The 2 Groceries You Need For A Copycat Starbucks Iced Tea Lemonade

Though Starbucks may be best known for its coffee, the chain also offers a variety of tea-based drinks – including its Refreshers, hot teas, tea lattes, and more. 

Heidi's Home Cooking is a blog run by a former Starbucks employee. Heidi shares that she worked at Starbucks while in college, and became very familiar with all the drinks that the coffee chain offered. One of her favorites was the iced black tea lemonade. She notes that after she left Starbucks for another job, she was no longer eligible for an employee discount. Without any kind of discount, the cost of a Starbucks drink every day can add up quickly.

Since she was well-versed in what went into making each drink, she was able to quickly find an alternative to make her favorite drinks at home. According to Heidi, you only need two ingredients to recreate the Starbucks Iced Black Tea Lemonade at home — and both ingredients can easily be found in grocery stores.

Starbucks uses Tazo tea products in-store (which makes sense, since the companies merged back in 1999) according to Heidi's Home Cooking. Fortunately, Tazo tea products are easy to find in most grocery stores. Heidi says that the Tazo Earl Grey tea bags are the closest you can get to the real Starbucks taste at home. She recommends keeping the ratio at an even one cup of water per one tea packet while brewing.

For the other half of the drink, Heidi recommends purchasing a can of frozen lemonade concentrate. Though there are quite a few different brands that can be purchased in stores, she prefers the Trader Joe's variety.

Heidi generally makes a pitcher of the drink at a time, so she has some pre-made and ready to drink. She combines four cups of the tea with the lemonade concentrate, and adds in two cans full (using the same can the lemonade came in) of water to dilute the concentrate. She then fills the pitcher with ice, and adds it to the fridge to chill for a few hours before serving.

If you want to enjoy your drink right away, Heidi's Home Cooking does note that you can add ice to the glass to quickly cool it off. One more important step though, according to the blog, is that the drink should be shaken with ice — not just simply stirred.

Heidi notes that it might be a subtle difference, but she can always tell between the two methods. She recommends adding ice to a shaker, pouring the drink mix in, and shaking it up roughly 10 times to achieve that perfectly cold, crisp feeling. Plus, shaking drinks with citrus can help incorporate them a little better while cooling them down.

The blog also notes that Starbucks does add in some syrup to sweeten the drinks up. Though she personally prefers it without any added sweetness, you can add in simple syrup, sugar, Splenda, or whatever your preferred sweetener is. To finish off the drink, she adds a slice of lemon to the rim of her glass.