The best barista oat milk - the big comparison

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

We wanted to know exactly. To do this, we tested 20 oat drinks and had them tasted in a blind tasting by six baristas, roasters, cuppers, and food technologists. The reigning Swiss Latte Art Champion 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 is common in everyday usage.

The results of the test series reveal some surprising findings. Go 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.

Across all categories we established, 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 capability proved to be very good for many oat drinks. Only a few fell short. The foaming behavior of the very good drinks was 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 works best for you. In this spirit, we invite you to browse through our results. We explain how we evaluated what in the individual chapters.

Taste Winner

And the winner is…. Mølk! In terms of taste, the milk from the German startup particularly stands out in combination with frothed milk. The oat drink took first place both with a strong chocolate espresso and with a fruity espresso.

With the chocolate espresso, the cappuccino made with Mølk proved to be well-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 effect in the 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 a distinctive taste of the oat drink 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 worked very well with the espresso when frothed and warm. As a cold oat drink, Mølk also ranked fourth, with some tasters describing 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 two top spots 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 capable of foaming. Only well-foamable milk can then be used as creamy foam for latte art. Swiss Latte Art Champion Dario Pieber therefore frothed each oat milk twice for us and poured it as a cappuccino with a heart. All oat drinks were used anonymized.

In conclusion, it can be said that almost all alternative milks used showed good to very good foaming performance. Six oat drinks received full marks. They could be well enriched with air during the draw phase and very well homogenized during the rolling phase. When pouring, the surface remained smear-free, the contrast was good, and the surface proved stable and bubble-free.

The differences in the majority of oat drinks were so small that we can unreservedly recommend all barista oat drinks 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:

• Migros 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

Moderate Foaming Behavior

5.5 out of 10 points:

• Allos oat barista

Sustainability and Transparency

When evaluating the sustainability and transparency of oat drinks, we did not make a comparison to cow's 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 on cow's milk. If you want to learn more about milk.)

In the context of transparency, we evaluated whether a life cycle assessment exists, whether the origin of ingredients and nutritional information are available. In the area of sustainability, we considered origin, production, CO2 footprint, sustainability reports and goals, and waste management. To do this, we not only researched online but also contacted manufacturers and took their responses into account.

Result of Sustainability and Transparency

Minor Figures achieved the most points. As a B-Corp company, they particularly scored with comprehensive information about their products and their sustainability goals and commitments. The same applies to Rewe and Berief, who share third place. Second place goes to Gutsch, who work very locally and maintain 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 is likely not sourced from Europe.

According to their own statements, manufacturers are making efforts to work as locally as possible, but often have to rely on products from outside Europe.

The CO₂ footprint is far below that of conventional milk, namely about half. The comparison data does not come from an organically produced oat drink, but rather from Oatly. This also takes into account transport data from Scandinavia to the supermarket in Germany. This suggests that emissions from organically produced oat drinks grown and processed in Central Europe would have an even smaller footprint.

Some of the products are labeled as climate neutral, meaning emissions are captured and offset. However, since it is not known which emissions exactly occur during the production of the beverage, we did not take this into account.

The method of ecological scarcity, which considers not only "global warming potential" but also land use change, acidification, and heavy metal pollution, and thus enables 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

An assessment of the price-to-performance ratio of the various oat milks reveals the difficulty that a weighting of the evaluated parameters must be carried out. However, this is difficult to do across the board, as different purposes depending on use and interest need to be rated.

If you like to drink fruity espressos, you may place less value on the taste of oat milk in combination with dark espressos. If you also like to use oat milk for muesli, you place more value on cold performance. We decided to view all evaluated criteria as equally important and used the average of the parameters.

The results of this comparison are as follows:

• With a price-to-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-to-performance scores of 4.42.
• At the lower end of the list we find "Coop Karma Bio" and "Beleaf oat drink barista" with price-to-performance scores of 1.61 and 1.49 respectively.

How Was It Evaluated?

Sustainability and Transparency

Transparency Assessment

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

Unfortunately, we could not find information about the drinks on Lidl's website, for example. Gutsch is missing the nutritional table and Natumi is missing the ingredient list. Otherwise, all information was available.

Information about origin, production, and LCA (life cycle assessment) is, however, less easy to find. Only Oatly has published an LCA here. Minor Figures has indicated a footprint for their beverage, but less detailed than Oatly, which indicates different footprints for different markets. Migros provides a comparison value for its oat drink: the CO₂ footprint corresponds to 4 km of car driving. This puts the footprint nicely into context. However, it is not possible to make a comparison with other manufacturers from this, so Migros does not receive a point in this area.

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

Sustainability Assessment

While transparency assessment evaluated data availability, the focus of sustainability assessment is on the quality of the information provided.

We deliberated for a long time about how to deal with missing data and vague data. The result was that we did not rate any missing information as 0 points, and in the case of unclear or imprecise statements, we went with the worse option.

For example, statements were often made such as: "We source our ingredients from local farmers. As demand increases, we must, however, fall back on, for example, oats from the EU." In such a case, "Europe" was applied for origin.

For published footprints, we assessed them as present if they were smaller than the footprint of milk* (1.36 kg CO2e /L).

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

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

We asked manufacturers about their company's waste management. There were many interesting answers about what was done with the different waste product. From reusable shipping packaging to feeding oat residues 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 organic
• 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 our research, we noticed that many manufacturers produce their drinks in Germany/NRW or specifically in Beckum. Berief is headquartered there, and two minutes walk away is Soja GmbH, which shares the CEO with Berief. (As of summer 2023)

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

Taste

Warm Assessment: Cappuccino

Six tasters evaluated four different aspects of each oat milk. Harmony between 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 achievable total score of 144 points per oat milk (6 points per aspect multiplied by 4 aspects multiplied by 6 tasters). However, since in practice the entire point range is rarely exhausted, the maximum score was reduced by 10% for display purposes. Thus, an adjusted maximum score of 129.6 points was established. This score corresponds to 100% of the realistically achievable points. A score of 88% thus corresponds to 114.1 points (88% of 129.6 points). To display the evaluations on a scale of 1 to 10, the percentage values 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 Assessment: Pure Oat Milk

In addition to evaluating the four aspects, tasters also evaluated the taste of the cold milk. Each taster could award up to 6 points, with 6 being the highest and 0 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.

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

The highest-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 corresponds to about 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-to-Performance Assessment

To calculate price-to-performance, we first calculated the average of the evaluations for each brand in five categories: fruitiness, chocolate character, cold milk, sustainability, and foaming capability. Evaluations in these categories were given on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 representing the best result.

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

Sources, Further Links, Remarks

*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 did not participate in the evaluation or development of the test criteria. The tasting was conducted blind. No taster knew which milk they were tasting at any given 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 cappuccinos with barista trainer Andrea Perin. Dario Pieber is Swiss Latte Art Champion and was responsible for consistent frothing of the cappuccinos 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, personnel administration 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, federally certified hotel-restaurateur HF, sensory course leader

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

Thanks for the collaboration to all involved and the other supporters in the background.