How is almond milk made
How is almond milk made?! What a great question! Did you know that you can actually make almond milk at home with the right ingredients and methods?
With so many people finding themselves with new food sensitivities, or even just dietary preferences, milk alternatives have become quite popular. They are also commonly found among the vegetarian and vegan crown that prefer not to consume animal products. Thankfully, as they pick up speed prices tend to settle out a little but oftentimes you’re still caught paying a premium for almond milk. Luckily, you can make your own almond milk, and even customize it a little to be exactly the flavour you like!
The benefits of almond milk
While animal milk has many health benefits, it comes with some downsides as well. The human digestive tract doesn’t always handle milk produced by other animals all that well, which is likely why lactose intolerance has become so prevelant. Additionally, cows milk can contain a significantly higher amount of fat and cholesteral than almond milk. Not to mention the health risks if you were to start producing and drinking your own animal milk without having built up the correct antibodies. There is a reason that raw milk cannot be sold in many parts of the world – and it is a very good one – safety! The proper processing, pasturizing, preservatives, and vitmain additives (many milks are fortified with Vitamins A and D) are necessary to get the true benefits out of animals milk.
If store bought cows milk was a regular part of your diet, that you are now thinking of transitioning to homeade almond milk, it is important to consider all aspects of the nutritional change. For example, you may be benefiting in some ways with constantly fresh almond milk, but also lacking in others and need to find another source of vitamin D or another nutritional component that your body requires and will no longer be recieving from the previous store bought milk.
How to make your own
Food safety is important so be sure to start with clean almonds that were bought from a trusted source that meets all of your countries food health and safety requirements. It is also important to keep in mind tha homeade almond milk doesn’t have preservatives and won’t keep for long so it is best made in small batches according to how much you will use up quickly.
The only two ingredients required are raw almonds and water. Everyone has a bit of a different taste though and a wide variety of flavours can be added from salt to natural sweeteners and beyond.
Step one is soaking the almonds. It is generally recommended that this processed be allowed approximately 24 hours to complete, at which time the water is drained and remaining almonds move on to the next step.
Next up is blending the remaining almonds into a pulp with some water, until you really can’t see any solid chunks. This is the time to add in any additional flavours that you want (sea salt, honey, maple syrup, spices, etc).
Finally, find a cheese cloth or nut milk bag to squeeze and strain the mixture through – ta da – you have almond milk!
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I just love almond milk and didn’t even realise how easy this can be made yourself, I would think it will save me some money and most of all without artificial sweeteners, which is a good thing. Thanks so much for this recipe on how to make almond milk. Would adding any cacao powder make it taste like chocolate milk?
Hi Lizzy,
I can’t say I have tried adding cacao powder myself, but imagine that with that and little sweetener it may have somewhat of a chocolate milk flavour 🙂 If you give it a shot please let me know how it turns out!
Hi Admin,
Thanks for this informative article on how to make almond milk at home! I’m definitely going to try it out the next time I run out of store-bought almond milk. I have a question about the straining process: what is the best way to extract as much almond milk as possible? I’ve tried using a cheesecloth in the past, but it always seems like I’m leaving a lot of milk behind.
HiChas,
Great question – you could try a wider grid cloth, or may have to spend a little more time tilting the cheesecloth or removing the solid portions to allow more of the milk to drain through. I hope you enjoy your next batch of fresh homeade almond milk!