Cold Foam Cold Brew At home

Starbucks’ cold foam cold brews are my jam. I’ve loved all of them but the salted honey that came out last year (that was noooo bueno). I have a keurig k-cafe which makes beautiful latte foam either hot or cold, so I’ve been drinking that for a little over a year. BUT I worked for Starbucks for a couple of months before getting my first full time job and know that they make their with skim milk and a blender. I got a little personal blender for Christmas expressly for this purpose.

Today I attempted a copy of a Salted Caramel Cold Foam Cold Brew. I didn’t have cold brew made (because my cold brew filtering pitcher just broke lol) so I used iced coffee today, but I”ll probably post an update with some fun variants on this recipe and those will use actual cold brew! If replicating, though, this might be an easy way to start if you don’t have the tools to make cold brew/don’t feel comfortable doing so.

I started with two pumps of salted caramel syrup. In the future, I’d probably do three pumps, and I think regular caramel would be just as good. Then I added 6 ounces of strong coffee and some ice! The fun part is making the cold foam. This took about three minutes in my little one-speed blender, but if your blender spins faster the milk will whip up faster, and be fluffier and last longer.

Depending on the drink, Starbucks uses either skim milk or heavy cream for their foam. Plant-based milks don’t whip up as well, unfortunately. As I understand it, the foam is made by the blender ripping apart the proteins in the milk and introducing a bunch of air, and that process doesn’t work as well without the compounds in actual dairy. Some kind of science or something!

In this blender is a good amount of skim milk plus a good sprinkling of sea salt. For the Salted Cream Cold Foam Cold Brew at Starbs, I believe they throw in two fast food packets of salt. I stopped blending every 30 seconds or so to try to assess the airiness of the concoction. Enjoy this satisfying foamy milk pour:

And the finished product! I’d have topped with caramel sauce if I had it, so if you had it you should definitely do that. This is just the technique, so it can be replicated with TONS of flavors, and as I play around with this more I’ll definitely post an update with recipes I recommend. I’m sure butterscotch with a vanilla or marshmallow-flavored foam would make a delicious coffee version of Butterbeer, vanilla coffee with lavender foam would be fresh for spring, and mocha cold brew with peppermint foam would be lovely for our winter Holidays. So fun, right?!