The 5 Best Nut Milk Makers of 2023, Tested by Food & Wine

We put five of the most popular, top-rated nut milk makers to the test to determine which one reigns supreme.

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Food and Wine / Nutr

With the wide range of nut milk makers available today, making homemade nut, seed, or grain milk is a fun way to customize your blend of milk and experiment with plant-based recipes. You can also make thicker creamers in addition to milk and customize the viscosity for your next matcha latte or cold brew. Not only does a nut milk maker ensure freshness, but you also won't need to buy multiple products for different beverages. It's also incredibly cost-effective, even when you buy the highest quality ingredients like raw and organic nuts. Best of all? Almost all the nut milk makers we tested make the process easy and (dare we say) fun!

To help you find the best nut milk makers available, we tested some of the industry’s leading, best-selling models for weeks, comparing five popular brands including Nutr, ChefWave, and Almond Cow. We ground up over 10 cups of nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes to assess yield, viscosity, speed, flavor, and overall ease of use. We also spoke with a registered dietician for some additional insights and tips for making the best nut milk at home.

Amazon

The Nutr is versatile and loaded with preset functions to make milk at both warm and room temperatures in a short amount of time, all with consistent texture and flavor. Plus, it’s very easy to operate.

It's best used for making small batches. Harder nuts like almonds need an additional cycle for smoothness, and the hot function takes a bit longer.

It’s chic, it’s small, it’s smart, and it won our best overall rating. Here’s why. The Nutr is extremely user-friendly and has seven preset functions that are controlled via a control panel with a single touch button for toggling through the various settings. There’s even a function for self-cleaning. The option to make milk at room temperature, warm, or boiling adds to the versatility of this nut milk maker. During testing, we found that the milk had a smooth texture, though we appreciated the fact that you can run it through a second time for added smoothness.

For the most part, you don’t need to use the strainer that comes with the machine, but if you want to, you can strain the milk directly into a cup. The hot setting in the Nutr is for making milk that requires prior cooking (like soy or rice) and it runs for 20 minutes. The flavor and texture of all alternate milk was consistent throughout our testing.

Given the capacity of the machine, it makes small batches of milk. Should you need more, you can run it multiple times but only after giving it time to cool down between batches. In our tests, it stopped blending when we worked it continuously because of overheating. It is easy to clean with the self-clean function and also very easy to store due to its compact size.

Price at time of publish: $189

Food & Wine/john somerall

Amazon

It makes about 2 1/2 cups of milk in a single batch, steams the ingredients while blending to improve texture, and its feature-rich design handles everything at the press of a button (including literally cleaning itself).

We had to experiment with ingredient quantities to achieve the right consistency.

The ChefWave is a feature-loaded appliance with preset buttons for various kinds of nuts, soy, oat, and coconut, and we were able to combine nuts and seeds to make unique flavor combinations. In less than 15 minutes, we were able to make 20 ounces of almond milk which was hot and ready to use in coffee, as the Chefwave uses steam while grinding the ingredients. The design is straightforward and intuitive, and we liked that we never had to figure out different settings before we had the chance to have our first coffee.

The recipes did take a bit of tweaking and adjusting the quantities of ingredients to get a thicker consistency, but comparatively, we used fewer quantities of nuts and grains to make creamy milk. The texture is slightly gritty with harder nuts like almonds, which are easily fixed with a fine mesh strainer. A simple soap and water rinse of the wastewater basin, the water reservoir, the glass pitcher, and the steam cover takes care of the cleanup. The grinding jar self-cleans each time it makes a batch of milk. We like it for its features, customization, and self-cleaning. Now if only it could brew some coffee, too!

Price at time of publish: $310

Food and Wine / Renu Dhar

Amazon

It is quite versatile as it can grind dry ingredients like flax meal and coffee, and heat beverages. It is also easy to store.

It takes a long time to finish hot cycles and it is tricky to assemble.

