Making soy milk from scratch

In an effort to have a more vegan diet, I have recently switched from drinking dairy milk to oat and soy milk.   I really only drink milk in my morning latte and with my oatmeal. It has taken me some time to get used to the taste, but now I can drink it without issue.

My favorite vegan milk

When a friend of mine told me that she was making her own soy milk, I got really excited.  I love my oat and soy milk but the packaging is not optimal.  I put the milk container in my recycling bin but I am not confident that it is actually recycled.  Coated cartons such as these are apparently extremely difficult to recycle.  Motivated and knowing that you can find anything on the internet, I found an easy recipe on how to make your own soy milk  on YouTube (see link here Mary’s Test Kitchen How to make soy milk).  It sounded easy enough.

Step 1:  Soak soy beans overnight.

Step 2: Drain water and remove skins of soy beans.

Step 3:  Put the soy beans in a blender and add twice the amount of water.  In other words, for half a cup of beans, add 2 cups of water.  Puree on high.

Step 4:  Remove the pureed soy beans and save the soy liquid.  I didn’t have a nut bag so I used a cotton produce bag that I already had and squeezed out the soy liquid.  The remaining soy material called Okara is full of protein and can be used but I composted it.  The milk looked really creamy but it really didn’t smell great.

Step 5:  Heat the soy milk while stirring continuously and bring to a boil.  Keep stirring and then lower the heat for 30 minutes or more.  Apparently, the longer you heat the soy milk, the less the bean flavour and bitterness will be present.  Once you are done, you can add maple syrup to make it a bit sweeter.

I heated the milk for over an hour.  The results:  It looks like milk doesn’t it?

I made a latte from it and the foam quality was excellent.  I was so excited to try it!  The taste?  Such a disappointment.  The bean flavour was overwhelming and it was also quite bitter.  Bottom line: it was awful, not to mention that it did to my digestive system.  In rereading the recipe, I think I probably didn’t put in enough water but I am not sure that I want to give this another try.  Like much in life, you learn from the failures more than the successes.

Another friend suggested that I try and make oat milk instead. Maybe once my system has processed the soy milk, I will be ready to move on… Have any of you tried to make oat or soy milk?  I would be really interested to know what you have found out.