Discover your barista’s drink creativity: Barista Originals. 

This weekend (Friday the 14th through Sunday the 16th) and next weekend, your baristas get to spotlight one of their favorite drink creations. You’ll find signs for these special drinks on the store’s chalkboards. Each store has a lot of freedom in what they pick to feature. Here in Seattle, I’ve tried a couple of unique drinks. This one, by far, was my favorite of all that I tried:

^ This beverage was a Horchata-inspired Nitro Cold Brew, and is currently offered at the East Olive Way Starbucks in Seattle.

Here’s the menu board for it:

Toffee nut, chai, vanilla, and a splash of cream combine with Nitro Cold Brew to make a horchata-inspired flavored drink. This was truly creative. It was a delicious sweet, elegant, full-coffee flavored drink, with some spice flavors. It did resemble a horchata flavor a bit!

I love how Nitro Cold Brew can be jazzed up with flavors and milk to make some amazing creations. I recommend this hack here too: Pumpkin Spice Nitro Cold Brew.

The first of the “Barista Originals” I tried was at the Fourth and Seneca Starbucks in Seattle:

^ This was built like a Caramel Macchiato except that instead of Caramel atop the drink, it had pumpkin spice sauce. For more information on what’s in a Caramel Macchiato, take a look at this past StarbucksMelody story:

Understanding Your Caramel Macchiato

This was okay but not a lot of pumpkin flavor since it is not actually in the drink, rather just drizzled on top.

Lastly, I also had the chance to try this “Barista Original” at the Starbucks at 328 – 15th Avenue East, in Seattle. This store has a unique design, as it was an experimental store from July 2009 through February 1, 2011. This very unique store no longer offers beer or wine, and no longer has unique foods, but it retains it’s one-of-a-kind store design and has a manual espresso machine. During the store’s experimental phase, it was called “15th Avenue Coffee and Tea.” I hope Starbucks never changes it! (And Starbucks certainly has done many, many big experiments since about January 2008.)

So at the 15th Avenue East Starbucks, here’s there “Barista Original”:

Partner Audrey made my drink:

She explained to me that it is a Pumpkin Spice Latte with half the pumps of pumpkin spice syrup. It’s half white mocha, half pumpkin spice sauce. This beverage also comes with Pumpkin Spice whipped cream, a holdover from a promotion earlier this month.

Weigh in! Have you had the chance to try any “Barista Originals” drinks? If you are at a Starbucks with nitro cold brew taps, try the horchata drink! In Seattle, roughly half the company-operated Starbucks locations have nitro cold brew. It is quickly expanding. I know there are a number of stores in California with nitro cold brew, including this gorgeous store in Long Beach, California. (Look at that Siren mural! The store design is stunning!)