Post #342752 by The Gnomon on Thu, Nov 8, 2007 10:45 AM

Emergency Orgeat Emergency
Revolting Development Affecting Emergency Orgeat

Sorry about the poor quality image. I jiggled my cellcam.

I didn't want to report this until I had the opportunity to test the new and improved Pacific Almond milk from a few different sources.

This is a shot of the new and old products side by side. The "new and improved taste" claim had me concerned right off the bat. I think the only thing that should allow that to happen would be to use fresher almonds and less preservative. What are the odds of that?

Anyway, the taste of the new product is OK—no spectacular difference from the old. There is one problem with the new product that makes it useless for making Emergency Orgeat and that's the fact that the microparticles in the milk do not settle and the milk is always lumpy. That means the only way to get rid of the thick suspended particles is to put it through a cheesecloth/filter bag process. If you have to go that route, it adds enough time and work that you might as well just make the orgeat completely from scratch.

The virtue of the old product was that the microparticles would settle out and form a thick gook that pretty much stuck to the bottom of the carton as long as you didn't agitate it. Then you could pour off the milk from the top 2/3 or so without any sediment. When the EO ingredients were blended together, there would just be a fairly thin layer of froth at the top that could easily be removed with a drinking straw.

The new product generates a froth layer that's 2 – 3 times as thick as the one that forms using the old product and the froth layer forms a lot slower. When you remove that, it still doesn't seem right, and it isn't. The blending just smooths out it's lumpy consistency and leaves the microparticles suspended in the liquid. The result is that it makes all drinks cloudy.

I'm still checking to see if the new product will eventually settle out like the old product after it has a chance to sit still for a period of time. But the old product would settle out within a day or two after it was shaken up. The new product has not settled out after a few weeks, nor has it shown any indication that it might ever. Unless some other company makes almond milk similar to the old Pacific product, Emergency Orgeat might be a thing of the past.