Canned Almond Milk

Canned.  Almond milk.  You heard it here first.

 How do I know?  Because I've been scouring the internet for instructions on canning almond milk.  It just isn't done.  You can can milk, and you can can dry almonds, but canning almond milk is, thus far, a thing of legend.

Disclaimer:  don't actually try this.  This recipe is not FDA-approved and to be frank, I haven't even tested the canned stuff yet.  Stay tuned for details on whether or not I've contracted botulism from my own foolishness.  Just saying.
[Disclaimer edit]  I'm emphasizing the above.  DON'T TRY THIS.  It was a miserable failure and I dumped everything out.  Maybe I didn't process it long enough - everything came unsealed.  [/Disclaimer edit]

Number one on the list:  how do you milk an almond?  It's easy.  First, you soak a cup of almonds in water overnight.  This plumps them up.

Then rinse your almonds and put them in the blender with four cups of water.  So our ratio here is 1 c. almonds : 4 c. water, making almond milk at least 80% water.

I recommend a bigger blender than this, if you can find one.

Next, strain the almond pulp out of the milk.  You can see in the photo above that it has already started separating.  Ideally I would have used something like the pillowcase in making grape juice, but instead I went with some cheese cloth over a strainer.

I quadrupled the recipe so that I ended up with 8 pints (16 cups) of almond milk.  This results in a big pile of almond meal, which should NOT be thrown away!

Even just sitting in the pot, the almond milk separated a little bit.  This is a little foretelling of the canning process.  Right here is where you should add 1 tsp of vanilla and 1 tbs of sugar (or honey or maple syrup) per cup of almonds.

This is where we deviate from the normal path.  Right now your almond milk is perfectly good.  You can drink it, put it on your cereal, make smoothies, or use it to trick your friends.  What I do next might ruin it.

I based my processing time on this.  I frequently use pickyourown.org and I have a good deal of faith in it.  So water bath canning for 30 minutes.

And the result?  Well, the almond separated from the water.  It doesn't take much movement of the jar to stir it up again, and giving it a good shake makes it look almost as good as new.

Honestly, I'm not worried about trying this.  I think it turned out just fine.  It will be great for smoothies and other things that almond milk is typically used for.  Maybe even drinking straight.  Why did I do this?  Well, I don't think that regular milk is nutritious.  After reading about what the cows go through, and how disease-infested the environment is, I'm turned off milk completely.  Even organic milk is something I would reserve for special baking occasions like blueberry coffee cake, but not for drinking.

So stay tuned to see what I do with the almond meal, and if not that, then at least stay tuned to see if this canning adventure puts me in the hospital.  If it doesn't, I'm sure this isn't the last you'll see of home-canned almond milk.

[Edit]  This canning adventure was a horrible disaster.  An utter failure in terms of almond milk and a huge waste of time.  Everything came unsealed and smelled awful.  Almond milk is very tasty raw and perhaps that's just the way it's meant to be.  Maybe someday I'll attempt this adventure again and see if I can find a way to make it work, but thus far, this qualifies as Biggest Kitchen Disaster EVER. [/Edit]