The best barista oat milk - the big comparison

Good barista oat milk makes a cappuccino better! The most important criteria for a good interaction between oat milk and coffee are foaming performance and creaminess, as well as balance in taste with the espresso. Which oat milk or oat drink meets these criteria best? And which manufacturer is also transparent in production, CO2 footprint, and ingredient disclosure?

We wanted to find out exactly. We tested 20 oat drinks and had them tasted in a blind tasting by six baristas, roasters, tasters, and food technologists. The reigning Swiss Latte Art Master then subjected the oat drinks to a foaming and latte art test.

In this article we use "oat milk" and "oat drink" synonymously. Oat drink is the formally correct term for oat milk. According to EU regulations, it is not milk but a milk substitute product. We use both oat milk and oat drink in this article as it corresponds to general usage.

The test results reveal some surprising findings. To the chapters of the test series.

• Results at a glance
• Taste winner
• Foaming performance and latte art
• Sustainability and transparency
• Price/performance
• Conclusion
• How was it evaluated?
• Sources and further links

Results at a glance

The best oat milk on the market is the one that fits your interests and criteria.

Overall across all categories we set up, dm's Oat Barista Milk performed best in our test.

The absolute taste winner in cappuccino is the Barista oat drink from Mølk.

In the category Sustainability and transparency, Minor Figures Organic took first place.

The foaming ability proved to be very good for many oat drinks. Only a few fell short. The foaming behavior of the very good drinks were too close to each other to crown a single milk as the "best."

How did the various oat milks perform in the different categories? The summary shows this.

The best oat milk is the one that suits you best. In that sense, we invite you to browse through our results. How we evaluated what is explained in the individual chapters.

Taste winner

And the winner is…. Mølk! In terms of taste, the milk from the German startup stands out especially in interaction with frothed milk. The oat drink took first place both with a robust-chocolatey espresso and with a fruity espresso.

With the chocolatey espresso, the cappuccino prepared with Mølk proved balanced. The frothed oat drink complemented the coffee well without overpowering it. The cappuccino was described as caramel-like, chocolatey, and nutty, specifically reminiscent of walnuts. Despite a somewhat dry aftertaste, the overall balance was good.

In combination with the fruity coffee, the oat milk showed similar properties. The cappuccino was creamy, nutty, and caramel-like, suggesting that the oat drink's own flavor also contributes here. The espresso itself has no pronounced nutty or caramel notes. The fruity aromas of the coffee did not have the same presence as the notes of the darker espresso roast.

The texture of the oat milk was described as buttery, oily, and sticky, which when frothed and warm paired very well with the espresso. As a cold oat drink, Mølk also came in fourth place, though some tasters described the oily note as too intense and slightly artificial.

The dm Barista oat milk also showed good performance, with Aldi Suisse and Lidl Barista oat drink following in taste with their oat drinks. dm Oat Drink Barista and Lidl Barista Oat Drink took the top two places in the blind tasting of pure and cold oat drink. How was it evaluated?

Foaming performance and latte art

Delicious milk is not automatically equally foamable. Only well-foamable milk can then be used as creamy foam for latte art. Swiss Latte Art Master Dario Pieber therefore foamed each oat milk twice for us and poured it as a cappuccino with a heart. All oat drinks were used anonymously.

As a conclusion, it can be said that almost all alternative milks used showed good to very good foaming performance. Six oat drinks received the full score. They were easily enriched with air during the injection phase and homogenized very well during the rolling phase. Even when pouring, the surface remained smear-free, the contrast was good, and the surface was stable and bubble-free.

The differences in the majority of oat drinks were so small that we can recommend all barista oat drinks without reservation for foaming.

Very good milk foaming behavior

With 10 out of 10 points:

• REWE Bio + vegan Barista Oat
• Aldi Suisse
• BioBio Oat Barista Netto
• Alnatura Oat
• Provamel Oat Drink Barista Bio
• Coop Karma Bio Oat Drink

9.25 out of 10 points:

• Mirgos V-Love Bio · Oat Drink
• Lidl CH/DE - Barista Oat Drink
• Beleaf Oat Drink Barista
• Natumi Bio Barista Oat Drink

Good milk foaming behavior

8.5 out of 10 points:

• dm Oat Drink Barista with Soy
• Minor Figures Organic Oat
• Gutsch
• Mølk
• Berief Bio Oat-Soy Drink 1l
• Rebel Kitchen BIO MYLK Barista

7 out of 10 points:

• Oatly Germany Oat Drink Barista Edition
• Alpro Barista Oat Milk
• Voelkel Oat Drink Barista

Medium foaming behavior

5.5 out of 10 points:

• Allos Oat Barista

Sustainability and transparency

In evaluating the sustainability and transparency of oat drinks, we did not make a comparison to cow milk but instead conducted a direct comparison with each other. In direct comparison between oat drink and milk, oat drink typically performs better (see WWF study as PDF).

