Midnight Drink {Starbucks Copycat}

The gorgeous color of the Starbucks Midnight Drink matches its name perfectly. And with this easy copycat recipe, you can make the coconut milk-based Refresher at home any time you're craving one!

Jump to:

• 🌃 What is the Midnight Drink?
• 🗒 Ingredients
• 🫙 How to make blackberry sage syrup
• 🥣 How to make refresher base
• 🥤 How to mix drink
• 🎉 Modifications
• 🍋 More ways to use base
• ⏲️ How to store
• ⚡️ Is there caffeine in drink?
• 🥥 More coconut milk Refreshers
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

Whenever Starbucks launches a new line of Refresher drinks, it often seems like the coconut milk version is the most popular.

The Pink Drink gets a lot more buzz than the Strawberry Acai Refresher and the Dragon Drink seems to sell more than the Mango Dragonfruit Refresher.

So, while we were super excited to try the Blackberry Sage Refresher, we were even more excited for the Midnight Drink!

What a perfect name for a drink that really does resemble the midnight sky. It also happens to be packed with sweet berry and creamy coconut flavor. And it's easy to make at home, too.

🌃 What is the Midnight Drink?

The Midnight Drink is the coconut milk version of Starbucks new for February 2025 Blackberry Sage Refresher.

It combines the Blackberry Sage Refresher base with sweetened coconut milk instead of water, along with freeze-dried blackberries, for a nice sweet and fruity, creamy drink with just a touch of sage.

Starbucks describes the Midnight Drink as, "Delicious flavors of sweet blackberries paired with notes of sage are shaken with ice, coconutmilk and blackberry inclusions—a perfect balance of flavors creating a refreshing, craveable beverage for the season."

If you love the idea of a blackberry drink, but don't like the idea of sage, you can certainly make the drink without the herb.

🗒 Ingredients

The ingredients for the Midnight Drink are basically the same as the ingredients for the Blackberry Sage Refresher, except you'll need sweetened coconut milk.

You'll start by making the Refresher base and then mixing that with sweetened coconut milk and freeze-dried blackberry inclusions.

I'll also show you how to make the blackberry sage syrup for the base, but if you prefer, you can use store-bought blackberry syrup and can infuse it with sage (or forget the sage altogether if it's not your thing).

In the Starbucks drink, the sage flavor is actually added along with the blackberry inclusions! So, you can ask for the drink without the inclusions (they don't change the flavor of the drink; just the color) if you are ordering in-store and don't like sage.

Starbucks also makes all their Refreshers with a white grape juice concentrate, but I generally feel like this adds too much grape flavor when made at home. However, if you prefer to use the white grape juice base instead of the syrup, you can follow my recipe for the Strawberry Acai Refresher and replace the strawberries with 6 oz. of blackberries and omit the acai and passionfruit powders.

Here's everything you need for that (be sure to view the recipe card at the bottom of this post for ingredient amounts and full recipe instructions):

• Blackberry sage syrup: I share my recipe with you, but if you prefer, you can buy a bottle of blackberry syrup and infuse chopped sage into it.
• Sweetened coconut milk (the kind in the carton, like Silk or SO Delicious)
• Citric acid: you can replace this with lemon juice if you prefer
• Green coffee extract: this is what adds caffeine to the Refresher and you can leave it out if you don't want any caffeine in yours.
• Freeze-dried blackberries

And for the blackberry sage syrup (if you're making your own):

• Water
• Granulated sugar
• Blackberries: if you can't find fresh, you can use frozen.
• Fresh sage

🫙 How to make blackberry sage syrup

This homemade syrup is really easy to make. I already have a blackberry syrup recipe on my blog, so I followed that recipe here and then infused some fresh sage into it.

To make, just put water, sugar, and blackberries in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.

Once boiling, lower heat and let mixture simmer for about 15 minutes until blackberries are softening and mixture has thickened.

Remove saucepan from heat and mix chopped sage into syrup. Cover saucepan and let sit to infuse sage flavor for about 15 minutes.

And then strain the blackberries and sage from the syrup into a bowl.

