Starbucks Iced Caffè Latte

The Starbucks Iced Caffè Latte costs £4.70 for a Tall and carries 128 calories in a Grande, which makes it lighter than the hot version by more than twenty calories. Two shots of signature espresso go over ice, cold milk follows, and nothing is steamed at any point.

Cold changes what you taste. Without steaming, milk keeps its own flavour rather than developing the toffee sweetness that heat brings out of the sugars, so the espresso sits further forward than it does in a hot latte. The drink is thinner in the mouth and cleaner at the finish. Ice also mutes bitterness, which is why an iced latte made with a dark roast can taste rounder than the same shots served hot.

The calorie difference between hot and iced is the ice itself. A hot Grande latte is 151 calories; the iced Grande is 128, because ice takes up space that milk would otherwise fill. A Tall is 83 and a Venti 130, and the small step from Grande to Venti is because a Venti iced cup is mostly extra ice rather than extra milk. Caffeine holds at 89.1mg through Tall and Grande, reaching 133.7mg in a Venti.

Ice quality matters more than the recipe does. A cup filled properly to the top melts slower than a half filled one, because the cubes chill each other rather than the drink chilling them. That runs against what most people assume, which is that less ice means more coffee. In practice less ice means a warmer drink that waters down faster, and the same volume of milk either way.

Ask for light ice if the drink reads watery to you, and stores will fill the gap with milk, which pushes the calories up towards the hot version. It suits a warm afternoon and it survives a walk far better than any hot drink, since there is no foam to collapse. The Cold Brew Coffee is the black alternative with far more caffeine, and the Caffè Latte is the hot original.