(We also have two articles <1> <2> and a documentary film about cow milk. If you want to learn more about milk.)

In terms of transparency, we evaluated whether a Life Cycle Assessment exists, whether the origin of ingredients and nutritional information are available. In the sustainability area, we considered origin, production, CO2 footprint, sustainability reports or goals, and waste management. For this, we not only researched online but also contacted manufacturers and considered their responses.

Sustainability and transparency results

Minor Figures achieved the most points. As a B-Corp company, they can stand out especially with comprehensive information about their products and their sustainability goals and commitments. The same applies to Rewe and Berief, which share third place. In second place is Gutsch, which works very locally and maintains close relationships with their producers.

What statements can we make?

Basically, all oat drinks are grown and produced in Europe. Only Rebel Kitchen's Mylk contains "Coconut Cream," which probably does not come from Europe.

The manufacturers say they strive to work as locally as possible but often have to resort to products from other European countries.

The CO₂ footprint is well below that of conventional milk, at about half. The comparative data does not come from an organically produced oat drink but from Oatly. This also takes into account transport data from Scandinavia to supermarkets in Germany. This suggests that organically produced oat drinks grown and processed in "Central Europe" should have an even smaller footprint.

Some products are labeled as climate-neutral, meaning emissions are tracked and offset. However, since it is not known exactly which emissions occur during beverage production, we did not include these.

The ecological scarcity method, which in addition to "Global Warming Potential" also considers land use change, acidification, and heavy metal contamination, thus enabling a more comprehensive view, can also confirm this. The difference is not as striking as with CO2e, but oats still have a clear advantage.

Price/Performance

Assessing the price-performance of various oat milks reveals the difficulty that a weighting of the evaluated parameters must be made. However, this is difficult to do across the board, as different uses depend on usage and interest.

Those who like fruity espressos will place less value on how the oat milk tastes combined with dark espressos. Those who also like to use oat milk for cereal place more value on cold performance. We decided to treat all evaluated criteria as equally important and used the average of the parameters.

The results of this comparison are as follows:

• With a price-performance score of 5.68, "dm Oat Drink Barista with Soy" leads the list, closely followed by "REWE Bio + vegan Barista Oat" with a score of 5.60 and "BioBio-Oat Barista Netto" with 5.33
• "Alnatura Oat" also scores well with price-performance scores of 4.42.
• At the lower end of the list we find "Coop Karma Bio" and "Beleaf Oat Drink Barista" with price-performance scores of 1.61 and 1.49 respectively.

How was it evaluated?

Sustainability and transparency

Transparency evaluation

We searched online for information about the drinks. We wanted to know not only the ingredients and nutritional values but also more about the sustainability and origin of the drinks and their components. It is clear that ingredients and components must be listed on the packaging. But if you want to inform yourself in advance online, you should also find these values on the websites and shops of the providers.

Unfortunately, we could not find information about the drinks on the Lidl webshop, for example. Gutsch lacks the nutritional values table and Natumi lacks the ingredient list. Otherwise all information was available.

However, information about origin, production, and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is less easy to find. Only Oatly published an LCA here. Minor Figures published a footprint for their drink, but less detailed than Oatly, which publishes different footprints for different markets. Migros provides a comparative value for its oat drink: The CO₂ footprint corresponds to 4 km of driving. This puts the footprint in good context. However, it is not possible to make a comparison with other manufacturers from this, so Migros receives no points in this area.

Additional points in this area could be earned through information on origin or the location of the production facility. For about half of the tested drinks, we could find at least information about the country of production on the website.

Sustainability evaluation

While transparency evaluation assessed data availability, sustainability evaluation focuses on the quality of the information provided.

We spent a long time thinking about how we wanted to handle missing data and vague data. The result is that we did not rate missing information with 0 points, and in cases of unclear or imprecise statements, we assumed the worse option.

For example: Statements were often made like: "We source our ingredients from local farmers. However, with increasing demand, we must resort to, for example, oats from the EU." In such a case, "Europe" was applied to the origin.

For published footprints, we considered them present if they are smaller than the milk footprint* (1.36 kg CO2e /L).

We considered various certifications in the production of drinks, including Bioland, Naturland, Bio-Knospe, and Demeter. Each of these certifications has additional restrictions on the use of additives and farming practices. However, we did not particularly highlight any specific method, as examining it would exceed the scope of our work. A separate study would be needed for this. However, we rated all certifications that have additional restrictions beyond EU-Bio higher.

We also did not study in detail the sustainability reports and goals of individual providers but used these to get a picture of the status in each company.