Keep the syrup in the bowl or pour it into a mason jar and place in fridge to cool completely before using.

The syrup will continue to thicken as it cools.

You can keep this fruity simple syrup in the fridge for about a month.

🥣 How to make refresher base

Now you're ready to mix up your base. Once your base is made, you can keep it in the fridge for about a week, which means you can whip up a Midnight drink or other blackberry Refresher whenever you want.

Just add blackberry sage syrup, water, citric acid, and green coffee bean powder (if using) to a large jar or container.

Shake well to combine and refrigerate until ready to use.

The base is a super concentrated blackberry sage mixture, so you'll want to be sure to mix it before drinking.

Keep it in your fridge until you're ready to use it.

🥤 How to mix drink

Ready to mix up a Midnight Drink?

Just add about ½ cup blackberry sage base, ½ cup sweetened coconut milk, and ¼ cup freeze-dried blackberries to an ice-filled shaker.

Shake well to combine

And pour the entire mixture, ice included, into a glass.

Take a sip of your berry-packed, coconut creamy drink.

I would say you can definitely taste the sage in the water-based Refresher much more than you can in the Midnight Drink. This one is all about the blackberries and coconut.

I think it's a super tasty drink, but I don't see this one becoming more popular than the Pink Drink or the Dragon Drink!

🎉 Modifications

When you make Starbucks drinks at home, it's really easy to make modifications to them, based on what ingredients you have on hand and what your preferences are.

Here are some modifications for the Midnight Drink:

• If this drink is too sweet for you, you can cut down on the amount of blackberry syrup you use in the base or you can use unsweetened coconut milk instead of sweetened.

• If you're not a fan of coconut flavor, but like the idea of a creamier drink, consider using almond milk, soy milk, or oat milk instead.

• If you're not a fan of sage flavor, leave it out of the syrup.
  
• If you want to make the base with white grape juice, like Starbucks does, I recommend following the process I use in my Strawberry Acai Refresher recipe. Make the base with 2 ¼ cups white grape juice and 6 ounces of blackberries. Let the sage infuse into the base once it's off the heat before straining.

• Leave out the green coffee extract powder if you don't care about having caffeine in your Refresher.

• If you don't have citric acid, you can add about a tablespoon of lemon juice instead. I do love the extra little zing citric acid gives the drink, but lemon juice will have a similar effect.

• If you don't have freeze-dried blackberries, you can use fresh blackberries or just leave them out all together. They do alter the color of the drink a bit, but since you're already using a blackberry syrup to make it, the color will be similar.

🍋 More ways to use base

Starbucks' Refreshers come in threes and so, along with the Midnight Drink come two other drinks:

• If you prefer a less sweet, not creamy drink, mix the base with water instead of coconut milk for the Blackberry Sage Refresher.

• If you like sweet and you want to add a little more tartness, too, mix the base with lemonade instead for the Blackberry Lemonade Refresher.

Of course, you can really mix the base with anything you want, so let me know if you try anything different!

⏲️ How to store

I recommend storing the Refresher base in a large mason jar in your fridge. When stored properly, it should last about a week.

And you can also easily double the base recipe; just make sure you have a large enough jar or container to keep it in. I recommend these 4 cup mason jars.

You shouldn't mix the base with the coconut milk until right before you're ready to enjoy your drink as the coconut will separate and may curdle a bit from the coconut milk.

⚡️ Is there caffeine in drink?

Despite what many people believe, there is caffeine in all Refresher drinks.

You can't order the drinks sans caffeine at Starbucks because the base is made with green coffee extract. But when you make the Midnight Drink at home, you can just leave that ingredient out!

According to the Starbucks website, the Midnight Drink has 55 mg caffeine. For reference, a grande coffee from Starbucks has around 260-360 mg of caffeine depending on the roast.

So, it's not a lot of caffeine, but it's good to know it's there.

There's a lot to love about the Midnight Drink, not the least because it's totally Instagrammable!

Only time will tell whether it sticks around on the Starbucks menu or not, but even if it's gone with the season, you'll be able to make it at home for as long as you want!

📖 Recipe