Nowadays, you don’t have to be dairy-free to enjoy the wide selection of alternatives available. Plant-based milk has become increasingly popular with Irish consumers, and the appeal has gone beyond dietary preference and lactose intolerance. Some people want to experiment with different flavours or textures, some people are looking for specific nutrients from the non-dairy milk, others might be tempted to give these a try for environmental reasons.
In this Coffee Blog, we are going to take a look at the differences among dairy-free milk, and give you a few tips on how you can create a delicious coffee drink with plant-based milk at home.
Soy Milk
This is probably the best-known plant milk around the world. People have been using soy alternatives to animal products for generations. It is great not just for those who want to avoid dairy, but also for people with nut allergies. You will either love or hate the taste of soy milk, some find it has a neutral flavour, while others might think the nutty flavour can be overpowering.
Almond Milk
This dairy alternative has reportedly overtaken soy milk as the leading plant milk in recent years, it has refined and smooth taste. In general, Almond milk is very manageable to pour and great texture. And it is widely available in the supermarket.
Oat Milk
This plant milk is relevantly a newcomer in the PBA range, but it has quickly gained popularity, mainly because it has the most neutral flavour of all alternatives to dairy and doesn’t overpower the coffee, matches great with coffee, in both hot and cold drinks. But it can be watery to froth at home.
Coconut Milk
Coconut milk is creamy and rich, which helps it mimic the mouthfeel of a dairy-based drink. But it has a lot of saturated fat, which masks coffee flavours, and it has a distinctive taste of its own. It is quite versatile in hot or cold drinks.
Hemp, Hazelnut & Cashew
Hemp, hazelnut, and cashew milk are widely disregarded for speciality coffee drinks, they are not as well-known as some other types of plant-based milk.
Hazelnut has a distinctive flavour that can mask or distort the nuances of the beans.
And normally hemp is too watery to froth, hard to maintain the texture.
Cashew milk has a milder flavour than almond milk but is also naturally sweeter, which can be overwhelming in coffee. It also doesn’t foam well.
How Plant-Based Milk Froth Differently to Dairy
How milk reacts to heat and foaming depends on its proteins. Plant-based milk obviously contains different proteins than the lactose and whey proteins in cow milk, so they behave differently when frothed.
Temperature
Temperature changes, the acidity of coffee, and the impact of frothing cause plant milk to curdle more easily. Plant-based drinks don’t need to be heated quite as highly as typical dairy milk.
Ingredients
Many of the plant-based milk used by baristas often have added stabilizers, to allow the milk to better handle hear and foaming. They are normally called “Professional Range” which are only available to the trade. On the other hands, the plant-based milk we can buy in the supermarket do not normally have these added stabilizers, they are cleaner and healthier, but also more difficult to froth, so it is actually very hard to re-create your favourite barista styled plant-based milk coffee drink at home.
Tips for Frothing Plant-Based Milk for Home Baristas
No matter why kind of coffee drinks you fancy and what type of milk you prefer, the Lavazza milk frother range is designed to recreate coffee shop quality milk drink as best as possible for both dairy milk and plant-based milk. And here are some tips for frothing plant-based milk at home.
Keep the product chilled to achieve the best results
Shake the milk carton in order to mix the sediments before pouring into the frothing jug or the milk frothers
Froth it as gently as possible, minimising the amount of air that is mixed in
Avoid overheating the milk
Pour the milk quickly and evenly into the coffee
Try out different brands of plant-based milk, dependant on the manufacturer and additives, some plant-based milk can either foam very well or not-so-well.
Check out the Lavazza Milk Easy and Milk Up Frothers pages for more frothing tips and recipes, enjoy the barista-quality of coffee at the comfort of your own home. And don’t forget, the team here at CoffeeClick are always on hand to offer any advice or guidance you need, just give us a call or send us a message and we’ll be happy to help.
