About Grounds to Brew

Welcome to Grounds to Brew.

Here you can find all sorts of coffee-based drink recipes to help you become a better at-home barista.

You’ll also find lots of Starbucks insider tips & tricks and copycat recipes. In fact, I pride myself in testing each recipe until it’s as close to the original as possible, using ingredients you can actually get your hands on.

If you love tea as much as coffee, be sure to check out my sister site, Sweet Steep.

Hello, I’m Kristin

Hi there. I’m Kristin, the passionate coffee-blogger behind Grounds to Brew.

Currently, my husband and I live in the Chicago area. Our two adult children and their spouses, and three grandsons all live nearby.

My degree is in marketing and my career (before blogging) alternated between data, training and design. (I think I’m left and right-brained.)

Website design was the thing that merged my varied interests and eventually led to the launch of Grounds to Brew and Sweet Steep.

At heart, I love to share information in creative ways.

That’s why I love sharing everything I know about coffee and Starbucks drinks from an insider perspective on Grounds to Brew.

One of my favorite things to do is take photos of real Starbucks drinks that I order myself. I think of these as drinks in the wild. It’s exciting when I capture every ripple of caramel or cascade of vanilla sweet cream.

More importantly, you can see exactly what each barista-made drink looks like.

Personal Accounts

My Starbucks Insider

By my side, is my trusty Starbucks-insider, my daughter with more than 8 years Starbucks experience.

She is passionate about every detail of her job and so knowledgeable about all-things Starbucks.

And let me tell you, she’s the best copycat recipe taste-tester. With her expertise, she lets me know things like the flavor is spot-on, but the consistency is off, or vice versa. And we work on it together until it’s the best possible Starbucks at-home dupe.

My claim to fame is actually knowing how to make every single size Starbucks drink according to its recipe card without ever having stood behind the counter as a barista, thanks to my barista daughter and her contagious passion.

I think that will be in my brain forever, sort of like riding a bike.

My Promise to You

My goal is to help you become a better at-home barista and take the mystery out of how Starbucks makes your favorite coffee drinks. Along the way, I hope to share lots of helpful Starbucks ordering tips and guides.

You can trust that Grounds to Brew is 100% me (a real person, not error-filled artificial intelligence)!

Every written word is mine and every photograph is through the lens of my trusty Nikon.

Every Grounds to Brew recipe passes through my kitchen and camera and all content is based on my first-hand (or should I say, “first sip”) knowledge and experiences.

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