January 22, 2020

A family operated firm near Tel Aviv, Israel is producing a cheese using almond nuts. They sell three products, in pint jars: regular cream, garlic flavored, and spicy. Their customers currently are health food shops, and they will expand sales to restaurants once they are able to increase production.

They buy locally grown almonds which are graded as seconds, at half the price of the un-broken ones. They are still a lot more expensive than soybeans.

They have a clever way of making this food product. It is a specialty for lactose-intolerant people. It starts by soaking the nuts in water for 24 hours. Then the almonds are mixed with water in a ratio of about two water to one nuts. This is flaked in a bowl blender.

This mix of flaked almonds and water has a melted ice cream consistency. You can see tiny pieces of almond in it. Each batch is run in their CP-4 press.

The press liquor is heated to as high as 75C in cheesecloth bags in a pasteurization process. Next the bags are allowed to sit over perforated plates for several hours, during which water drains out. Once drained, the bags are hung in a chiller, during which thickening takes place. Later the product is filled into jars and stamped with an expiration date.

The consistency of the product is like cream cheese or a cheese dip. It was explained that this product is technically a cheese, although not of the kind produced from milk with bacteria.

Their new production machine is a Model CP-4 screw press. It was found that using a perforated screen with fine holes gave double the production rate of a wedgewire screen. The screen, unusual for a CP-4, is split in two halves. This feature facilitates CIP.

The throughput is definitely low for a CP-4, around twenty five kilos of nuts per hour. This capacity is understated because of the batch mode operation.

The wedgewire screen tended to blind over after a few minutes of use. Reversing the screw rotation relieved the problem somewhat, but it did not last very long.

The machine is cleaned with a 3-5% concentration of sodium hydroxide (NAOH, soda ash).

A feature of this process is the high ratio of oil and flavors in the almonds which are mixed into the water during the initial flaking operation.

Vegans and others know about making almond and other nut cheeses. Here are links to their web sites:

https://www.thespruceeats.com/homemade-almond-cheese-recipe-591548
http://rawmazing.com/recipe/raw-recipe-simple-almond-cheese/

Here is a link to a video showing the operation:

(1 minute) ALMOND CHEESE https://youtu.be/68F0nXx9bEI

Issue #320