This is a value option for someone who regularly makes soy milk, soups, and other beverages, as the Tribest Soybella heats, cooks, and blends all in one go. It’s also easy to store if it’s not used every day. We were able to easily make chai with cashews, warming spices, and black tea leaves by simply adding our ingredients and pressing the preset function for hot beverages. It worked similarly for making soups and stocks. The raw function makes milk from nuts, seeds, and oats and does not heat up. The machine comes with a fine and coarse screen to filter out the pulp after blending. Though we found the texture to be slightly gritty at first, we also learned that running the cycles a few times and using another strainer improved the texture.

It took some time to figure out how to attach the head to a fine mesh container that holds the nuts or grains. It is tricky to attach especially when it is full of nuts and occasionally does not thread in properly. The clean-up is a bit time-consuming, as everything must be hand-washed. We also noted that there is a slight wait time for making hot beverages or soups to allow for proper cooling before cleanup. And since the blade is attached to the motor head, cleanup feels like a bit of a balancing act between trying to keep the electrical bits dry and watching out for the blades.

Price at time of publish: $120

Food and Wine / Renu Dhar

Almond Cow

It is the fastest milk maker on our list, making nut milk in just about a minute. Plus, it has built-in strainers for keeping the pulp back.

The filter basket takes a bit of maneuvering to attach when it is full, and clean-up is a bit of a time-consuming process. This unit also does not have heating capabilities.

If speed is your main concern, we recommend the super time-efficient Almond Cow. It uses about 10,000 RPM while processing the ingredients to make milk. At most, it only took one minute, but usually, it was even less for softer nuts like cashews and grains like oats. The entire unit is sleek and consists of a motorized unit, a stainless-steel filter basket, and a container for collecting the milk. Once loaded, operating it is simple. Just press the ‘cow’ button and let it run through its cycles. The ingredients are ground and blended with the water, and once the cycle finishes, the pulp stays back in the filter basket. Although the unit does not have heating capabilities, you can add warm or hot water to make the milk at the desired temperature.

We noticed that it leaves behind a lot of pulp which can contain almost half a cup of milk. The mouthfeel of the almond milk particularly was quite gritty. We found that running the cycle twice and further straining it through a cheesecloth increased the desired mouthfeel of the nut milk and improved the yield.

It takes some maneuvering to attach the filter basket especially when it is full, as getting the blade through a full cup of whole almonds is tricky. And it appears we were not the only ones having trouble with attaching the basket. Almond Cow has a demo video in their FAQ section demonstrating how to attach the basket. We would have liked clearer instructions on how to attach the basket when it is full, especially with harder nuts. Cleaning the Almond Cow also proved to be tricky, as the blades are attached to the top which also houses all the electric components. It is heavy to hold in just one hand while you scrub the food off with the other and try not to get any water in the vents.

Price at time of publish: $245

Food & Wine/Renu Dhar

Amazon

This is a versatile nut milk maker that makes smoothies, dips, and nut butter, has a large capacity, is intuitive and easy to use, and is very easy to clean.

It uses a multistep process with waiting times, and it is a splurge.

We may be slightly obsessed with the versatility of the Nutramilk nut milk maker and how easy it is to operate it. Even after our testing, we kept making bean dips, hummus, soups, and salsas in addition to making nut butter and milk. The process is simple: Place the nuts in the container, place the lid on, and hit the butter cycle. It turns everything into smooth and creamy butter and automatically tamps the contents. After the butter cycle runs its course, you can add in the liquid, and let the machine run its course. Once done, the milk can be dispensed through the spigot. We also liked the easy clean-up process as the parts are dishwasher-safe.

Taste is another area where the Nutramilk had us floored. It produced the creamiest cashew and oat milk and its almond milk had only the slightest residue. And a cup of nuts yields about one quart of nut milk. The assembly is intuitive and works just like a food processor. Once you start the nut or grain milk process, this unit does it all, with one catch. The machine works in multiple stages, making nut butter first, adding liquid, and then dispensing – all of which require manual actions or inputs. The basin, blades, and wiper blades are top-rack dishwasher-safe and can also be washed by hand with soap, and the spigot requires unscrewing for additional cleaning.

