Adventure 1 – Almond milk (attempt #1)

By looking at the title, you should be able to tell that my intent at making almond milk wasn’t a huge success.  

I decided to start my journey with almond milk because it seemed easy, and it was one of the most recent ideas I had in my head.  All I really needed were almonds and water (and a blender, and some special straining devices.)  To top it off, I went to Costco and a 3lb bag of almonds was calling my name, so it sealed the deal of me making almond milk.

I’ve made horchata before many times, and I will post my delicious recipe for that sometime, and it is a similar process.  However, the end result of my almond milk was kind of chewy… or rather pulpy.  

Here were my steps:

1. I soaked 2 cups of almonds for about 18 hours.  The recipe I followed said to soak them overnight or two nights.  I thought I would be good with this amount of time.  

2. I took out half of the water logged almonds for attempt #1 at making the milk.  They didn’t feel very squishy.  In fact, most of them felt pretty hard still.

3. I blended the almonds with 2 cups of water.

4. I strained the mixture several times using a normal strainer.  Then I added a pinch of sugar and a bit of vanilla.

5. I drank the almond milk (and it was warm).

Result: Not good enough for me to go on an almond-milk-making spree, but I am going to try to see how I can make it better.  In some ways, it is pretty easy.  All you have to do is soak almonds and then blend them… but I am going to have to investigate if I need some cheesecloth or something (I have no idea what cheesecloth is, but I have heard about the device many times).  I even tried using a coffee filter, but I just ended up making it rip and tear, and the almond meal oozed out.

I will try my hand at almond milk in a few more days.  Next on the agenda is yogurt!