How to Make a Hot Vanilla Latte and an Iced Shaken Espresso

The drink is built in three steps: pull a double espresso, combine it with ice and vanilla syrup in a cocktail shaker, shake hard to chill and aerate, then pour over oat milk. Shaking creates the dense foam layer, and pouring the milk last keeps the dark brown, milk-tea, and foam layers distinct in the glass.

The same skills transfer to a hot vanilla latte, which uses steamed milk and vanilla syrup with a similar espresso base, only the latte milk to coffee ratio and milk texture differ. For the shaken version, use a blend with vanilla and cocoa notes, shake for about ten seconds, and pour oat milk slowly over the foam to hold the layers.

On a scorching summer day, a cup of layered iced specialty coffee always catches the eye. Starbucks' Iced Shaken Espresso, with its stunning three-layer appearance of dark brown espresso, milk-tea-colored milk, and fluffy coffee foam, has become the top choice for many coffee lovers to recreate. This time, Front Street Coffee will walk you through the logic behind making this drink: using espresso with ice cubes and vanilla syrup, shaking it in a cocktail shaker to incorporate air and create a dense foam layer, then pouring oat milk through the layers to create a unique texture where grain and coffee intertwine. From ingredient preparation to extraction parameters, shaking technique, tasting the final product, and even ideas for flavor variations, this article restores the complete process step by step, so you can easily make a refreshing yet rich personalized Iced Shaken Espresso at home.

Every summer, iced specialty coffee becomes a topic you simply can't avoid. While browsing online, Front Street Coffee noticed that a particularly good-looking iced specialty coffee often appears on people's recreation lists — it's called "Iced Shaken Espresso," from the well-known coffee brand Starbucks.

Unlike previous iced specialty coffees, Starbucks' Iced Shaken Espresso visually consists of three intermingling layers: dark brown espresso at the very bottom, a lustrous milk-tea color in the middle, and fluffy coffee foam on top. The overall form is so beautiful that you can't help but want to try making it yourself. Before the high temperature warning arrives, those interested should hurry up and learn it.

Ingredient Preparation

Front Street Coffee looked through Starbucks' previous promotional ads and learned that the composition of this Iced Shaken Espresso is actually not complicated. First, on the basis of espresso, ice cubes and flavor-enhancing syrup are added, then through the action of shaking, the purest espresso is given aromatic expression at low temperature. Finally, oat milk rich in grain aroma is paired with it, sparking a brand-new iced coffee taste experience.

For the coffee base, Front Street Coffee still uses the Sunflower · Warm Sun blend from daily store production. Tasting the espresso directly, you can sense oily notes of vanilla and cocoa, with cream, fruity acidity, and fermented wine aromas on the palate. When paired with milk to make a latte or flat white, it shows characteristics of vanilla biscuit and liqueur chocolate, with very distinct layers. For the oat milk, Front Street Coffee purchased the most common OATLY Barista.

Before making, you need to prepare: a double shot of espresso , plenty of ice cubes, 15 grams of flavored syrup (vanilla), 100 grams of chilled oat milk, 1 cocktail shaker , and a transparent glass.

Recreation Process

First, add 180 grams of ice cubes to the cocktail shaker. For the specific amount, you can refer to the actual volume of the ice cubes — filling to about the 400 ml mark on the shaker body is fine. Since Front Street Coffee uses larger ice cubes, only 7 fit here.

Add 15 grams of vanilla-flavored syrup to the ice cubes first, then we begin extracting the espresso.

According to the parameters dialed in that day, Front Street Coffee used 20 grams of coffee grounds to extract 36 grams of coffee liquid in 27 seconds, pouring it over the ice cubes in the shaker.

Then, immediately put on the lid and shake vigorously up and down. This action is to "knock" more air into the crema layer of the espresso, expanding a rich foam cluster and giving the coffee a denser mouthfeel.

After shaking for about 1 to 2 minutes, once you confirm the espresso, ice cubes, and vanilla syrup are fully mixed and a fluffy, silky foam layer has formed, you can pour the chilled espresso into the pre-prepared glass.

Finally, take the oat milk out of the refrigerator and let it pass through the foam layer into the coffee liquid, until the glass is eight-tenths full.

Photograph and Taste

Front Street Coffee tasted the homemade version of the Iced Shaken Espresso. First, you feel the rich vanilla-flavored foam layer. On the palate, you can catch not only the nutty, caramel, and fermented notes of the espresso but also the aroma of grains. The bitterness of the coffee has been neutralized by the added oat milk, while the syrup gives the coffee a touch of light sweetness. After drinking, a hint of iced chocolate aroma lingers in the mouth. With the help of ice cubes, the entire cup is both refreshing and rich, making you want to take big gulps — extremely refreshing and palate-cleansing.

What other specialty coffees can be made using the Iced Shaken Espresso method?

Besides being a specialty coffee drink on Starbucks' menu, we can also view the Iced Shaken Espresso as a method of preparing iced coffee. So as long as we have ingredients that make coffee taste better and properly gauge the amount of each element , we can always create a "personalized Iced Shaken Espresso" that best suits our own taste.

For example, when we want to make a mini version of the Iced Shaken Espresso without losing coffee intensity, we can consider replacing es presso with the more concentrated ristretto , and serve it in a smaller glass to reduce the proportion of oat milk, making the coffee flavor more robust. Similarly, the syrup can be replaced with other flavors, such as sea salt caramel, mocha, toffee, etc.

Also , if you don't like the taste of oat milk, you can also switch to regular milk. However, the "Iced Shaken Espresso" made this way would actually be more like another type of iced latte in form, wouldn't you say~

- END - Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)

No. 10, Bao'an Qian Street, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.