It turns turns out that making ones own almond milk is simple and really quite easy, and I was able to do so off grid in a matter of minutes. All you need is raw almonds, water, a blender, and if you wanna get all fancy about it a nut bag - but I found that to be entirely unnecessary for my liking.
Why make your own almond milk? Besides the obvious advantage of saving money, there are actually tremendous health benefits!
Did you know that most almond milk found in the stores have calcium carbonate added to compete with dairy milk calcium levels? But this is actually not healthy at all as the human body has trouble absorbing the calcium in this form, which comes from ground up oyster shells and predominantly limestone. As Mike Adams from Natural News explains:
Cheap calcium carbonate is added to almond milk to make it compete with the calcium content of regular cow's milk. But the result is a nutritional catastrophe: You're drinking inorganic, crushed oyster shells or limestone!
And all this excess processed calcium consumed in an unnatural manner over time causes calcification in the body, including of the vitally important pineal gland (along with flouride and chlorine).
So realizing this I decided to try making my own almond milk, as I’ve come to really enjoy it, and it turned out surprisingly well.
All you’ve got to do is put a handful or two of raw almonds in a blender with a few cups of filtered water and blend it up for a minute and you’re good to go. What I realized is you need high ratio of water to nuts to get the right consistency of milk.
Yesterday I just kept adding water until it was thin enough; so this morning I had good idea of the piper ratio to begin with. Apparently the fancy ‘proper’ way to do it is after blending it to filter it though a nut cloth t filter the almond pulp out, but I didn’t mind it as it was similar to orange juice with pulp, and besides I was putting it in cereal anyway!
I read that you’re also supposed to soak the almonds in water overnight first, but not sure why. I didn’t and the ground up just fine. All in all it was a tasty new experience and I thinker I found it tastier than store bought - though it would be nice to have a coconut to make an almond-coconut blend...
If you’ve never done it before and have a blender, and weren’t aware of the health downsides of commercial almond milk before, I highnly recommend trying it out for yourself! It’s simple, tasty and super easy, and it seems like it will end up quite a bit cheaper too.