To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.
To revisit this article, select My Account, then View saved stories Beans Cleaner Line For Agriculture And Farm
If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED
I have nothing against cows, but that doesn’t mean I always want to drink their juices. Like many people who do it for dietary, moral, or climate-change reasons, I’ve been looking at alternatives to cow’s milk. I have found great convenience in automatic milk makers, which are designed to coax nondairy milk out of nuts, oats, and other plant products. You simply throw the plant products into the device with water, and the machine automatically processes it all into a milky, creamy beverage.
There are two main types of plant milk. With sources like oats and almonds, the milk (usually called raw milk) is made by finely blending the material and mixing it with water so the plant material is suspended. For rice or buckwheat milk, the plant source is soaked and heated to release the enzymes that break down the plant material, then ground and mixed. Thus the name hot milk. Most of the milk makers I tested can make both types, including heaters and blenders. Some, such as Nutr and MioMat, also offer soy milk programs, which require you to heat the liquid to break down a chemical in raw soybeans—a trypsin inhibitor—that can give you a gut ache.
Be sure to visit some of our other buying guides for kitchen gear, including the best gear for small kitchens, the best electric kettles, the best coffee grinders, and the best tea accessories.
If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more.
The somewhat questionably named Nutr is the smallest of the milk makers I tested, about the size of a half-gallon milk carton. It also makes the smallest amount of milk, about a cup and a half at most. It is speedy, though: Throw in a cup of water and a tablespoon of instant oats, and five minutes later, you get a cup of oat milk. The same is true of almond milk, so the idea is that it makes milk only when you need it, precluding the need to store it. If you want larger quantities, just know that Nutr is working on a family-size version that can make up to 600 milliliters (about 2.5 cups) in one batch.
I tested it by making oat, almond, rice, and tiger nut milk. The resulting milk was very well blended, although the milk did benefit from using the Nutr’s included cup-top filter, which catches the plant mush. That filter didn’t catch it all: I still found some gritty bits in the filtered milk.
The Nutr is quick but frustratingly noisy: The loud blender motor runs intermittently as if an annoying child has their finger on the power button and keeps turning it on and off to bug you. The blender runs less often on the longer milking cycles, but it is no less irritating. It certainly isn’t the kind of noise I want first thing in the morning: It woke up my dog, which meant I couldn’t have a cup of coffee before I took him for a walk.
The Nutr also handled rice milk (a hot milk that has to be heated while brewing) without problems, but it took about 27 minutes, plus about 10 minutes waiting for the milk to cool from the near boiling point the milking process needs to get those enzymes working. That’s a long time to wait for the small amount it makes.
In addition to offering subscription shipping for the nuts, oats, and other plant materials you make milk from, Nutr sells powder mixes to flavor the milk and add herbal ingredients. The Vanilla Cinnamon with Reishi Mushroom and L-Theanine had a rather unpleasant fungal aftertaste, but the strawberry powder was more pleasant, with a sweet taste and the slight citrus kick. A sample pack of the five flavors is included.
Making small batches of fresh plant milk when needed is a great concept, since plant milk tastes best freshly made. The execution could be better, though. The noise is incredibly irritating, and the small maximum quantity means it only works for one person. That might be OK if you have a single vegan in the family, but the noise might drive them back to drinking cow milk.
If you want to make larger quantities of plant milk or experiment with different milk sources, try the ChefWave Milkmade. It automates the process of milk-making but allows plenty of flexibility in the source and quantity, and has an auto-clean feature that saves a lot of time. It looks like a coffee machine, with a loader at the top and a glass carafe at the front. There’s even a water reservoir at the back, like a Keurig or other capsule coffee maker, though you have to refill it every time you use it.
You take off the water reservoir and fill it to the 10- or 20-ounce levels, depending on how much milk you want. You then put the milk source in the mixing chamber, a glass-lidded compartment on the top of the machine. You then select the cycle from the control panel, and it brews you up a batch in the handy milk jug on the front of the machine. That process took about 18 minutes for oat milk and 45 minutes for soy milk. Once complete, the Milkmade beeps contentedly and runs a cleaning cycle that purges the system and dumps the cleaning water into an internal hopper. Once the cleaning cycle is complete, empty the hopper, and the Milkmade is ready to run again.
It's simple and effective, but the downside is that you must refill the water reservoir and empty the internal water hopper every time you use it. Even though the reservoir holds over 40 fluid ounces, most of that is used in cleaning.
