Half & half mochas

Mochas are simply steamed milk with espresso and chocolate syrup. How does Creative save at Starbucks when it comes to this delicious drink?

First off, I have to advocate going half sweet. I think people in the West consume far too much sugar, and it’s a no-brainer that sugar is not good for you. To be balanced, it’s a stretch to completely eliminate sugar from your diet. But I have found that whereas once, I would ask for a regular sweet mocha, I can now go down to half sweet.

Starbucks sweetens their drinks thusly:

• Tall – 3 pumps of syrup or sauce (half sweet is 1.5 pumps)
• Grande – 4 pumps of syrup or sauce (half sweet is 2 pumps)
• Venti – 5 pumps of syrup or sauce (following the formulae above, half sweet would be 2.5 pumps)

The other day, my lovely wife and I went to Starbucks to grab a drink for ourselves. I turned to her and asked her to lemme order. So, I ordered a regular venti mocha, 5 pumps of syrup, extra hot (and I wanted it to 200 degrees F but they could only do 190). At this point, she walked away, as she hasn't mastered the art of suppressing her sense of embarassment from my creative cheapsake ways (and she's Chinese!)

You may be wondering why I, who preaches consuming less sugar, would order such a sugary concotion. Well, I received my drink and asked for one more tall size cup (which our friendly barista gave to us).

I then took the venti mocha to the condiment counter, and poured some of the drink into the tall cup until it was 2/3 full. I then took some of the free milk available at every condiment counter in any Starbucks and filled both drinks up with milk (be it non-fat, whole, or half & half).

There you go… a venti mocha and a tall, all for $5.23 (CDN), and as I ordered them extra hot, they were still quite warm to drink! Seeing as a grande mocha is around $4.00, that’s quite the savings.