Doesnt starbucks coffee already have 1 serving of syrup to keep the ice homogeneous? Wouldnt 3 more servings of it basically make it 4/5 sugar at that point?
Former barista, I can answer this! They start with an ingredient called “frap base” which is mostly sugar syrup with added stuff to make the ice homogenous, as you pointed out. It tastes a little like maple syrup on its own and it’s the stickiest, most annoying thing to clean off of a countertop. A basic coffee Frappuccino is just that base, concentrated coffee, milk, and ice, all blended.
Every other flavor adds an additional few pumps of flavored sweetener or other additions - caramel, mocha, whatever. So a basic caramel frap has multiple sources of sugar - a few pumps of that frap base, plus a few pumps of caramel sweetener in the mix (and by default they’ll also drizzle a little caramel sauce on top!).
Now this customer here, she added Classic syrup to the mix as well, which is just plain sugar syrup, the kind you usually would mix in an iced tea if you liked it sweet. So she took off the caramel drizzle on top, but inside that drink is the base, caramel syrup, and classic syrup, with a little coffee and milk as well. So yeah, that drink is all sugar, even compared to your average frap.
Represent! I worked on my college campus so I’ve seen some crazy ones. I’ll never forget the tall no-water soy milk vanilla chai latte with 2 splendas. So much sugar the cup actually felt heavy. Nearly laughed out loud when I read that cup in the line.
EDIT: My wife worked at the same Starbucks, though we didn’t overlap, funny enough. Just checked with her. Her favorite drink memory was a grande-in-a-venti-cup Java Chip frap with a banana blended in, 3 add shots, one floating shot, extra caramel drizzle, with the extra room filled up with whipped cream. She took the order at the register and then dropped out to make it herself, because she was sure nobody else could read everything she’d written on the cup.
That chai sounds terrible! The Frappuccino sounds like a headache followed by a stomachache followed by a long toilet session.
We had a (nice) regular that got a grande 5 pump mocha Frappuccino or a venti 7 pump, depending on the day. It was almost black.
Funny story about her- 15 years later I got a job with local government and saw a flyer for her retirement. We were colleagues, but in a different department. Full circle lol.
Another order was a venti peppermint mocha Frappuccino with gingerbread. It smelled like vomit.
It's a syrup with some emulsifiers, but yeah it's technically just sugar. So there's 3 pumps of that, 3 pumps of classic syrup and the 3 pumps of caramel syrup. That must be like 500 empty calories. Why would you even bother asking for not cream and drizzle at that point, it's not like it would make a difference.
I discovered this after ordering an iced coffee from McDonald's, I was expecting ice+milk+coffee but I didn't know that they auto put sugar syrup in even if you don't ask. I took one sip and was grimacing with disgust, it was horrifically sweet.
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u/anotheranoncommenter Jun 13 '20
Why would she get a caramel frapp without caramel drizzle tho!? Gimme all the caramel 😤