The Milkmade did an excellent job blending the milk but didn’t filter it, meaning the milk can have a slightly gritty texture from bits of the source material. This was present in the oat, soy milk, and horchata that I made, all of which benefited from a final pass through a fine mesh filter (not included).
The control panel provides six presets (almond, soy, oat, cashew, macadamia, and coconut) but you must select your desired preset by pressing the program button repeatedly until the one you want is selected. The control panel looks like you could just touch the name to select, but only two of the buttons are touch-sensitive. You can delay the start of the milk-making process so you will have a fresh batch of milk when you wake up, but you only set a delay; there is no true timer. There is also no way to customize the presets, so you can’t raise or lower the mix temperature or tweak the grinding time, things that most plant milk connoisseurs like to do with experience.
Looking like a slightly overgrown electric kettle, the Tribest Soyabella is a simple plant milk maker that can do other things, such as make soups, infusions, and tofu. It is rather too simple, though—the only option is to make raw or heated milk, chosen by a pair of buttons on the top of the device. This top lifts off to reveal the device's workings: a blender arm and a filter cup. To make a batch of milk, you put up to 4 cups of water in the vessel and a cup of your plant material into the filter cup, which twists to lock onto the top. The blender then grinds up the material and mixes it with the water, while the filter cup keeps the plant pulp contained.
The process takes about a minute for raw milk and between 15 and 25 minutes for hot milk, depending on how much water you add. The Soyabella can handle between three and about five cups of water.
When done, pour the milk out, remove the filter cup, and discard the pulp. This works well. While some gritty bits did get through, the filter cup kept the chunkier bits contained. I found the results from the suggested recipes relatively weak and watery; the instructions suggest that you run the cycle twice or thrice to get a better result, which was a good idea. It would be better if there were a way to set a longer blend time. There is also no provision here for automatically soaking the plant source, so you must do that manually.
The short manual shows how to use it to make soup, sauces, and soft tofu, and includes a good selection of recipes for various dishes. A grinding cup is also included, which fits over the blender arm to grind dry ingredients.
The Tribest Soyabella tries to be a jack-of-all-trades but doesn’t master any of them. It makes decent milk, but only if you run it twice or thrice. That makes it feel a bit pointless, since it requires a lot of extra work every time you use it.
The $245 Almond Cow looks like a slightly extended cow-themed electric kettle, complete with a cow button on the top that you press to start. That’s the only control: The Almond Cow, as the name perhaps suggests, is designed to make milk from almonds, although it can handle other raw milk sources like oats. There is no way to make hot milk like soy milk. It does a pretty effective job of milking almonds, though, so it is a solid pick if almond is your sole milk source.
I tested the $325 Almond Cow Starter Set, which includes the milk maker and a few accessories, such as a rather cute branded glass milk jug, a cleaning brush, and several packs of the Creamy CocoCash coconut and Original Almonds ‘n’ Dates milk mixes that the company sells.
The process of getting milk from your electric cow is simple: Add water to the vessel (between 5 and 6 cups), put the dry ingredients in the filter cup, twist it onto the bottom of the lid so the blender arm is in the materials, put the lid on, and press the button. The Almond Cow then grinds and mixes everything, a process that takes a few minutes. When it is done, the light on the top turns blue, and the milk is ready. The pulp is kept in the filter cup, which you remove and clean by hand. A collector cup is included, which fits over the filter cup to stop it dripping everywhere. The vessel also has to be rinsed out between uses.
I found the milk the Almond Cow produces was delicious: The high-speed blender with multiple blades meant the almonds were well blended and little or no grainy plant material was left behind. The milk came out a little frothy, like a pint of albino Guinness. The froth quickly settled, though, and the 5 cups that the Almond Cow produces should be enough for a family breakfast or a day of coffee-making.
Speaking of coffee, you can also use the collector cup and a smaller amount of water to make creamer, a more concentrated blend for those who prefer the thickness of a nondairy creamer.
The two milk mixes (Almond Cow calls them Milk Medleys) produce tasty milk with a nice, creamy mouth feel. The Creamy CocoCash is made with cashew nuts, coconut, and dates, while the Original Almond ‘n’ Dates is made from, well, almonds and dates. Both of these mixes would be easy to duplicate, although they use one more secret ingredient: a bit of rice flour that thickens the mix.
After using the Almond Cow, there is a lot of cleaning: Clean the filter cup, rinse the top off (the milk gets splashed inside the vessel as it is blended), and clean the vessel itself. It’s no surprise that the starter pack I tested also included a bendy scrubbing brush that helps get the gunky plant pulp out of the filter.
