Anyone make evaporated OR condensed milk? (coldbrew coffee question)

[Mr Gus]

If so is it worthwhile pricewise per can (circa 355 ml of final product) in this day & age, when milk costs, sugar, & hob energy have been taken into consideration? (basically a simmer reduction of milk thus evaporated, & condensed is the same but with added sugar)

Any noticeable difference?

Reason being i've been playing with sous vide cold brew coffee at home (don't give me "that look" ) as the wife & daughter as with much of society are paying through the nose for a very simple chilled product, so I sous vided 2 litres in a parfait jar to percolate at 65c prior to filter & chilling.

1 cup of lightly tamped coffee, kirkland, costco colombian which was festering in the cupboard, (colombian is on the higher acidity scale, which I was trying to reduce for easier drinkability without the gut rebelling) pour warm, filter (polyprop funnel & coffee papers) ..bottled 1550 ml end product in glass flip top bottles.

Grounds had very little moisture in them (not worth squeezing) so straight into the compost box.

Whilst I do have some evap milk to make a decent mac & cheese with, (trust me, it's all the better for it & fast) I don't have condensed, & wanted to get in there with a sweet milk syrup mix ..it's all time & energy that needs scrutinising & I just wanted to compare canned versus fresh home made whilst I was at it...

Anyhow, no gut ructions, high caffeine, no jitters, little apparent acidity ...no need for ice, just a chilled sigg flask. if not poncing about with milk syrups to your level to sweet tooth, my first one with whole milk was very good too as a faff free, fridge door item.

I cannot see myself making condensed & evap milk regularly, but you never know, if it reduces the wifes propensity to buy a clutch of plastic bottles of the stuff from supermarkets then job done with very little effort, less if regular milk & a spoon or 3 of sugar is used.

Feckin plastic!

[Mr Gus]

To anyone curious (doubtful) I bought a can of condensed milk whilst out this evening, & stupidly had a late night cold coffee fix upon openimg the can to chill for the morning.

Basically you could easily break a family members expensive plastic/ canned coffee habit this way & provide a big old caffeine jolt via the extraction method that cold brew infusion allegedly supplies, this week I'm going to swap out wifes bought in coffee bottles for home made & load it into a chilled sigg thermal flask.

Aldi / lidl do condensed milk cheaply, sadly I was nowhere near either & had to suck up "carnation" prices £1.75 for 397 ? ml.
But, as the condensed milk is so sweet you can use very little & top it off with semi skimmed milk, the coffee drinker will tell you what is acceptable in terms of finished product.
I used a clean knife (as it was to hand) & stirred in 4-5 knife flat measures of sticky condensed milk, so use really was minimal, & tried variations on monin choc hazelnut syrup sauce & a caramel sugar sauce, just because..

Nb, condensed milk upon opening should be removed from the can, stored in an airtight container, it can be frozen as "mush" for arou d 3 months before it degrades noticeably.

Toss in your wifes flavoured sugar syrup & you suddenly have a poncily named chilled choc mocha, caramel machiatto knock off, ..or whatever.

Will be teaching this to my kid on the hob when she comes back in a few weeks, ..you never can tell with teens if something taught is going to stick, but if it has the potential to save £3.00 a pop & g ive her enough of a jolt to get through a lecture awake & curb a plastic excess lifestyle, then i'm happy.

For the wifes habit, I can use the pre-heated low temp cooking water over, for a slab of meat or soft boil eggs at the same time as a low temp coffee brew, so it could be produced in a very energy efficient manner. (my parfait jar was only half - 2/3 submerged due to displacement) with tea towels in place the temperature soon balanced out

Sadly, despite looking for detail as to coffee extraction, no-one has been able to tell me "why 65.5c" / 80c is bandied around (also cold tap water & left to bloom, no idea of what is optimum & what is merely heresay ..any afficienados care to explain?

[Bugtownboy]

And I thought coffee and condensed milk was just a Spanish thing - leche y leche (leche, leche in the vernacular), condensado or the wonderful barraquito.

All a bit sweet for me, though the Spanish always seem to add sugar too

The barraquito does have some redeeming qualities.

[Mr Gus]

That's why the regular chilled milk & the evaporated milk are there.

the milk syrup is a combination of the two & essentially how they do it as 100% sweet (full on condensed) all the way down the scale.. as I'm merely experimenting (very nice it is though) to show how easy it is to make a silky commercial quality homemade, rather than "thin" knock off.
For me without opening tins it is nice enough.. for me, but a costa /starbucks is way heavy on the sweetness & cream, which is what youngsters get used to when they buy an iced pour over or buy a chilled bottle.

