Almond Milk

I had been drinking almond milk for few months before I got so fed up with those obnoxious little hard-to-recycle 1-quart cartons that I decided to try making my own. I found a recipe and gave it a shot. It turns out that it's really easy and comes out very good. Now I've been making my own almond milk every few days for the last 4 or 5 months. I get my almonds in bulk and use a re-usable cheesecloth (see note at bottom). I use the leftover almond pulp in other baking I do, so my almond milk production has reduced my contribution to the waste stream by a significant margin - and that makes me very happy.

I start with 1 cup of raw, unsalted almonds.

I soak the almonds for at least 6 hours to soften up.

I usually just let them soak overnight and then I make the milk fresh in the morning for my cereal. (I took this picture of the full moon rising over the Atlantic on Jekyll Island, GA)

After the almonds have soaked, I give them a quick rinse...

...and toss them in the blender with 3 cups of water for a total of 4 cups of stuff in the blender.

Then I blend the almonds into the water on the highest setting. I've found that by leaving it blending for a full minute or longer, I get more milk out of the almonds and end up with a finer pulp.

Next I pour the blended almond mixture into a cheesecloth...

...and squeeze all of the milk out through the cheesecloth.

I pour the milk into bottles to store in the fridge. Even my finest milk will start to settle out pretty significantly after 4 or 5 days, so I only make two liters at a time so I don't have to store it that long.

Assuming that I've soaked the almonds overnight, making the milk takes me about 5 minutes in the morning. It is super easy and accomplishes all of my original goals - to have tasty non-dairy milk without all of the packaging. I highly recommend it!

Some final thoughts:

• I've found that my almond milk has a slightly nuttier taste than the commercial stuff. I happen to like it but there are a few things I've tried to play with flavor. I tried substituting about 1/4 of the almonds with cashews. This seemed to mute the almond flavor without adding much from the cashews. I've also added small amounts of vanilla extract, agave syrup or molasses to flavor the milk. I found the results pleasant but I just prefer the plain flavor. I also made chocolate almond milk by adding cocoa powder and agave syrup. That was mighty tasty.
• I now use a muslin cheesecloth that I made. This small change of equipment has been a dramatic improvement for several reasons. The first is that I have much smoother milk with virtually no detectable particulates. Second, it's a much tougher material so I can squeeze a lot more milk out of it without worrying that it will split open and dump almond pulp into my milk. Third, the coarse cheesecloths that you can buy in the grocery store cost about $3 for a square yard or so. I tried washing and reusing one of these cheesecloths once and it completely fell apart. In contrast, I've been using my muslin cheesecloth for a few months and it's holding up very nicely. It is just a funnel shaped piece of unbleached cotton muslin. I just rinse it out after each batch and let it dry in the sun.
• I found a place I can get raw almonds for $3.99/ lb. At this price, I can make a quart of milk for about $1.60. In most stores a quart of almond milk is between $2.50 and $3.50 and comes with all of that horrible packaging. Given that I use a quart of milk in my cereal almost every two days, that small savings adds up pretty quickly. It's also very convenient that I never have to worry about running out of milk. Because the raw almonds store very well, I can get a month's worth of almonds at a time so if I'm out of milk, I just have to soak some almonds before I go to bed and then I can have fresh milk in the morning.
  
• After you've squeezed the milk out, you're left with about a cup of almond pulp. I still haven't figured out exactly what the best thing to do with this is. I put it in all of my bread and into my pancakes, but that doesn't use it up at nearly the rate that I produce it. I tried making crackers with it but because I didn't want to use any flour, they were all crumbly. Recently I tried making cookies by adding banana, peanut butter and honey. These were pretty good and had a much better consistency, but were still a little off. If anyone has any suggestions for almond meal based recipes, I'm all ears. I did find that by blending the milk longer, I got a finer meal which was better to bake with.