Soy makes everything taste like soy. I can’t taste the coffee. All I can taste is soy. It’s much less forgiving with temperature and is very easily overheated, more often than not resulting in a soy puck – that thick layer of soy foam at the bottom of your cup once your coffee has cooled. Even top-quality soy, frothed perfectly at just the right temperature, too easily overpowers the intricacies of the coffee. Soy and coffee are a bad idea from the dark ages when there were no other dairy substitutes.
Almond milk amplifies bitterness. It doesn’t overshadow the flavour of the coffee as much as soy, but it doesn’t have the same mellowing effect as dairy. I find that a flat white with almond milk is more similar to a long black than to an actual flat white. Almond milk was my go-to for years before I actually realised I was never enjoying my coffee.
Coconut milk is too rich. It’s like I’ve added butter to my coffee (which isn’t altogether a bad idea). I do like a good bulletproof coffee, but it’s definitely a sometimes drink.
Isn’t oat milk basically just watered down porridge? I reluctantly do this thing sometimes *swallows all pride*… I call it “morning brown”. When I know I’m going to have a busy day and there definitely won’t be time to get takeaway, or even stop to eat, I put my breakfast and coffee together in a little thermos and sip at it when I can. It’s basically overnight oats and a coffee pod. At times in my poorer past, it’s just been a couple of spoons of Moccona and a single Weet Bik in boiling water. The shame. So this hideous “morning brown” and oat milk go hand-in-hand in my mind, but I don’t really have much experience with real oat milk at all, let alone barista-made oat milk coffees.