What Is It?
Did you know that Italy, especially southern Italy, is one of the world’s biggest growers of almonds? Living as I do in California, which grows over 2 million tonnes to Italy’s 154,000 tonnes, I was unaware of the beauty of Italian almond milk until Koita sent me a sample. A plant-based milk company, Koita also makes rice, oat, soy and coconut milks.
How Does It Taste?
Have you sniffed your almond or oat milk lately? I bet it doesn’t smell like much. But Koita’s organic almond milk smelled amazing. Like fresh-baked almond cake but fresher. On the palate, the freshness is similarly apparent. They do put some xanthan and guar gum as well as some rice starch into their organic almond milk, but these additives do not add any weird or off flavors or leave your tongue coated with a filmy layer. The finished product is silky and creamy without being heavy. There are no added sugars, giving the product a 0 grams/cup rating. Recommend.
Koita does not boost the product with calcium. As someone who does not drink cow milk, I rely on my alt-milks for about 30% of my daily calcium needs. I am, therefore, less likely to buy an alt-milk product that is not boosted with calcium, even one with amazing flavor.
Organic Almond Coconut
A little less fragrant than the organic almond milk, the organic almond coconut milk smelled like fresh coconuts and almonds. It was slightly thicker and creamier than the almond milk, preferrable for adding to coffee. Koita adds grape sugar but total sugars are only 4 gram/cup, not bad for alt-milk. And they do add calcium from seaweed (lithothamnium, a type of red algae), boosting it to 290 mg or about 20% of the average human’s RDA. Recommend.
Next time, I’d like to try the Soy Barista and the Oat Barista.
In Sum
Fresh almond, oat, soy, rice and almond-coconut milks exhibit wonderful aromatics and fresh, creamy flavor on the palate. No funny stuff!
