Coffee fedi, help me out!
I’m getting more and more milk/lactose intolerant as I get older, but lactose free milk is too sweet for me.
I don’t sweeten my coffee, and even lactose free milk with no sweetener else makes my coffee too sweet.
So, what do I replace my milk with when I order coffee?
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Oat milk!!! You can buy it unsweetened. To me it is the most neutral tasting plant milk, and better for the environment too.
Yeah oat milk is definitely the best alternative. I’ve even started putting in my tea 😱
Yep to oat milk. I’ve even started swigging it straight from the carton 😱
This is the way. They even have oat milk coffee creamers out there too (though those are sweetened). In my experience, Chobani has the “milkiest” oat milk, it’s thicker, whereas the other brands seem too watery.
I don’t know if it’s just me and my seeming sensitivity to textures, but oatmilk in my coffee was like they’d machinegunned porridge through a loose sieve into my cup. Undrinkably thick and gritty.
Sounds like it might have ‘split’
2nd582nd Oat milk. I love a good dairy milk, but I can’t deny that I now prefer the flavour of a good oat milk with coffee. Goes well with a strong rooibos, too.You’ve got to compare a few brands if you don’t like it – some are absolutely feral, even the extra-fancy ones. It also gets noticably worse with age so discounted cartons near the best-before date is a bit hit and miss.
My favourite is Vitasoy’s standard Oat Milk.
Steamed texture is the best on the 2nd-4th day after opening a new carton; maybe to do with a little oxidisation changing the chemistry just enough.
Surprisingly tasty just poured cold into your mug/glass as an iced coffee with either espresso but especially with a good filter brew.
Go to the dark side. Drink it strong and black, don’t look back.
I’ve tried. I have really really tried, but it feels too “thin” or something? I’m not sure what it is exactly, but it lacks something that I want in my coffee
it’s the fat in the milk
Drink Turkish then
Oh, if only! That would make me a very happy girl! But it’s all just Australian style cafes around me :\
Sometimes you have to travel for good coffee. Sometimes you just have to drink what’s around. It’s always a risk to try a different coffee shop but as long as it’s not drive through coffee you should be OK
For me, Oat is probably the first in line after dairy as far as flavour goes. Soy and almond I find can vary wildly depending on brand used. Some are OK.
If black espresso is off the table for you, give cold brew a try. In summer I always have some in the fridge. Goes well straight, with milk and even with soda water.
+1 for oat. Creamy and delicious. You can get unsweetened fairly easily too.
I agree, oat for a flat white is great. Soy for iced coffee is amazing, better than milk original.
I used to know a guy that put butter in his coffee
Who hurt him?! That sounds… interesting…
It’s a thing in South East Asia. Usually sweetened with condensed milk. Not bad actually.
I recall that being a recommendation when doing the keto diet. That and coconut cream in coffee.
Bit of an acquired taste I think.
I came to offer similar advice. I don’t recall whether butter is problematic for someone with a lactose intolerance, but another thing to try is ghee, also known as clarified butter.
I googled to check and found this from healthline.com
Butter is very low in lactose. For example, 1 cup (227 grams) of butter contains only 0.1 grams of lactose ( 1 ). For this reason, butter is well tolerated in most lactose-free diets. Only those who are highly sensitive to lactose may experience symptoms.
Doesn’t that still have lactose anyway? Not very helpful.
Although I wonder if margarine would work the same…
Different people have different lactose intolerances. I can eat cheese or butter, but milk will run right through me. From healthline.com;
Butter is very low in lactose. For example, 1 cup (227 grams) of butter contains only 0.1 grams of lactose ( 1 ). For this reason, butter is well tolerated in most lactose-free diets. Only those who are highly sensitive to lactose may experience symptoms.
I have a really hard time with this whole thing, because I got told I’m lactose intolerance based on the results of an endoscope I underwent for (possibly) unrelated reasons. I didn’t have (or at least didn’t notice) any of the typical symptoms of lactose intolerance.
So I’ve cut out straight milk and cream, and only eat ice cream or milk/thick shakes with lactase tablets, but I still eat hard cheese the same as normal, as well as milk chocolate. And because I don’t get the runs or anything like that, I don’t really know if I should be eating the things I am.
Ultimately, your body is your body, and you kinda have to figure out how it reacts to stuff.
Well, you didn’t mention what you already tried and didn’t like, so expect useless suggestions here.
Now, while I don’t prefer it for coffee, and I doubt you’ll be able to source it steadily, goat milk is often less of a problem for lactose intolerant people. I just don’t like it in coffee at all.
My first pick would be oat milk. It’s liquid, it doesn’t taste weird in coffee, and it’s not expensive to buy or make.
Second choice would be one of the non dairy powder creamers. They aren’t exactly the most unprocessed thing you can get, but they’ve been around long enough that they’ve gotten the taste to where it works. I can’t say I keep it around, what with being able to handle milk and cream; but I’ll usually take some of it before sketchy milk or cream on the road or at hotels. Coffee mate is the brand I’d go with overall.
Third pick would be one of the liquid non dairy. Reason that’s not second is that the taste isn’t as consistent, imo. Not sure why that’s the case, but I’ve noticed more difference between batches. If you can’t tell the difference like that, then liquid is better overall because it doesn’t tend to be as prone to poor mixing.
