Is Hazelnut Milk The New Almond Milk?

First there was non-dairy creamer, the original "coffee whitener." It's the lactose-free powder that for decades was widely used as a "non-dairy" substitute for milk or cream but has rarely seen the inside of a cup of specialty "third wave" coffee. You've never come across a packet of the stuff at, say, Intelligentsia or Handsome Coffee (where you can't even get sugar).

Then there was soy milk. It may or may not have been a taste improvement over the sodium caseinate and vegetable oil in non-dairy creamer. And it tends to curdle in coffee (coffee, more acidic than soy milk, can act like a coagulant — hello, tofu). Plus there are all those phytoestrogens and the stigma of GMO soybeans.

So, more recently, almond milk has been the dairy alternative du jour. High-end cafes such as G&B and Sqirl offer their own rich, nutty house-made almond milk to those who are inclined to skip the cream. When Four Barrel in San Francisco last year banned soy milk (citing legumey-ness), it started serving locally made almond milk instead.

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