream Cold Brew before it runs out! Don’t forget you can also buy me a coffee here.