Price at time of publish: $500

Food and Wine / Renu Dhar

After weeks of thorough testing, we awarded the Nutr Machine as our top overall pick due to its versatility, ease of use, and selection of built-in preset functions to make nut milk at both warm and room temperatures in a short amount of time. We found our almond milk, cashew milk, and oat milk to be consistent in both flavor and texture after each test.

We put the top nut milker models through side-by-side testing, making three different alternative kinds of milk with almond, cashew, and oat. We paid attention to the quality of the alternative milk produced, and how easy the machines were to use, assemble, and disassemble. We also assessed how loud the machines were, how much pulp they left behind, the time it took to make each batch of milk, the mouthfeel, taste, and the yield of the milk. We also noted how easy or difficult the products were to clean and whether they could be cleaned in a dishwasher.

Food & Wine/Renu Dhar

Because you would be using this machine frequently, look for something that's either easy to store or has a sleek design that would look good on the counter. An intuitive interface with pre-programmed functions takes the guesswork out and saves you time. Some nut milk makers come with filters; some are without. Choosing one or the other depends on if you like your nut milk with a little texture or completely smooth.

We tested products with capacities that go from one or two servings up to six cups. Depending on how much nut milk you would consume typically in a day or even a week, choose a size that fits the requirements. Also, consider the time it requires to prepare and blend a batch of alternative milk (including clean-up time) and decide if buying a machine with a larger capacity might serve you better.

A machine that can make different types of plant-based milks including nuts, grains, and seeds gives you more flexibility. If the machines can do more, like make nut butter, soups, and pastes, it adds more value.

If it takes more time to clean the machine than it takes to make the milk, chances are you will not use it very often so look for a machine that's easy to clean and maintain. Some machines have self-cleaning functions, others have parts you can wash in a dishwasher, and a few require handwashing.

“When you make nut milk, you can avoid many of the processed additives that are used to keep the nut milk fresh and you have control over any extra flavorings and sweeteners added to the nut milk,” says Katie Couch, PhD, RD. It also reduces waste by eliminating single-use packaging of store-bought alternate milk. Homemade nut milk can also be customized to suit the application, creamy and thick for coffee, slightly thinner for adding to cereal, and somewhere in between to add to your smoothies.

Individual nutritional and dietary needs vary quite a bit, and the nutritional profile of dairy and nut milk is also quite different. Couch says, “Dairy milk packs in more protein has a lower glycemic index, and greater micronutrient availability, especially calcium. Many of the bioactive components in nut milk such as phytic acid, oxalate, and lectins, bind to and inhibit the absorption of essential minerals and trace elements – calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc."

"Concerning fat, dairy milk does have saturated fat, whereas nut milk can sometimes have a higher proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids. Something else to consider is that the nutritional composition of nut milk is highly variable depending on the brand and nut. However, for people who are allergic to dairy or have a dairy intolerance, nut milk is a great alternative that allows them to still enjoy many foods,” says Couch.

Homemade nut milk is just water and nuts, whereas store-bought nut milk can (and often does) have additives such as thickeners, stabilizers, and emulsifiers. “Some people are not able to tolerate products with these processed additives”, Couch says. For them, being able to make nut milk without additives and being able to control the nutritional composition of the milk is significantly important for their health goals.

Making nut milk at home creates many possibilities and choices for what type of nuts, seeds, and grains to use. The most popular choices are almonds, pistachios, cashews, hazelnuts, oats, soy, rice, hemp, chia, flaxseeds, and quinoa. Popular flavorings include vanilla, chocolate, and spices like cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, saffron, turmeric, and black pepper. Popular sweeteners include dates, honey, and maple syrup.

Renu Dhar is a personal chef and culinary instructor who is passionate about making cooking approachable, developing easy and nutritious recipes, and finding tools that help make cooking fun and easy for everyone. She integrates her professional kitchen expertise and knowledge of ingredients to test and review products, which can be found at The Spruce Eats. For additional expertise, we spoke to Katie Couch, Ph.D., RD. Couch’s areas of research include nutrition sciences focused on metabolism, obesity prevention and treatment in primary care; pharmacotherapy for obesity, and regulation of body weight.