Starbucks Iced Royal English Breakfast Tea Latte Copycat Recipe

Starbucks Iced Royal English Breakfast Tea Latte

The Iced Royal English Breakfast Tea Latte at Starbucks is a delicious way to enjoy iced black tea with milk. This robust iced tea latte is half classic English Breakfast tea, half milk, and turbinado cane sugar for sweetness.

Starbucks makes the base of this latte with extra strong black tea brewed from Teavana Royal English Breakfast tea bags.

The Teavana package describes it as, “full-bodied black tea with rich, malty undertones” and lists the ingredients as a blend of black teas.

Here’s how Starbucks describes the Iced Royal English Breakfast Tea Latte:

A select blend of rich, full-leaf black teas from India and Sri Lanka sweetened with liquid cane sugar and combined with milk and ice.

Starbucks

Why You’ll Love this Recipe

• Save money making it at home. I love going to Starbucks, but let’s be honest, making copycat drinks at home is a money-saver. Just keep a box of English Breakfast tea bags on-hand and you can make this iced tea latte whenever you want for a fraction of the cost.
• Another way to enjoy iced tea. If you love regular iced black tea, this tea latte is another way to enjoy it. Made with almost half milk, it’s as satisfying as it is sweet.
• Contains caffeine. English Breakfast tea lattes are made with black tea which is caffeinated. If you want a little boost, but maybe not as much as coffee, this latte gets the job done.
• Make it iced or hot. If you’re in the mood for a hot English Breakfast tea latte all you have to do is steam the milk and skip the ice. Here’s how to make the hot version: Starbucks Royal English Breakfast Tea Latte copycat recipe.

RELATED: Starbucks Black Tea Drinks: Everything You Need to Know

Ingredients

Starbucks makes the Iced Royal English Breakfast Tea Latte with double-strength Royal English Breakfast tea, 2% milk, liquid cane sugar and ice. All the components are shaken together to cool down the tea and create a frothy top.

Here are the 6 ingredients you need to make a copycat at home.

• English Breakfast tea bags
• Hot Water
• Cane Sugar
• Turbinado Sugar
• Milk
• Ice

English Breakfast Tea: Use your favorite brand of English Breakfast tea bags. My go-to brands are Twinings, Tazo and Harney & Sons.

You can use either tea bags or loose leaf tea, but since the latte has so much milk in it, there’s no need to use the highest quality loose-leaf tea.

You need twice as much tea to make this latte compared to a regular cup of iced tea.

Sugar + Turbinado Cane Sugar: Starbucks sweetens the English Breakfast latte with liquid cane sugar which is made with two types of sugar: regular cane sugar and turbinado cane sugar.

The turbinado cane sugar provides a rich, molasses-like flavor.

For this recipe, I simply use a combination of granulated cane sugar and turbinado cane sugar.

You can also use liquid Sugar in the Raw or a bottle of Starbucks Liquid Cane Sugar. For reference, Starbucks adds 4 pumps (about 2 tablespoons) of the liquid sweetener to a 16 ounce grande size drink.

Milk: 2% dairy milk is the standard milk in Starbucks tea lattes. I like this option because creamy milk goes so well with strong breakfast tea.

Water and Ice: All Starbucks drinks and ice cubes are made from triple-filtered water. I recommend using filtered water, as well, for the best-tasting at-home drinks.

This Brita water filter pitcher is a good solution if you need a way to filter water.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Making an English Breakfast tea latte is as simple as brewing double-strength tea and assembling the latte ingredients in a specific order to reduce the amount of melting ice. Here are the steps to make it.

1. Brew the tea. Boil water and pour it over the English Breakfast tea bags in a tea pot. Set a timer and steep the black tea for 5 minutes. Discard the tea bags when the tea has finished brewing.
2. Sweeten the tea. Stir both sugars into the hot tea until dissolved. The granulated sugars may be substituted with 1-2 tablespoons of liquid sugar in the raw. Let the tea cool for a few minutes if desired.
3. Assemble the latte. Pour the sweetened English Breakfast tea into a drink shaker, followed by the milk, then ice. Shake it a about ten times then pour into a cup that has a 16 fluid ounce capacity or larger. If you don’t want a shaken tea latte, simply add the components to the cup in this order: sweetened tea, cold milk, ice cubes.

Detailed recipe and instructions are in recipe card at bottom of post.

Brewing the English Breakfast tea.

Assembling the tea latte.

Recipe Notes

Follow the recommended brewing time on the package. Over-steeped black tea is bitter. Avoid this by setting a timer and not exceeding the suggested steep-time.

You can read this for more tips on making black tea properly: How to Make Black Tea Delicious Every Time.

Make the latte with a tea concentrate. Regular tea won’t cut it for a latte. As a matter of fact, you may not even taste the tea.

This is why extra-strong tea is a must for lattes.

To make the tea strong enough, brew it with double the tea bags or half as much water compared to a regular cup of tea.

Add the ice last. Starbucks shakes their tea lattes with ice to cool down the entire drink. It also makes a frothy top.

However, making this latte in a drink shaker is not necessary, especially if you’re making it with cold tea.

If you don’t want to cool down the tea before assembling the latte in a cup, just make sure to add the cold milk before the ice cubes.

This reduces the amount of ice melting.

More Starbucks Tea Latte Copycat Recipes

• Starbucks Royal English Breakfast Tea Latte Copycat
• Starbucks Iced London Fog Tea Latte Copycat Recipe
• Starbucks London Fog Tea Latte Copycat Recipe
• Homemade Starbucks Iced Chai Latte with Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Foam
• Homemade Starbucks Iced Chai Latte with Matcha Cream Cold Foam

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