Hemp Milk ‒ Hamppumaito

Making vegetable milks involves no magic. The instructions nearly always follow the same pattern: rinse the seeds you're using and soak them, blend smooth with some water (how much depends on the structure you're looking for), filter and season if you like (for example with vanilla and syrup). If you're using something like oatmeals you don't need the blending. If you're using things like soy flour you don't even need the filtering. Soy beans are probably among the hardests ones as they also need simmering for about half an hour.

Whether you make your own milks or buy them, I strongly encourage you to experiment with various milks. The same ice cream can have a very different underlining mother taste depending on whether you use oat milk, coconut milk, rice milk, soy milk, hemp milk, almond milk, hazelnut milk, sesame milk, peanut milk, quinoa milk or yam milk. Also their structures vary a lot: coconut milk is very creamy and soy milk gives the nicest flavour to coffee. So even if I usually write "oat milk" (which is produced in Finland, sold in every food store and gives the pleasently round oat taste to most basic foods) in recipes you can substitute it with any one you want.

Here's for example the simplest recipe for hemp milk:

- 5 dl hemp seeds
- 1.5 l water

Let the seeds soak in water overnight. Next day, smash them. Keep adding water as you proceed. The smoother you make, the better the result. If you use a mortar or a grinder it's even possible to make fine powder you don't have to filter at all.

If this is not the case filter the milk through a cheesecloth. Be sure to use a dense enough textile. First time I tried this with a standard strainer and old stockings which of course resulted in a lot of hard black pieces in my milk and later in my hemp tofu or hefu. (Old t-shirt then again works better.) If the milk seems too dense add more water. Remember to shake before using. This isn't homogeni

The nutritional values depend on the hemp variety you're using (They vary surprisingly much. For example mine were especially rich in fat.), how well you've managed to grind them and how much water you used. Just to give a reference, here and here are the values of two commercially produced hemp milks.