Past that, you get into things that don’t really taste that close to milk. That’s where the other plant based “milks” come in. I’d rank them almond > soy > coconut > hemp for coffee. If you want reasons for that ranking, I’ll give it, but it’s so subjective compared to the simpler reasons behind the first three that it isn’t likely to be useful.
Beyond those, you go back to dairy with butter. Weird, and it doesn’t taste the same, but it is actually very yummy. Problem is when it comes out the other end. Coffee and its proclivity towards rapide action in that regard make drinking a lot of it with butter a horrible idea. Well, that and the potential higher calories for what it takes to get the job done.
Then there’s flavorings. While they’re a waste in good coffee, you can get various extracts and flavors that are either made for coffee, or work well with it. Chocolate syrup falls inch this category as well. But a half teaspoon of vanilla extract smooths out most mid tier to office rotgut very nicely.
Obviously, your favorite whiskey version is an option. I like a nice splash of bourbon in some coffee, but it isn’t something you should be doing regularly, or when leaving the house for much of anything.
Now, all of that is according to my taste buds, amazing and by my criteria of staying as close to whole milk or cream as possible in not only taste, but consistency, and mouth feel.
This is going to be a personal preference. Nobody can tell you what milk you like. You’ll want to talk to your barista. Explain your problem and ask advice. You may even try out a few of the milks they have to determine what you like. Arrange a tasting even, at a quiet time for the cafe.
You want to pick one of the common milks (like soy or oat) as your preference. You don’t want to get addicted to rice milk and then find it isn’t available at 90% of cafes.
People can’t tell me what I will like, but they can tell me what the like, and that will help me choose.
It’s not just about taste either. Someone pointed out for example that oat milk has less of an environmental impact than almond milk, and that sort of thing helps me make a choice when I go exploring alternatives :)
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I’ve found personally that oat milk is the closest to being a drop in replacement for regular milk in things like cereal and coffee. Most almond, soy, etc. milks seem to be either flavored or heavily sweetened. It has a fairly neutral flavor and consistency.
I do soy milk but that’s mostly because of taste, and it’s one specific brand (European, Spar brand). Almond milk should be sweetest, but it varies a lot between brands.
vegan barista milk? https://us.oatly.com/products/barista-edition-oatmilk
The Target brand is exactly this for 1/2 the price.
If you don’t sweeten your coffee, you might like ‘bulletproof coffee’ which means coffee with coconut oil.
Black coffee?
Well, hmm… you can put nothing in it, that’s what I do. But if you like a smoother coffee, coconut oil is good.
I’m not a coffee drinker, but I did recently get told by doctors that I’m lactose intolerant and have mostly cut out regular milk from my diet.
I went from taking milk with my tea to having tea black. Took a couple of weeks to get used to it, but I no longer miss the milk.
For cereal, I went with lactose free milk. I hated it at first, but forced myself through it for a while. I think by the time I was 2 L through I had mostly come to “accept” it, but after about 12 L or so I got to the point where I no longer noticed how sweet it is.
Either of these, or both of them (use LF milk but much less than you’re used to), could be viable options for your coffee. It’s about giving it time to see if you can adapt.
Another option which I personally never tried is to go with plant-based milk substitutes. Soy, oat, almond, cashew, pea, etc. This video presents some facts about each as well as an entirely unscientific small-scale (at least 7 people, very likely 9, probably not much more than that) taste test. Their results said that soy is probably the best option, being the cheapest (at least in the US, where they did their test), and 2nd best both for nutritional value and in their taste test. It was also the best for foaming/frothing, which I gather might be important in coffee? Oat came second, winning both taste and foam, but being less nutritional and pricier.
If environmental impact is a factor for you, oat is probably best. Almond emits less carbon, but also uses by far the most water of any dairy substitute, while oat is 2nd best in carbon and also 2nd best (with a huge gap to 3rd place) in water use. With how important water scarcity is in Australia, I figure that makes oat the winner here.
I’ve been drinking lactose free milk most of my life, but I’ve avoided it in my coffee, because it’s too sweet. But now, even the small amount of lactose I have in my coffee is starting to hit me, and I don’t want to switch to lactose free milk for coffee. It completely spoils the flavour with its sweetness
So seeing all these responses, Oat is starting to look good. The reduced impact is a pretty good reason, given that all of the alternatives will likely taste weird to me to start with :)
I’m not lactose intolerant, just trying to go more plant-based, and oat was pretty easy to get used to, even if I didn’t really like it the first couple of times I had it. Warm uses of oat milk also tasted better to me at first than cold, so it started with me drinking oat milk lattes, now I’ll put it in cold brew, or iced chai lattes.
You could get lactase tablets. Those allow you to (temporarily) digest milk, so you could continue to have your coffee with milk.
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I alternate between periods of black coffee and coffee with oatmilk. I go with Pure Harvest unsweetened. I never see cafes using it but maybe it’s no good for steaming.
It’s mostly cafes I’m worried about. At home, I’ve got a lactose free milk from my local grocer that isn’t too sweet. But the cafes all seem to use really sweet lactose free coffee.
It’s sounding like oat milk is the way to go. Lots of people like it, and it’s less of an issue for the environment. The biggest issue will be me making myself stick with it until it tastes normal to me :)
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I’d seriously just try every single option until you figure out which you like the most!
The thing is, I don’t really like any of the options I’ve tried :P
That’s probably just because I’m not used to them though.
