As much as my love for black coffee runs deep, latte’s are the drink of choice for the majority of us specialty coffee drinkers and with the influx of dairy free milk varieties, knowing what’s hot and not in your coffees seemed appropriate subject matter. This also gave me a good insight into how our dairy free drinking counterparts live.
Soya milk – 
Soya milk has been on the scene for a while now and out of all the milks had the closest resemblance to cow’s milk and generally complimented the coffee flavour well as to not overpower. There was however a knack to making a soya latte and from testing this type of milk I’d advise warming the milk before mixing to avoid it cooling and curdling.
Coconut milk – 
Look wise coconut milk blended well with the specialty coffee to give it a good appearance, but for me the unique flavour coconut milk has doesn’t go well with the coffee. That being said I have seen people turn coconut milk into a creamer that gives it a better flavour with coffee, however I have my doubts.
Almond milk – 
Personally I thought almond milk tasted nice with specialty coffee, which may partly be because I have preference for nutty flavoured coffees from South America. The only drawback of this type of milk was as the coffee cooled the milk started to separate suggesting you need to drink the coffee fast to avoid the curdle affect.
Macademia milk –
Similar to Almond milk the nutty flavours compliment specialty coffee well so from a taste perspective it seemed to work. Macadamia milk also has an apparent thicker consistency to cow’s milk which I hoped would create a creamier coffee but instead made for a more lumpy curdled coffee. I also had a similar result with hazelnut milk.
Rice milk –
In terms of consistency this was the thinnest milk compared to cow’s milk, which along with the taste didn’t look the part in terms of coffee consistency. As with hemp milk which has a similar consistency I’d avoid these milks in coffee at all costs, especially if you like a thicker creamy coffee.
Conclusion:
In the end if you’ve been drinking milk your whole life it becomes a hard ingredient to compete with and for me full fat cow’s milk reigns supreme if I do add milk, but there’s definitely some rising star alternatives out there to tickle your taste buds and mix it up so never say never!