I will link a video on. "milk syrup" simpler to watch than explain.

Here: . (good channel)

it seems an out of the blue post I understand, but our fridge has recently become stacked with small plastic bottles of the stuff, ..& it is just a very simple coffee base with sugar & milk for a tonne of cash, wife consuming one per work shift, plus her made up juice bottle, plus a.bottle of pop or similar... plastic runs rampant, a decent colld coffeeis just as easy as making a hot one / velvetised hot chocolate for her ...with less packaging consumption & " tuned to taste" for mere pennies if she can adapt (yes, she can)

I was fine with semi skimmed milk, and a couple of sugars as my first time out with the stuff, ..which i'd reduce sugars to zero as I got used to the taste profile, but too many kids "want" more, ..with this basea silly poured over ice,choc sauce.walled mess of a cup & a squirt of cream are within reach ..but hopefully in a re-useablecontainer, taking less time to assemble than a layered (even bite) banana split, ice-cream, cream & sprinkles type thing!

The condensed / evap is also a staple of asiatic countries where refrigeration is was less available (just like it was over here back in the day)
I use evap milk as a silky emulsifier in quick mac & cheese which produces excellent results on a batch served & eaten immediately.

[Mr Gus]

I should explain, wife gave up instant coffee,too many problems went with it, so she converted to a hot chocolate velvetiser, & these chilled bottles,
of expensive coffee.

Right now we have some 16 litres of monin hazelnut syrup alone, (plus another 10 assorted flavours of syrups, which is whyI started making caramel syrup & rebottling it (but the ikea induction is crap for thar, so its a battle) wife also into bubble teas which suspiciously likely to be sweetened with canned milks from my experience, so worth investigating to duplicate if easy enough & stem the plastic tide.

Your tenerife boozey coffee uses around 10 ml of condensed milk in the bottom of a glass coffee cup. (poncey coffees) ..I wouldnt want to be making that at 6 am let alone drinking it as a travelling cuppa

She's off to see "our kid" this weekend, so i'll make up a litre or so of chilled in a double wall vacuum for the journey to plymouth, which is 2 coffeestops, a tenner spent & possibly late return / idling fee's at a starbucks en route ..so worth making a moreish home brewed !

Last visit to a supercharger resulted in just that due to busy bank holiday baristas & slow output of coffee, ..email sorted that out with starbucks (any drink vouchers) ..more plastic "sigh"

[Mr Gus]

Currently running a "do-over" same proportions using the sous vide (still water version) in the instantpot so the Anova is ready for food later..was surprised at how quickly that came up to temperature (even overfilled), this time using my valuable stock of MIlo to produce a chocolate malted coffee thing (no idea what poncey name it would use) seeing as I had 4 tins squirrelled away for "that thing" that happened over 2020-2021
This time will use condensed, evaporated, milk & cream (maybe even a cherry on top)

Just want to get a few trial drinks comfortably made & understand the principles of "construction" of which this is pretty enjoyable experimentation, I have learnt just to not test it on the wife, just throw it at her, (exasperating asking for a deconstruction, ..ie think about what you are tasting woman)

[Mr Gus]

Well the milo mocha was only so so.. so I dumped it as a hot drink & stuck it in the fridge, (much improved) ..This morning, having had 24 hours to sit in the fridge all harsh notes had gone, added some orange blossom honey to it with cold milk & it was very agreeable, works well without any faff, orangey, coffee-ey & sweet, ..will try with a local (ie common old rape guzzling bee honey tomorrow)

The orange honey cold brew was "wow" in a glass, recommend it if you care to try go for a cold caffeine hit.


Will have to make some condensed milk now, or open my mega sized dented emergency can (catering size that i'd forgotten about) ..looks like I will be making a few rich sauces (& cauliflower cheese for the wife) ..they better freeze well therefore.

If you can control the heat then having played around with a 2 hour brew & an overnight brew (more energy) then I am inclined to say go for between 2 -4 hours & stir it every hour from the outset, ..save energy, any improvement from an extended duration I could not coax out, so before anyone reads any BS via the internet, several hours with some heat (65c) will do the job making for fast turnaround if you care to try it / use it for a summer fundraiser with a splash of extra's for the starbucks generation (the essential thing is to give it 24 hours in the fridge upon straining & sealing.

As for me, my new tipple for a few summer weeks I think.