Is anyone making their own soy milk?

If you do a search for "soy milk maker" on amazon.com you can see models and read reviews.

The one you chose got four stars. (It's apparently difficult to clean and doesn't make good rice milk.) There's one about the same price called Soyabella that got five stars.

 

You can also try using soy flour for quick soy milk. Probably won't taste as good, but it might do well with flavorings or as a supplement to cut down the cost of bottled/boxed soy milk.

http://www.thumboilseed.com/soy-milk.htm
http://www.ellenskitchen.com/faqs/tofumilk.html#oldsoy

 

I've seen my parents make soy milk with some sort of white beans, a blender, and a filter, and some sort of cloth that they use to squeeze the juice out.

 

A friend of mine once taught me how to make tofu. (I'm not sure I still have the instructions, and it was too much bother to ever do it myself.) The process began by making soy milk. We boiled soybeans, ground them up, filtered several times, added the nigari, soaked and drained in a cheesecloth... It was a lot of work and the resulting tofu was almost as good as the stuff we could buy in a store. It was a fun project, the way making paper might be fun. But when it comes time to write a letter, the store-bought paper works better, and the store-bought tofu is better. We did not drink any of the soy milk, as that was just an intermediate step towards tofu. But I'm guessing that it would have been almost as good as the store-bought soy milk, and a lot more work.

I've never used one of these machines, but I have used other machines claimed to cheaply make some common food item, and they typically are far more work than the savings is worth.

Anyway, I buy the low-fat or the no-fat soy milk, so the machine would not work for me. Soybeans are actually rather high in fat.

 

My mom used to make soy milk with one of these machines (she bought hers from Hong Kong I think) all the time. The thing looked like a bread machine but was super NOISY. The soy milk tasted great, esp if you prefer yours unsweetened or warm. She'd make a big batch, sweeten it just a bit, then put it in the fridge.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Oct 29 2007, 06:03 AM) [snapback]531909[/snapback]</div>

Never had one of my own, but I worked for a guy who did this. The good part is it really works. These things can make excellent quality milk if you have the good kind. The brown ones make better-tasting milk, but it's less healthy, due to the higher fat content. The black and white ones mix less fat into the milk.

The bad part is that cleaning up afterwards is not only very hard work, but is really disgusting. After the hay has gone through, the stuff that comes out the other end stinks to high heaven, and draws millions of flies, and there is a lot of it. You also need a prodigious quantity of hay, plus lots of straw, and it's more work, seven days a week, than you can imagine.

I do not recommend one of these for home use.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Oct 29 2007, 06:27 AM) [snapback]531913[/snapback]</div>

Milk has its detractors also. It is said to be "unnatural" for humans to drink it. Modern dairy cows (and modern dairy goats too, for that matter) have been bred to produce copious quantities of milk, which is unnatural to their systems, and unless you patronize an organic farm, the cows are fed antibiotics and other chemicals. For infants, mother's milk has antigens which help confer resistance to disease. Cows' milk has antigens to cow disease, and lacks the ones human infants need.

Personally, I think both cow milk and soy milk taste dreadful. Tolerable on sweetened cereal or with plenty of sweetened chocolate, but by themselves horrid. I use the soy milk because I am lactose intolerant. But I don't use much of it.

 

My mom used to make soy milk from soy beans by hand. She also made tofu with some of the milk.
It's tedious work, but it tastes really good. The bad part is the cleaning up, as someone has said.

My youngest child is allergic to dairy and soy milk, so we have to give him rice milk instead (essentially
a rice drink fortified with calcium and vitamins). To keep down the cost, we buy the stuff in bulk at Costco.
I'd imagine you could do the same for soy milk. Or if you live near a large Asian community, you may be able to get fresh soymilk from their groceries stores...

 

Our cows seem to be fed with grass from the ground mostly and I think the milk they make is great on my morming muslii.
I never have any trouble cleaning up as I get my milk in a bottle, the 1% fat variety milk.

 

I've moved from cows milk (contaminated with chemicals like, but not limited to growth hormones) to soy milk to rice milk (tastes a little weak to me) to finally almond milk. I've tried to cut way down on soy (and corn) as in the US they are mostly all GMO products. I object to GMO on two levels...I don't feel it has been adequately tested on humans. (It's outlawed in most European countries while they await the results of the national testing on US citizens) and also on principal since companies pushed GMO-tainted product approval through congress without adequate testing, all for the sake of short term profit. They also sue small-time farmers in whose fields GMO product is found to have drifted into, whereas it seems to me that the law suit should be the other way around since it's the GMO product invading/polluting other non-GMO farms. Big money may be able to buy off judges, but they can't force me to partake in their offerings.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Oct 29 2007, 08:27 AM) [snapback]531913[/snapback]</div>

Contrary to the "soy" as poison hypothesis, there are also some studies linking soy to an inhibitory effect toward breast cancer. This is pretty much a topic still under investigation, as can be seen by the number of clinical trials currently testing soy in various ways. An early survey of results points toward the effect of soy being positive, although researchers are uncertain as to exactly when consuming soy might have the most benefit.

 

The Soy Toy is for you!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Oct 29 2007, 07:06 AM) [snapback]531927[/snapback]</div>

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Oct 29 2007, 09:03 AM) [snapback]531909[/snapback]</div>

I've tried but I can't seem to figure it out. How do you milk a soy bean anyway? I don't see an udder on 'em. B)

 

Unfortunately the soy beans die in the process.

 

Viking31 - From what I've read, you need to be concerned that your soy product has been derived through fermentation. I've looked long and hard and the only soy product that is processed with the process of fermentation is tempeh.

I don't stay away from soy now, but I am relying increasingly on alternative sources for my protein intake. I've always believed that a diverse diet is better in many regards anyway. Maybe that option is allowable for you????

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patsparks @ Oct 29 2007, 07:20 AM) [snapback]531931[/snapback]</div>

If you do not have your own cows, or an organic dairy farm, the cows that give the milk you drink are probably fed on a concoction made of soy, corn, and fish meal. They may also get (I kid you not!) chicken feed previously passed through the chickens: Chickens do not digest their feed well, and there is still some nutritional value left in it. This is salvaged by feeding chicken manure to cows. Mixed in small proportions with the above feed mix. And BTW those chickens, among other stuff, corn for example, also get cow's brains and other slaughterhouse waste. And the cows and chickens and all the rest get a chemical cocktail of antibiotics and growth hormones to make them grow faster and keep them alive in unnatural and unhealthy conditions of overcrowded and manure-festering barns.

Farming has come a long way in the last half century.