Even if you consider yourself an indie coffee aficionado, you'll almost definitely find yourself in line at Starbucks sometime in the future. This Seattle-based caffeine juggernaut with a huge international footprint can be found everywhere.
Since the odds of someday ordering a drink at Starbucks are pretty high, it helps to know what the experts like to drink — and what they absolutely don't like to drink — at Starbucks. Here are coffee industry pros' thoughts on 10 popular Starbucks beverages.
The Pumpkin Spice Latte contains tons of sugar and experts say it shows.
Yeah, we're starting with the bad news first. The PSL, the unofficial Coffee Drink Of The Fall, tastes delicious, but experts don't think it has much in terms of flavor balance and coffee structure.
Former long-time Starbucks barista and present-day coffee collector J.R. Duren points to the high sugar content in the PSL as the drink's biggest problem. If you want to taste the nuances and flavor dimension of coffee, "this drink is, in my opinion, far too sweet and full of sugar that you just don't need," Duren told INSIDER.
Of course, if you enjoy a pumpkin spice latte from time to time (as countless other Starbucks customers do), there's nothing wrong with that. Skylar Bowker, e-commerce manager for BuyCoffeeCanada, puts it like this:
"Don't listen to pompous snobs who try to tell you what you should or shouldn't like. Everybody has different tastes, and one of the great things about coffee is the diversity of flavors. Find what you like best, and try something new once in a while. There's even a time and place for the pumpkin spice lattes that supposed 'connoisseurs' look down on."
Experts say the White Chocolate Mochas are too sweet to highlight the flavor of the coffee.
Coffee experts tend to frown on any beverage with a particularly high volume of sugar, as the sweet stuff can mar the flavor of the coffee beans themselves (and, when habitual, these drinks can also compromise the health of the drinkers).
Duren calls out the White Chocolate Mocha as a particularly egregious offender on the sugar front, with overwhelming sweetness caused by the white chocolate syrup.
"I would consider [the White Chocolate Mocha] more of a 'beverage with coffee' than a coffee drink," he told INSIDER.
The Iced Caramel Macchiato bears no resemblance to a traditional Italian Macchiato.
The Caramel Macchiato consistently ranks among Starbucks' most popular beverages, in both its hot and iced forms. While neither version has much to do with Macchiatos as they're known in Italy, the Iced Caramel Macchiato strays particularly far from the original, according to experts.
"[The Iced Caramel Macchiato] has led countless unlucky souls to believe that a Macchiato is some iced concoction," Jhonn Thomassen, former Starbucks barista and current owner of Marine Park Coffee in Brooklyn, New York, told INSIDER.
In reality, the Macchiato is a pour of espresso in a demitasse cup that's topped with a small dollop of foamed milk (‘macchiato' means ‘marked' in Italian). It definitely doesn't contain caramel, and it's never served cold.
Thomassen doesn't suggest removing the Iced Caramel Macchiato from the Starbucks menu entirely, but he has a suggestion for the ‘Bucks team about the drink's name: "Let's call this what it really is: an Iced Vanilla Latte with caramel sauce on top."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider