Starbucks Iced Brown Sugar Oat Shaken Espresso

The Starbucks Iced Brown Sugar Oat Shaken Espresso costs £6.00 for a Tall and carries 131 calories in a Grande, and the shaking is not a gimmick. Blonde espresso, brown sugar syrup and ice go in a tin and get shaken hard, then a splash of oat drink goes over the top.

The shake does two things at once. It chills the espresso instantly, which stops the ice melting into it, and it whips a light foam onto the surface that a stirred drink never has. The result is colder, thicker and less diluted than a built iced coffee. Blonde roast underneath keeps it bright rather than heavy, and brown sugar brings a molasses note that white sugar syrup cannot. Oat drink finishes it without the weight of dairy.

Caffeine steps up at every size, which is unusual: 85.5mg in a Tall, 128.2mg in a Grande and 171mg in a Venti, because each size adds another Blonde ristretto shot. Calories run 100, 131 and 159 across those three. Sugar in a Grande is 14.3g out of 20.2g of carbohydrate, which is moderate for a flavoured drink and lower than the banana version at 17.7g.

Blonde roast is doing more work here than the name suggests. Starbucks uses its lighter roast in every shaken espresso because a dark roast turns harsh when shaken hard with ice, picking up a metallic edge from the agitation. The lighter bean holds its sweetness through the same treatment. It is the reason these drinks taste nothing like a dark roast iced coffee with syrup stirred into it.

Half the syrup pumps is the standard way to bring the sugar down, and it works better here than on most drinks because the brown sugar note survives at half strength. It is best drunk quickly: the shaken foam settles within about five minutes and the drink flattens into an ordinary iced coffee. The Iced Caramelised Banana Oat Shaken Espresso is the sweeter version, and Cold Brew Coffee is the unsweetened cold option.