A few weeks back my wife sent me a link to making your own oat milk at home and I said to myself surely it can’t be that simple, can it? Let me backtrack a little bit though. A few months back out of curiosity I started buying oat milk. (OK OK it’s not milk I know) I am however using it as a substitute for milk so I’ll call it what I want. It’s white .. I put it in my breakfast cereal so I’m going calling it milk. There was a special offer so I believe it was working out at €1 a litre. A few weeks later and it’s back up to €1.60. Not the end of the world but given its just oat? it does seem quite expensive. Now there are many reasons you might like to try oat milk, you can go into various ethical reasons surrounding dairy if you’d like. For me, It was a bit of an experiment and I quite like it and I’ve stuck with it.
To make your own you’re going to want
- 100g of Oats
- 1 litre of water give or take
- A pinch of salt
- 2 dates (Not entirely necessary but they do sweeten it up a bit)
You could try adding in some honey or some maple syrup if you’d like.
I like to add my ingredients to a blender and give it a blend while it’s dry. Next, I pour the bottle of water I’ve got into the blender as it mixes away. You don’t really want to blend for much longer than 40 seconds. Once blended you’ll want to filter it. The first time I tried this I passed it through a tea towel and that was hell. Since then I’ve asked for a pair of old tights and they work a treat as you can see in the photo below.
You end up with a bit less than a litre of “milk” not to mention the leftover blended date and oat mix. I’ve read that you can use this for various things. Me? I throw a beeswax cover on and have it with some muesli in the morning.
You do want to refrigerate the milk. So doing this late in the evening means it’s perfect in the morning.
The mix will end up separating a bit as it settles overnight. Don’t worry.
Give it a shake and it’ll be back to a lovely milky colour in seconds. It keeps easily for 3 or 4 days.
The whole process takes me about 5 minutes.
The big question is … is it worth it? I think it is.
100g of oats costs just under 26 cents. The water is “free” as I’m using tap water (I know it’s not free but it’s difficult to put a price on it) A date probably costs around 4 cents. I’ve not checked how many are in a pack.
SO! I’m able to make myself a litre of oat milk for around 30 cents instead of €1.60
Is it worth the hassle? for 1 euro?
If you use 1 litre of milk a week and you’re saving 1.30 a week then that’s €67.60 a year. If it’s 2 litres a week (which it is in my case) That’s around €135 euros a year. Not too shabby. If you’re changing from dairy milk well the cost of that will vary. A litre of dairy milk will cost around 80 cents. That makes a 50 cent saving per litre. So €26 a year for one litre.
For me, a huge thing is that I won’t have 100 cartons/plastic lids a year. While you may be able to recycle them not having them produced in the first place would be even better.
Bonus: Don’t have any tights? Now’s the perfect time to break the ice with that neighbour you like 😀