I also found that with chunkier ingredients like almonds, you must push the filter cup up quite hard to ensure it is correctly locked into place when attaching it to the top. That’s because the blender blades sit right at the bottom of the cup, and a nut can get stuck below the blades, keeping the twist lock from engaging properly. If the cup works its way loose during blending, it makes a mess and could damage the blade. The easiest way to avoid this, I found, was to gently shake the cup while attaching it to the top to keep the materials moving.
I also found that when you pour the milk out, the top of the Almond Cow has a habit of falling off as you tip the whole thing to get the final milk out of the vessel. There is no locking mechanism that holds the lid in place, only gravity.
Still, the Almond Cow does an effective job. It makes well blended milk in decent quantities and does it pretty quickly. What it does not do, however, is handle the variety of other types of milk some machines can. You are limited to raw milk like almonds, cashews, and oats.
The $199 Miomat is simple to use. Just throw the ingredients and the water into the large vessel, put the top on, select the program, and press start. It took about 15 minutes to make a batch of raw milk and 25 minutes for hot milk. It made about 5 cups of each.
The Miomat offers three milk programs: raw, cereal, and soy. Raw milk is for nut milk, while cereal makes milk from cereal crops like quinoa and rye, similar to the hot milk program of other devices. The soy milk program is designed for, unsurprisingly, soy milk, which needs a slightly lower temperature and longer cooking time than most hot milks. There are also programs for smoothies, soups (chunky and smooth), and porridge, as well as a cleaning cycle. For the latter, you add water and a couple of drops of washing-up liquid, and the program warms the water and swooshes it around to clean. I didn’t find this very effective: Grains of plant material get stuck to the bottom of the vessel where the heating element is, and the blender still needed a good clean and scrub afterward to get rid of more clingy bits of plant.
Inside the Miomat, the blender is surrounded by a grinder cylinder, a circular metal drum that forces the material through the blades to ensure it is all extracted. That means the milk is very well blended but not filtered. Instead, a fine mesh strainer is included, which you use to filter the milk afterward. This approach does mean that more of the material is milkified: I found the Miomat needed less plant material than the Tribest or Almond Cow to produce the same richness of milk. That’s a definite plus with expensive ingredients like almonds, but the downside is that you have to filter it yourself: The remaining bits of plant are not contained.
One confusing aspect of the Miomat is the measures. It includes a measuring cup called a “Miomat cup,” used in all the recipes in the manual. However, this is only about half the size of a US standard cup. This is detailed in the manual, but it could get confusing if you accidentally lose the Miomat cup or pick up the wrong cup. It would have been easier to switch over the measuring cup to a US one and adjust the recipes.
You don’t always need to find a technical solution to a problem. People have been making plant milk with milk bags like the Eco Bag Reusable Nut Milk Bag for thousands of years. It is the simplest of the devices I tested: a fine-weave, food-grade cotton bag that you use to filter the plant material.
To use, you simply soak your milk source overnight, drain it, zap it in a fast blender until it is a fine mush, then pour it in the milk bag while it's nestled inside bowl or jug. When you pour your liquid into the bag, the very finely ground parts of the milk source pass through the weave while the chunkier pulp stays inside the bag. Finally, lift out the bag and gently squeeze out the last milk. If you prefer your milk creamier, let it sit for longer or add ingredients like coconut and rice flour that thicken it.
Sounds simple? It is, but it is labor-intensive. You need a fast blender or a food processor to grind the plant source. A hand blender or a margarita maker won’t cut it—you need speed and multiple cutting edges. It also takes time to soak, strain, and grind enough of the plant source to produce milk. Plus, you must wash the bag by hand afterward, which is never fun.
This handmade-milk process can also go wrong. Get the cooking process wrong with hot milk, and you can give yourself severe gut rot. Squeeze the bag too hard, and you’ll get slimy milk from the starch. But it is much cheaper than the automatic devices I tested, and if you only want plant milk occasionally and don’t mind applying the necessary elbow grease, it’s a good, cheap choice.
TurboTax coupon: Up to an extra $15 off all tax services
H&R Block tax software: Save 20% - no coupon needed
Instacart promo code: $25 Off your 1st order + free delivery
Extra 20% off sitewide - Dyson promo code
GoPro Promo Code: save 15% on your next order
+30% Off with this Samsung promo code
Packaging Machinery © 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices