Post #336062 by Scottes on Tue, Oct 2, 2007 1:27 PM

OK, real good info here. Except the lack of measurements. :)

Re: Squeezing. My better half says I have a grip of steel and I can close jars and bottles tighter than the factory. My final almond "mash" after squeezing was basically fist-shaped clumps of dry almond dust which
disintegrated on contact with air. The nylon bag held up wonderfully, whereas cheesecloth would have fallen apart and made a mess.

Re: Measuring. You've obviously made this several times before, and you have a good idea of how much almond and water to use. For now, I'm going to measure, and record my findings.

And yes, I'm going to make another batch, cleanly and correctly. I'll measure the water this time, and use X ounces of almonds, and remark about how strong it is.

About the heating process... Key point there! That explains why my last batch came out too dark, too. It seems that the right temperature is "just hot enough to melt the sugar." I can say fairly certainly that you will cook the stuff long before you reduce it noticeably. 2 hours of simmering reduced the mixture by about 10%. Which goes back to the water, I guess, and using the "right" amount.

Re: Water. I originally poured in enough water to cover the almonds, by by the next morning the almonds soaked up quite a bit, resulting in a consistency of cold oatmeal. This was because after washing the almonds I dried them by placing them on cookie sheets and throwing them into a 150F oven for 20 minutes, stirred them up, and returned them to the oven for 10 minutes. This resulted in warm (maybe 105F) almonds that were very dry. The very dry almonds did chop very nicely in my mini food-processor. But some of what The Gnomon says means that I will keep a very close eye on this step, stirring frequently, to make sure that I don't cook the almonds. I think a food dehydrator would be perfect, but that adds another day to the process.

Nice point about the W&N WO - that sounds ideal due to its strength (thus less is needed to preserve) and lack of taste (so as not to change the flavor).

Sugar: Table sugar will keep the orgeat nice and white. The evaporated can juice sugar is close, but much much better. Using turbinado is very tasty for sure, but IMHO that's starting to get away from "proper" orgeat. Demerara or muscavado or brown sugars would all be very tasty but getting even further from "proper."

All nice info, and nice lessons learned. My next batch should be absolutely perfect.
And the nice thing is that even if it isn't perfect it's damned tasty anyway. The stuff I messed up last night is delicious despite the cooking and other mistakes.