The night before: place your nuts in a large bowl and cover them with water. Let them sit for 8 hours maximum.
Drain the nuts and give them a good rinse. Set a large bowl (that you can pour from) and a nut milk bag out on the counter nearby.
Add the drained nuts to a high speed blender and cover with 5 cups of water. Blend this mixture on high for 1 full minute, until you have a creamy milk consistency. Avoid going over 1 minute as this heats the milk.
Run the nut milk through your nut milk bag over the large bowl. Squeeze out as much liquid as you can. See notes for pulp uses.
If you’re adding vanilla or any other add-ins, rinse the blender before pouring the strained milk back into it. Toss your add-ins into the blender and give it a quick 15 second blend to combine.
Store your nut milk in a sealed glass bottle/jar. This should keep in the fridge for 1 week.
For frothing: I use a steam wand on my espresso machine. Plug-in frothers are great too! I don't recommend taking this milk over 145°F as the higher temperatures impact the texture and flavour.
Why sliced almonds specifically? Their taste seems mellower to me and there’s less pulp.
What I do with nut milk pulp: save it in a container in the fridge so that I can add spoonfuls to smoothies, blend into creamy puréed soups to give them more richness, or make nut pulp granola.
Macadamia nuts are spendy and sometimes I want to make this a bit more economical! In those instances I substitute them with hemp seeds, which require zero soaking. Hemp seeds will change the flavour of the milk, veering towards grassy and fresh. They still help with the froth though :)
My nut milk always lasts a week in the fridge, sometimes longer! The only time I’ve had it spoil in a shorter amount of time is because I either soaked the nuts 10+ hours or I blended the milk to the point of heating it slightly in my blender (longer than a minute). Add a couple ice cubes to the blender in the initial blend if you're really worried about this.
This creamy homemade nut milk is mellow, silky smooth, and perfect for coffee! My preferred nut combo froths like a dream for lattes. It’s also the ideal addition to smoothies, cereal, dairy-free cooking, and baking.