You've Been Drinking Starbucks Bottled Frappuccinos Wrong This Whole Time
Store-bought Starbucks Frappuccinos are incredibly delish, but they are perplexing. The beverage, which is supposed to be a frozen cappuccino, is sold as a regular liquid cold coffee but with the flavor of the fan-favorite beverage from the store. It turns out, we might have been drinking it wrong this whole time — or at least that's what the TikTok community thinks.
TikTok user @brookiebarry bought a bottle of Starbucks Frappuccino and turned it into an icy beverage by using a simple hack. She tossed the beverage in a blender with ice and voila, it was a frozen beverage. "Oh my God, it's like the same texture and everything as a Frappuccino from Starbucks," she said after trying the blended mixture. "I'm shook."
Another TikTok user @naatalie_lee shared a different method that has since gone viral. She put the Frappuccino bottle in the freezer and let it sit in there for two hours. When she opened the bottle, the caffeinated beverage was still in liquid form. After a little shake, the liquid turned into a slushy texture similar to what you would get at a Starbucks. "This is actually so cool," she declared.
The Frappuccino freezer hack has a scientific explanation
TikTok user @naatalie_lee's method of getting the Starbucks drink to actually be frozen after two hours can be chalked up to science. Although, if you give the hack a try, it might be best to transfer to drink into a freezer-safe container to avoid the glass bottle cracking.
As previously mentioned, you can only get the slushie texture if you shake the store-bought Starbucks Frappuccino when you take it out of the freezer. That's because the drink is made up of mostly water. Science Focus notes that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, however, most household freezers are set to 0 degrees. When the liquid is below freezing point but still in liquid form, it's known as "supercooled."
Science Focus explains the reason you need to shake the bottle is that "it needs something to kick-start the freezing process and encourage a small number of the liquid molecules to get together in a regular arrangement, as they do in a crystal, instead of moving around independently as they do in the liquid." The process is called nucleation.
Although Starbucks only suggests serving the store-bought version "chilled or over ice," nucleation is an easy way to get the drink at barista quality.