5 Delicious Brown Sugar Drink Customizations For Your Starbucks Run

Who doesn't love brown sugar? Even people who prefer more savory foods and drinks can appreciate its richer, more complex flavor compared to other types of sugar, like standard white sugar. Given that it's made with molasses, brown sugar is known and beloved for its distinct, caramel-like flavor — one that, as you can probably imagine, tastes particularly delicious added to coffee and espresso. When we compared brown sugar to white sugar in coffee, brown sugar was the clear winner. And, with Starbucks' brown sugar syrup, it's possible to add it to just about anything on the menu. 

Sweet, smooth, warm, and complex, brown sugar syrup is a great addition to all of your standard Starbucks coffee and espresso drinks. That much isn't up for debate — in fact, it's encouraged. The sweet syrup features in many of the coffee chain's main menu drinks, including the new Brown Sugar Oatmilk Cortado from Starbucks' 2025 winter menu. But below, you'll find a list of five delicious brown sugar syrup drink customizations for your next Starbucks run that go beyond that. From your spiced fall lattes to viral Starbucks secret menu drinks, customizing your Starbucks orders with brown sugar syrup doesn't stop at your coffee.

Starting off the list of delicious brown sugar drink customizations is a fan-made Starbucks drink inspired by the viral Dubai chocolate bar. Capturing both the look and taste of the famous Middle Eastern chocolate bar, this drink is, essentially, an Iced Matcha Latte made with pistachio sauce and chocolate cold foam — creating a gradient of green matcha and chocolatey foam in your cup that mimics both the taste and look of the dessert. But, while this drink does hit the mark, there is an opportunity to bring even more of a candy bar-like flavor to the beverage with the help of Starbucks' sweet, caramel-like brown sugar syrup.

Starbucks revamped its matcha for winter 2025, opting for a powder that wasn't pre-sweetened and thus, giving customers the choice to sweeten it themselves. So, when you go to order your Dubai Chocolate Bar Matcha Latte, the barista will likely ask you if you want the matcha sweetened, with the default sweetener option being simple syrup. But you can also substitute it with another sweetener or syrup option, too — with brown sugar being a great choice. Added to your matcha along with the pistachio sauce and chocolate cold foam, you'll get a Dubai chocolate bar-inspired latte that tastes much closer to the real thing.

When you think about fall coffee orders, your mind likely goes immediately to pumpkin spice. But over the last few years, Starbucks has released other fall menu drinks that have come to rival it. From the Iced Apple Crisp Non-Dairy Cream Chai of 2024 to the Apple Crisp Oatmilk Shaken Espressos and Macchiatos of 2023, and from the secret menu Harry Potter's Pumpkin Juice to the Pumpkin Cream Cold Brews and Pumpkin Chais that our taste testers tried and ranked on the Starbucks fall 2022 menu — apple, chai, and pumpkin seem to be the recurring flavors of the season. 

But no matter what end of the fall coffee flavor drink spectrum you lean toward, the addition or substitution of Starbucks' brown sugar syrup will only work to enhance those warm, autumnal flavor notes. As mentioned before, the inclusion of molasses gives brown sugar a much more complex flavor than your standard sweetener — one that's simultaneously sweet, but also deep and warm. 

These flavors pair naturally with those associated with your go-to fall coffee orders, be it substituted for the vanilla syrup used to sweeten your Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew, added to the iconic Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte, or combined with the spiced notes of your Iced Pumpkin Cream Chai. In fact, brown sugar flavors are already a fixture in fall drinks like the Iced Apple Crisp Oatmilk Shaken Espresso and the Iced Apple Crisp Non-Dairy Cream Chai, where it's combined with notes of apple and cinnamon for this very reason.

First debuted at the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Seattle, Starbucks began rolling out cold foam at all of its cafes in 2018. The sweet, frothy topping was introduced with Cold Brews and Nitro Cold Brews, but also in drinks like Iced Cappuccinos to provide that extra bit of foam and texture that, previously, wasn't explored in iced beverages. Since then, the topping has become as customizable as the drinks it was added to, with options like soy and oat milk cold foam for dairy-free customers as well as various flavor additions. 

Made from frothed milk and sweetener, it's possible to infuse your cold foam with just about any syrup or sauce on the menu — including brown sugar syrup. In fact, brown sugar cold foam took the number three spot in our ranking of 12 Starbucks cold foam flavors. Brown sugar cold foam is simple to order — just request a drink and ask to have it with brown sugar cold foam. It'd work well in virtually any iced drink you'd usually add brown sugar syrup to, except it will provide a bit of extra texture and visual appeal to the experience. 

For instance, you could order it with something as simple as a Cold Brew or Iced Latte for a nice layered effect in your cup. You could also add it to any of the iced fall beverages mentioned earlier, such as an Iced Chai, Iced Pumpkin Spice Latte, or an Iced Apple Crisp Oatmilk Shaken Espresso — you could even add brown sugar syrup to the pumpkin cold foam itself, if you wanted.

Starbucks might be better known for its coffee and espresso drinks, but our taste testers believe that Starbucks' Iced Tea is the absolute best fast food tea option. Instead of adding brown sugar syrup to the Iced Green Tea, where the warm and citrusy flavors might clash, consider adding it to some of the other popular Starbucks tea drinks. Chai and Matcha Lattes have been mentioned previously, but it'd also work well in the Iced Black Tea or a London Fog Latte.

London Fog lattes are made with Earl Grey tea, steamed milk, and vanilla syrup. Previously a secret menu item, the drink became so popular that Starbucks decided to bring it to the real menu, where it's also offered in an iced variation (which, as mentioned before, you could also add brown sugar cold foam to). Our taste tester recommends ordering the tea with two sachets for more depth, or with less milk if it's iced. 

But another idea is to add an espresso shot to it to create something people like to call a London Smog. Either way, it seems to be one of the most popular drinks to add brown sugar syrup to. You can either substitute the vanilla syrup with brown sugar syrup in this drink, or opt for half the amount of each. In any case, to avoid further diluting the taste of the tea, it's best not to go overboard on either.

When it's cold outside and the snow starts to fall, everyone's minds turn to hot chocolate. It's a given — and, if you're choosing between Dunkin' or Starbucks for your cocoa, Starbucks is the place to go. But that's not only because you can add brown sugar syrup to it (although it might be from now on). Made from mocha sauce and steamed milk, the reason our taste testers prefer Starbucks' Hot Chocolate is because of its bittersweet cocoa flavor and milky consistency. The addition of brown sugar syrup, in turn, offers a nice balance of sweetness and depth. But it also goes hand in hand with an ordering hack for velvety Starbucks Hot Chocolate, too.

Starbucks barista @itsjoboi on TikTok recommends ordering your hot chocolate with java chips added to it and vanilla syrup instead of the mocha. The line of thinking here is that the java chips melt and, in turn, thicken the Hot Chocolate. But you can also opt for half mocha sauce and half java chips for something similar and extra chocolatey — what really matters is that you balance it out with a syrup that offers some flavor contrast. Brown sugar syrup is perfect for this, thanks to its warm and caramel-like flavor. Plus, it'd pair great should you ever feel like adding in a shot of espresso or topping the whipped cream with chocolate curls (because why not?).