Starbucks
Starbucks Vanilla Syrup Copycat Recipe
Sugar, water, vanilla. Four minutes on the hob for a bottle that costs about forty pence and replaces a shelf of them.
How to Make Dunkin' Iced Coffee at Home
Brew It at Double Strength, Because Ice Is Water
Iced coffee that still tastes of coffee after the ice has been in it for ten minutes.
AI-generated illustration created for food.fast. It is not photographic evidence of a prepared batch.
Iced coffee at home is usually disappointing for one reason, and it is arithmetic rather than technique: ice is water. A glass of ice melting into a normal-strength coffee dilutes it by somewhere between a third and a half, and what you are left with tastes thin and slightly sour.
Dunkin' brews its iced coffee hot, at roughly double strength, and chills it. The dilution from the ice brings it back to normal strength in the glass. That is the entire trick.
The second thing they do is sweeten with liquid sugar rather than granulated. Sugar does not dissolve in cold coffee - it sits at the bottom in a gritty layer and the drink gets sweeter as you approach the end. A sugar syrup mixes instantly and evenly.
How this page shows its working
The method gives quantities, timings and observable cues rather than asking you to guess. The 4 cases in If it goes wrong explain likely causes and corrective action.
See the recipe verification standard · See how the cost is calculated
Double strength, and how to chill it without it going stale
Brew at double the normal dose: about 120 g of coffee to a litre of water, where a normal filter brew is 60 g.
Then chill it fast. Hot coffee left to cool slowly on a worktop continues to oxidise, and it develops a dull, papery, slightly stale flavour over the two hours it takes to reach room temperature.
Two fast methods:
Flash chill. Brew directly onto ice. Use half the water you normally would and put the other half in the jug as ice - so 120 g of coffee, 500 ml of brewing water, 500 g of ice in the receiving jug. The coffee hits the ice and drops to fridge temperature in seconds. This is the best method and it is what good coffee shops do.
Ice bath. Brew normally at double strength, then stand the jug in a bowl of iced water and stir. Ten minutes rather than two hours.
Either way, into the fridge in a sealed bottle. It keeps three days before the flavour noticeably flattens.
How to make it, step by step
Make the coffee
-
Brew at double strength
120 g of coffee to a litre of water, or to 500 ml if you are flash chilling.
About 5 min -
Chill it fast, not slowly
Straight onto 500 g of ice in a jug, or into an ice bath with stirring. Slow cooling on a worktop makes it taste stale.
About 10 min -
Into a sealed bottle in the fridge
It keeps three days. A sealed bottle matters - coffee picks up fridge smells readily.
About 1 hr
The syrup and the drink
-
Simmer the sugar and water for four minutes
Until completely clear. Cool and bottle - it keeps six months in the fridge.
About 5 min -
Build over a full glass of ice
Ice first, then coffee, then syrup, then milk. Stir once. A full glass of ice is correct - a half-full glass melts faster and dilutes more.
About 2 min
Coffee ice cubes, which solve the dilution problem entirely
Freeze some of the double-strength coffee in an ice cube tray and use those cubes instead of water ice.
The drink then gets stronger as it sits rather than weaker, which for anybody who nurses a coffee for half an hour is a genuine improvement.
Two practical notes: coffee ice never freezes as hard as water ice, because of the dissolved solids, so give it longer. And it will stain a plastic tray - use silicone.
This is also the best use for the last of a batch that is approaching three days old.
The flavoured versions, from the syrups on this site
Every Dunkin' flavour is the same drink with a different syrup, and the vanilla syrup page covers how to make all of them:
- French vanilla - vanilla syrup plus a quarter teaspoon of almond extract.
- Hazelnut - hazelnut syrup, or toasted hazelnuts steeped in the base syrup.
- Caramel - the caramel drizzle stirred in while the coffee is still slightly warm.
- Mocha - the mocha sauce, dissolved in a splash of hot coffee first.
- Butter pecan - butterscotch syrup with a quarter teaspoon of butter extract.
What a year of iced coffee costs
| At home | Coffee shop | |
|---|---|---|
| Per drink | £0.32 | £3.95 |
| Per week (5 drinks) | £1.60 | £19.75 |
| Per year | £83.20 | £1,027.00 |
| Time per drink | 1 minute | Queue plus travel |
Ways to change it once you have made it once
Cold brew instead
Smoother and much less acidic - see the cold brew recipe. Sixteen hours rather than five minutes.
Iced latte
Half coffee, half milk, over ice. Milkier and closer to a coffee-shop iced latte.
Vietnamese style
Very strong coffee over ice with three tablespoons of condensed milk instead of milk and syrup. Different drink, excellent.
What went wrong, and how to fix it
Each entry names a likely cause as well as a correction, so the advice remains useful when equipment, ingredients or batch size differ.
It tastes watery
- Why it happened
- Brewed at normal strength.
- What to do
- Double the coffee dose. Ice is water and it will dilute whatever you put under it.
Gritty at the bottom
- Why it happened
- Granulated sugar in a cold drink.
- What to do
- Liquid sugar syrup. Sugar does not dissolve in cold coffee.
It tastes stale and papery
- Why it happened
- Cooled slowly on a worktop.
- What to do
- Flash chill onto ice or use an ice bath.
Sour
- Why it happened
- Under-extracted, or a very light roast.
- What to do
- A medium or medium-dark roast, and check the grind is not too coarse.
Questions people actually ask about this recipe
Why does my iced coffee taste weak?
It was brewed at normal strength. Ice melts into it and dilutes it by a third to a half - brew at double strength to compensate.
What is liquid sugar?
A sugar syrup. Granulated sugar does not dissolve in cold coffee and sits at the bottom.
Cold brew or iced coffee?
Cold brew is smoother and less acidic but takes sixteen hours. This takes five minutes and tastes more like a traditional coffee.
How long does the coffee keep?
Three days in a sealed bottle in the fridge before the flavour flattens.
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