Lactose-Free: What You Need to Know About Tea and Coffee with Plant Milk

And how to make delicious drinks at home

Plant-based milk quickly gained popularity among wellness adepts who had given up on lactose. However, for coffee and tea aficionados, oat milk, soy milk, and nut milk still raises many questions. Femme4 together with experts, figured out how to choose the right vegetable milk for your favorite drinks.

The trend for plant-based milk instead of animal milk is gaining momentum. This is due to the fact that more and more people are becoming vegetarians or followers of a healthy lifestyle, in addition, many have lactose intolerance.

In any supermarket in the United States, you can find more than 10 varieties of the same taste of plant milk, with different shades, with or without sugar. But in some countries there isn’t much to choose from. But since people are motivated by a healthy lifestyle, the taste of plant milk becomes less important than its benefits for the body. But it’s not right. The taste of milk is important.

The taste of coffee directly depends on the quality of plant milk. For a restaurant, this is not only taste, but also the possibility of its professional use, it is important how the milk is whipped, drinks should not only be tasty, but also aesthetic. There is milk that does not whip, becomes covered with bubbles, it is impossible to correctly add it to coffee, the drink turns out to be tasteless and ugly. We always look at how milk interacts with coffee. Coffee has its own acids and a certain reaction to milk. Coffee with vegetable milk, of course, acquires the flavoring shades of the milk that has been added to it, be it notes of coconut, almond or soy, but it remains rich and rich in taste if the milk is of high quality. Therefore, professional quality milk does not make the drink less tasty or less “coffee” in taste.

We use Alpro Professional in our work, it whips better than regular Alpro. But we keep looking for a better quality alternative. Our guests can order any black coffee for any type of milk – cappuccino, latte, flat white. We try all drinks on all types of milk, so we can confidently offer our guests a choice based on their taste preferences. If some of the flavors did not fit with any of our drinks, we would not introduce it into the menu.

It is difficult to say that a specific plant milk is suitable for a specific type of coffee drink. There are rare exceptions, for example, cocoa: there is chocolate, but it does not go well with almond or soy milk. Guests love to experiment with tastes, so the recommendations here are often irrelevant. The main thing is that the coffee is well prepared and the milk is of good quality. If it does not whip well, is not dense enough, then the drink will not taste good.

Any plant milk contains a small amount of sugar. If you remove the sugar, then the coffee with vegetable milk will not be as bright. In this case, soy milk is more suitable, it does not affect the richness of the taste, even if there is no sugar.

MATCHA LATTE

Ingredients:

  • Match – 2 gr
  • Coconut milk – 180 ml

Cooking method:

  1. Mix the matcha with a little hot water.
  2.  Beat the coconut milk and pour into the liquid obtained earlier.
  3.  For sweets, maple syrup can be added for a great alternative to sugar.

LATTE WITH TURMERIC

Ingredients:

  • Vegetable milk – 240 ml
  • Turmeric – 1 g
  • Honey – 5-10 gr
  • Ground cinnamon – to taste

Cooking method:

  1. Pour milk into a saucepan and heat it to 70-75 degrees, not boiling. 
  2. Then add turmeric, cinnamon, and honey. 
  3. Mix everything actively and pour into a mug.

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