Not Milk?
By: Sophia Stunkard
My entire life has been leading up to this moment. For as long as I can remember I have been dying to write an in-depth review over the most popular milk alternatives. But there has been something in my way, my news-writing advisor, Mr. McCown. Every month I pitch this incredible story idea but it always gets shut down, until this fateful month of December (I am so sorry that that rhymed).
Before we begin, allow me to introduce my in-depth rating system based on..
- Thickness/viscosity of the milk alternative
- The price of said milk
- How it made me feel
- How the milk tastes alone
- How the milk compliments Biscoff cookies
Now let’s get the saddle on this fake cattle
Almond Milk (or as Trader Joes likes to call it ~almond beverage~)
For starters, you may be pretty familiar with almond milk because it’s one of the most popular and widely available milk alts out there, and for good reason. Not only is almond milk pretty affordable, it comes with a multitude of health benefits that may surprise you. But before I bore you with all of the nutritional factors, let’s do some taste testing. At first glance, I was astonished at how frothy the consistency of the almond milk was and eager for the upcoming sip. As I sampled the milk my taste buds were underwhelmed. With hints of bitter almond and water, the overall taste was average, but the texture made up for it. The almond milk closely resembled regular milk with a thick and enjoyable consistency. The almond milk lightly coated the cookie, creating the perfect milk to cookie ratio which I thoroughly enjoyed. not too soggy and not too hard. Here are my end results:
- Thickness/viscosity of the milk alternative: 5/5
- How the milk tastes alone: 2.8/5
- How the milk compliments Biscoff cookies: 4/5
- How it made me feel: pretty chill 3/5
- Overall score: 3.7/5
Oat milk (almond milk’s less popular younger sister)
Onto oat milk. For a little bit of history, oat milk was developed in 1994 in Sweden by Oatly's founders, brothers Rickard and Bjorn Oeste. As you may have guessed, oat milk is made by combining oats with water before milling the mixture into a fine consistency.. How crazy! When pouring the oat milk, I was a tad disturbed. The milk looked very watery and the color was very off-white with a tan hue. When it came to flavor, it tasted oaty? Which is of course to be expected because it is oat milk. At the end of the day the oatmilk was fine but not milky enough for my liking. Interestingly enough, I have tried different brands of oat milk that I’ve enjoyed way more than this so it may take a couple trips to the grocery store until you find your milk of choice. When the cookie was dipped in the milk I was pleasantly surprised. The oaty taste of the milk complimented the spice and a deep caramel flavor of the cookies and I would highly recommend this delectable treat combination.
- Thickness/viscosity of the milk alternative: 2/5
- How the milk tastes alone: 3/5
- How the milk compliments Biscoff cookies: 5/5
- How it made me feel: kinda weird 2/5
- Overall score: 3/5
Rice milk (I’ve never heard of this before writing this article)
If you are like me, you have probably never heard of rice milk. I was even hesitant to add this to my cart because of how off putting it sounds but I’m happy that I have you all reading this to give me some emotional support through this wild journey. As I was jotting some notes while testing the milks, my immediate reaction to the rice milk was,
“WHY DID I MAKE THAT SOUND WHEN I POURED IT OUT….I'm already afraid”
(Pardon the terrible spelling, I was still disturbed by the trickling sound of the rice milk)
Now, before drinking the milk I decided to have a little smell to give me a little preview. Let’s just say that it smelt like lotion and I may have gagged just a tiny bit. All of the scary things aside, the milk had a surprisingly good flavor. It was sweet but not too overpowering, making for a delightful sip. One downside I experienced was that the milk was very thin and when I tried dipping the cookie, the cookie decided not to soak up the milk so it was a little disappointing.
- Thickness/viscosity of the milk alternative: 2/5
- How the milk tastes alone: 4.3/5
- How the milk compliments Biscoff cookies: 1/5
- How it made me feel: kinda funky? 3.7/5
- Overall score: 2.75/5
Coconut milk (Tropical I guess?)
Now, I bet a few of you have tried coconut milk without even knowing it. Why do I say this? Because I know you secretly watched James Charles on Youtube and have ordered the infamous pink
drink from starbucks at least once. I for one love coconut so warning: this may be a bit biased. First of all, I was very impressed by how closely the coconut milk looked to regular milk. The taste of the milk was very rich but refreshing at the same time and the thickness blew my expectations away. My one complaint lies in the cookie portion of the taste test. The coconut milk and cookie did not mix well together and it left a putrid taste in my mouth.
- Thickness/viscosity of the milk alternative: 6/5
- How the milk tastes alone: 4.5/5
- How the milk compliments Biscoff cookies: 0/5
- How it made me feel: very goofy 5/5
- Overall score: 3.1/5
Soy milk (This translates to “I am” milk in Spanish which I thought was pretty funny)
It is hard for me to write about soy milk because it reminds me of the horrid experience that I had testing this milk alternative. For starters, I spilled it all over my shirt which was pretty unbearable. And then my poor nose had to smell the soy milk which was pretty disgusting. Now, I will once again quote my notes from when I first sampled the milk:
“I hated that. I couldn't tell what it tasted like and that made me all the more uncomfortable. Oh no, it also leaves a bad aftertaste.”
Anyway, the taste trial was brutal and the cookie trial was “eh”. I regret this experience.
- Thickness/viscosity of the milk alternative: 3/5
- How the milk tastes alone: -1/5
- How the milk compliments Biscoff cookies: 2/5
- How it made me feel: very uncomfortable 0/5
- Overall score: no
Final Thoughts
Thank you all for reading this review. My goal is for everyone reading this to find a milk that suits them in any way possible. I implore you to research, experiment, and discover all of the treasures that the milk alternative community has to offer. If you are interested in trying any of these milk alternatives for yourself, I purchased all of them from Trader Joes! If you want to be more adventurous with your milk journey, here are some more unique alternatives that I recommend.