Post #337846 by The Gnomon on Thu, Oct 11, 2007 6:45 AM

On 2007-10-10 13:48, Scottes wrote:
I'm suggesting to grind first, rinse them to get rid of dirt and tiny particles that would cause sediment, grind, soak, squeeze, skip the settling because there's nothing to settle, and now the separation process is 2 layers (foam & orgeat), not 3 (foam, orgeat, sediment).

I can't imagine ever grinding before washing the dirt off. Grinding it first will expose the dirt to much more surface area, the majority of which is oilier and easier for dirt to stick. Washing it after grinding would mean washing it a lot longer. If you're going to start out by grinding, I wouldn't bother washing at all.

Your idea of keeping it all in the bag might make it difficult, since I've found it very inefficient to hand-squeeze more than a fistful at a time.

Hmm. OK, then here's another possibility. I've been planning on picking up one of these things to dry off the almonds after their initial bath, instead of hand drying with a small fan.

I don't know how efficiently the filter bags drain, but if they drain pretty well, especially in the absence of microparticles, instead of squeezing the rest of the milk out, maybe we could use the salad spinner to throw the milk out with centrifugal force. Do you think the filter bag with the mash will fit down inside one of these spinners?

Right now I am leaning toward going back to blanching my own almonds to get maximum flavor. Doing so also eliminates the need to wash off any dirt. As soon as they're blanched they're ready to roll. But I'm quite sure I'll use slivered almonds often enough.

In that case, I'd wash off the dirt in a tap water bath, drain in a colander, spin the almonds in the salad spinner to remove the excess tap water, then grind them. Put the nuggetrines in the filter bag, put the filter bag in the colander, and slowly pour a gallon (maybe two) of bottled spring water over it all to remove the microparticles. I'd put it all back into the spinner to get as much of the water containing microparticles out of the mash. Then I'd put the filter bag with the nuggetrines inside (sans microparticles) into a container (hopefully about the size of the filter bag), pour in purified water to soak the nuggetrines, cover, and let sit overnight (or longer). When it's time to filter out the mash, I'd lift the bag out of the milk and hang it over the container so that it could drain for a while. When it had drained that way long enough, I'd put the filter bag back into the salad spinner and spin out the milk that was trapped among the nuggetrines. Does this sound viable?

The theory seems sound, but until I get the salad spinner and the filter bags, I won't have firsthand knowledge on those aspects. The rest of the process is sound.

As for Sgirl's method, its greatest virtue is making almond milk in a matter of seconds (or minutes if you include the blanching of the almonds). Her challenge is merely a filtering issue, but a formidable filtering issue at that because her VitaMix probably creates more ultra fine microparticles than any other method outside of making almond butter.

I think we're getting close to solving the almond milk problem. Once that is out of the way, making orgeat is a breeze.