We asked manufacturers about how they handle waste in their company. There were many interesting answers about what is done with the different waste product. From reusable shipping packaging to feeding oat residue to pigs, there were different approaches and solutions.

Origin

• 0 points, non-EU country
• 1 point for origin in Europe
• 2 points producing country = distribution country

Production

• 0 points conventional
• 1 point EU-Bio
• 2 points Bioland | Naturland | Bio-KnospeCH | Demeter

CO2 Footprint published = 1 point

Sustainability report/goals = 1 point

Waste management present = 1 point

Oat drinks from Beckum

During research, we noticed that many manufacturers produce their drinks in Germany/North Rhine-Westphalia or specifically in Beckum. Berief is located there and two minutes walk further is Soja GmbH, which shares the managing director with Berief. (As of: Summer 2023)

It is not surprising that Rewe, Alnatura, and Netto have both the ingredients and nutritional values matching. Rewe and Aldi South name Soja GmbH as their bottler, while Netto names Berief as the producer. Although Berief's own oat milk was also part of the test.

Taste

Warm evaluation: Cappuccino

Six tasters evaluated four different aspects of each oat milk. Harmony of espresso and oat drink, mouthfeel (texture, weight), aftertaste, and visual appearance were evaluated.

The maximum points that could be awarded per aspect was 6 points. This resulted in a maximum total possible score of 144 points per oat milk (6 points per aspect multiplied by 4 aspects multiplied by 6 tasters). However, in practice, the entire point range is rarely exhausted, so for presentation purposes, the maximum score was reduced by 10%. Thus, an adjusted maximum score of 129.6 points was established. This score corresponds to 100% of realistically achievable points. A score of 88% thus corresponds to 114.1 points (88% of 129.6 points). To display the ratings on a scale of 1 to 10, the percentages were divided by 10. Thus, a rating of 88% corresponds to a score of 8.8 on a scale of 1 to 10.

This approach was carried out both with a fruity espresso and with a classic and darker espresso roast ("chocolatey").

Cold evaluation: Pure oat milk

In addition to evaluating the four aspects, the taste of the cold milk was also evaluated by the tasters. Each taster could award up to 6 points, with 6 being the highest and 0 being the lowest score. This resulted in a maximum total score of 36 points per tasting. However, since each oat milk was tasted twice, each oat milk could achieve up to 72 points total.

As before, the maximum score was also reduced by 10% here to enable a more realistic representation. Thus, an adjusted maximum score of 64.8 points was established. This score corresponds to 100% of realistically achievable points for the cold milk tasting.

The best-rated oat milk achieved 46 points in this area. To display this on a scale of 1 to 10, the achieved score was first converted to a percentage (46 out of 64.8 points is approximately 71%) and then divided by 10. Thus, the best oat milk received a rating of 7.1 on a scale of 1 to 10 for the taste of cold milk.

Price-performance evaluation

To calculate price-performance, we first calculated the average rating for each brand across five categories: fruitiness, chocolatey taste, cold milk, sustainability, and foaming ability. Ratings in these categories were given on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best result.

Price-performance was then calculated by dividing the average rating by the price of the respective oat milk. The resulting value gives an impression of how much "quality" or "value" you get for each euro spent. A higher value means a better price-to-performance ratio.

Sources, Further Links, Notes

*https://www.wwf.ch/sites/default/files/doc-2020-10/2020_10_%C3%96kobilanz%20Milch%20und%20pflanzliche%20Alternativen.pdf

Philipp Schallberger is co-founder of Gutsch. He was not involved in the evaluation or development of the test criteria. The tasting was conducted blind. No taster knew which milk they were tasting at any time.

Thanks and team

The oat milk test was prepared by Tobias Milz and Felix Hohlmann. Tobias Milz is an environmental technologist and regularly writes about his research on coffee and sustainability on our website. Felix Hohlmann is German Barista Champion 2024 and prepared the cappuccini with barista trainer Andrea Perin. Dario Pieber is Swiss Latte Art Master and was responsible for consistent foaming of the cappuccini in the latte art test.

The sensory panel consisted of the above-mentioned Tobias Milz and from right to left:

Pascal Rutz, pastry chef, barista, and founder Brootmacher:innen

Gabriela Blank, barista, HR KM, yoga instructor, co-founder Rabbithole Basel

Nicolas Schwob, food scientist, co-founder Rabbithole Basel, R&D Vito

Nadja Schwarz, Q-grader Robusta and Arabica, wine sommelier, Eidg. dipl. Hôtelière-Restauratrice HF, sensory course instructor

Philipp Schallberger, head of roastery Kaffeemacher:innen, partner, sensory, former juror at World Barista Championships and World Brewers Cup

Thanks for the contribution to all involved and the further supporters in the background.