Making almond milk a home is a great idea, but is it worth it to spend hundreds of dollars to do it? Here’s my brutally honest Almond Cow Review.

What is an Almond Cow?

An Almond Cow is a machine that is used to make plant based milks. It consists of a top that contains the motor and the spinning blades and the bottom water reservoir.

Also included is a metal filter container that you fill with the ingredients that will infuse the water to make the plant based milks. Lastly, a collector cup is where you put the filter container as it finishes straining.

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How much does an Almond Cow cost?

On their website, the Almond Cow is around $245.00. If you put your email address in, you can get $15 off. I think most of the time, they also have free shipping for orders over $60.

When I purchased mine, I bought the starter set that included a jar for the milk, a cleaning brush, and a few of their products to make the milks. Because of its steep price, I think it’s important to read this Almond Cow review.

Why would you make almond milk?

This is a great question. Making almond milk is NOT cheaper than buying it. And it takes so much more time than just adding it to your grocery list. So why spend the time to make it?

Environmentally conscious

First, if you care about the environment, then you’re probably looking for ways to reduce your waste. By making almond milk at home, there’s no waste from the containers that you’d normally buy at the store. That’s a plus.

Health

Also, there are lots of things that seem healthy, but when you take a closer look, they are pretty suspicious. Almond milk is one of those things. If you make it at home, it has filtered water, dates, raw almonds, vanilla and salt.

On the other hand, if you take a look at the ingredient list of almond milk in the store, it is disturbing the amount of things that need to be added in order to make it shelf stable, or to make it last a long time in the refrigerator.

Almond milk made at home lasts about 5 days, which is WAY shorter life span than the store bought counterpart. In order for them to lengthen that 5 days to make it worthwhile to sell, lots of ingredients need to be added – things that I don’t really want to drink on a regular basis.

As an additional health aspect, you can choose to make the almond milk with organic almonds if you’re making it at home.

Pulp

Even though it’s about the same price as buying almond milk in the store, you are left with the almond pulp if you make it at home. You can use this in almond pulp pancakes, for different kinds of pulp cookies, and added to granola.

You can also dry it and use it like almond flour (it is a little dryer and less fatty so it’s not completely cup for cup). So when you make it at home, you end up with more for your money.

Does the Almond Cow really work?

Yes. It totally does. The Almond Cow is super fast. You put in the ingredients and just a couple minutes later, you’re pouring almond milk with absolutely no straining! It’s crazy!

If I had never made almond milk with a Vitamix, that probably would be the end of the story. Almond milk success!

What other ways can you make almond milk?

I’m sure that there are lots of ways to make almond milk. The only way I have done it besides with the Almond Cow is with my Vitamix. I assume you can use any very high speed blenders to make it this way. When you make it in the Vitamix, you’ll just need a nut milk bag for straining it.

My brutally honest opinion:

Ok, here’s my brutally honest Almond Cow review. There’s good and there’s bad. So here you go…

The Bad:

I do NOT love the Almond Cow for almond milk! Before I had an Almond Cow, I used to make almond milk in my Vitamix. See how to do that here! The Almond Cow was so tempting because it looked so easy – and it was! But there were some issues with the almond milk that resulted.

To me, the Vitamix almond milk is creamy and smooth. In contrast, the almond milk from the Almond Cow is thinner tasting and is also grainy and has a weird texture in your mouth.

Here’s what the two look like compared to each other. After a day in the refrigerator, the Almond Cow milk on the left is separated. The Vitamix almond milk is still mostly one homogenous solution.

I think the reason for this is that the Almond Cow almond milk has a lot of sediment in it because it did not go through a tightly woven nut milk bag. It only strains through the metal cup strainer. So that sediment all settles at the bottom.

The sediment doesn’t seem to mean a lot until you see the residue on these glasses. Each bit of that sediment makes the almond milk taste really grainy.

Honestly, if I was just using this in smoothies, I wouldn’t care. But I drink it, use it on cereal, and use it in my coffee. So creaminess is a must.

The Vitamix almond milk is SO creamy and doesn’t have any grit to it. If you want to learn how to make Vitamix Almond Milk, check out my blog post and see all the details!

What I’ve tried to counteract the thinner taste

I’ve tried to run the machine twice to get them pulverized more, like Almond Cow recommends. It helped but it didn’t seem to make a huge difference. Here’s a picture of the nut pulp after one cycle and then after the second cycle.

Other suggestions Almond Cow gives for creamy almond milk are:

Use hot water – that would mean that I have to get my filtered water out of the tap and then heat it up. That adds an extra step and the Almond Cow is supposed to reduce steps.

Use less water and add ice to get the water level up to the line – I feel like that is wasting almonds to use less water because you end up with less almond milk.

Combine almonds with something creamy like cashews – my son has a nut allergy and can only eat almonds 🙁

Add a second batch of fresh ingredients and let the machine run again – Use twice as many almonds? No way.

The Good:

I have tried so hard to make other milks in my Vitamix with very little success. I’ve made cashew milk and oat milk in my Vitamix and somehow, they are both a total disaster. The sediment is so pulverized that I can’t even get them to strain through my nut milk bag.

The Almond Cow is a different story! I’ve used it for both cashew milk and oat milk and they turned out great. Coconut milk and banana bread milk were also SO good!

Almond Cow has lots of recipes on their Instagram for probiotic shots and small batch lemonades and infusions that sound fun. I’ll have to try those!

The Verdict:

I do NOT love the Almond Cow for what it is originally be designed for. However, it seems to make excellent alternatives to milk with things other than almonds. I will be keeping mine for sure and using it for all those other types of non dairy milks!

So that’s my Almond Cow Review! Are you thinking of getting an Almond Cow? Did this help you in your decision making process?

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