With the hyped Nama M1 plant-based milk maker, I no longer have to get up at 5am to milk the almonds

I was vegan for six years, and the idea of cow milk has given me the ick since before I can remember, so I like to think I know my way around a plant-based milk. While I’m no longer vegan (the intricacies of which I will not be getting into here), I’m still majorly anti-milk. I haven’t consumed the stuff by itself in about a decade.

So of course I was desperate to try out the viral Nama M1 plant-based milk maker. I rarely make my own plant milk, purely because blending, and sieving, and blending, and sieving just feels like a nightmare. Is making milk easier on the M1 than the best blenders? Yes. Yes it is.

With the Nama M1 that nightmare is a thing of the past. The Nama M1 transforms nuts and grains into creamy, mostly smooth milk in under a minute. But… that’s all it does. While I love the functionality of the Nama M1, it’s pretty expensive for such a niche product. Could it be worth the $400 MSRP though? I’ll go through all the details in this Nama M1 review.

Nama M1 review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? A plant-based milk maker that does it all in one
• Who is it for? Dairy dodgers like me
• What does it cost? Eeesh: $400 / £375
• What do we like? It’s really easy to use and clean… it truly does take all the stress out of milk making
• What don’t we like? It’s sooooo expensive for what it is, and it’s very niche

Nama M1 review: Specs

Nama M1 review: Price & availability

Yes, the Nama M1 is objectively a lot of money. You’re probably never going to make the money back by making homemade nut milk. Seeing as a 32-ounce carton of almond milk is around $2.50 at Target, it’s actually probably cheaper to buy store-bought almond milk over raw almonds. For milks with cheaper core ingredients, such as oat milk, it could end up being an affordable (and more sustainable) way of sourcing milk over time.

However, the Nama M1 isn’t really focused on “earning” its price like a home espresso machine might market itself by “earn your money back in two months of homemade lattes”. The Nama M1 is all about being clean, non-processed, and most of all, homemade.

It’s a pretty massive $400 from Amazon U.S. or £375 from Nama U.K.. Even so, this makes it almost $300 cheaper than the Vitamix Ascent X3, which is our favorite blender. Considering you don’t have to strain the nut milk through a cheesecloth, you might be thinking $400 doesn’t seem so steep. But the Vitamix can do it all: soups, nut butters, juices, smoothies, nut milk… and the Nama M1 just makes milk.

If you make nut milk regularly or for a large family, though, I’m very confident that the Nama M1 will perform just as you’d expect and want it to.

Nama M1 review: Design

Oh, I can’t lie, I absolutely adore how the Nama M1 looks. It’s so chic and modern without being overly complicated or bulky. The blending base comes in white or black (I tested white), and it has a few moving parts that make up the machine. The motor base, the blending pitcher with spout, the lid, the strainer, and the blade frame.

The blade frame and the strainer slot together nicely, and when you’re done making milk, you simply remove the frame and strainer and twist them apart slowly to remove all of the pulp in one go. This is one of my favorite aspects of the milk maker.

There’s a useful spout on the side of the blending pitcher, so you can easily squeeze out every drop of nut milk. I’ll talk about this more in the ‘Performance’ section, but the M1 actually blends while the spout is open to get even more out of the pulp.

There’s a secondary pitcher too with an airtight lid so you can transfer the milk immediately to the fridge. The secondary pitcher has a lovely pouring spout and didn’t spill a drop when I was pouring it into my coffee.

Every part of the machine is well-made and carefully designed. I can’t get over how amazing the strainer and blade frame innovation is: I found myself looking forward to blending so I could squeeze out all the pulp again.

I was never struggling to slot pieces in or get them to fit. It’s all very harmonious, which is great considering the premium price. While, personally, I’d store the Nama M1 in a cupboard or pantry, it will look a treat if you decide to leave it out on the countertop.

Nama M1 review: Performance

Now onto what you’re really here for: How does the Nama M1 actually perform?

Well, it’s bloomin’ fantastic. The Nama M1 is, by far, the easiest way to make plant-based milk. If you make plant-based milk pretty much everyday, the M1 is definitely the product for you. It’ll change your life.

To test the M1, I made a variety of plant-based milks. I made: cashew milk, macadamia milk, almond milk, hazelnut milk, oat + almond milk, and a (delicious) maple, oat, coconut, and cashew creamer.

My favorite of all these concoctions was the maple, oat, coconut, and cashew creamer. I followed a recipe in Nama’s provided recipe book, and it was an absolute killer. I omitted the cocoa as I didn’t want to have chocolate-flavored milk, but I followed everything else to a T. Even with the high ratio of solids to liquid, the Nama M1 still managed to make a thick, creamy, and not gritty drink.

Making generic milk is very easy: you put in about a 1:5 ratio of solids to water. So if I was making 1 liter of milk, I’d put in 200g of nuts or oats. This provides the best texture, but if you want it more/less, then obviously you can adjust to your tastes.

The process is as follows: pour water and nuts/oats into the main chamber (make sure the spout is closed), then pop the lid on and press blend. The M1 will automatically blend for exactly 1 minute. Then, you open the spout and decant the milk into the provided pitcher. While the milk is draining, the M1 will blend again to extract as much milk as possible. This is the part that makes the M1 stand out. It really does squeeze every drop of milk out.

Once all the milk is extracted, you can easily separate the nut/oat pulp using the blade frame and the stainer. Simply twist the frame to remove from the strainer and the pulp will slide right out. Nama also provides a pulp mat for easy collection and storage.

And one of the best parts? The recipe book I mentioned earlier also has recipe ideas for the pulp. Yep, you can make almond pulp cookies, and dip them in your homemade almond milk. How nostalgic!

Making plant-based milk has genuinely never been easier. Forget blending, straining, straining, and straining again with manky cheesecloths. And then cleaning the sink while washing up. The Nama M1 does all of that for me — and I even get yummy cookies made from nut pulp after. Well, I have to make those myself, but the sentiment remains.

If you make plant-based milk regularly, this is a total game-changer. If you tend to buy store-bought plant milk (guilty), then it might be a little too expensive to justify. Disclaimer: it’s worth remembering that store-bought plant-based milk is fortified with calcium and vitamins, so if you switch to solely homemade milk, you might want to supplement those vitamins elsewhere.

Nama M1 review: Storage & maintenance

Even though it’s a pretty weighty 12 pounds and a pretty big 9 inches wide, the machine itself didn’t take up that much space on my countertop. Obviously I would store it in the cupboard or pantry between uses (if I had one…) but if you’ve got a particularly spacious kitchen and wanted to leave it on the counter between uses, as I mentioned earlier, there’s no doubt in my mind that the M1 would look great.

Keeping it looking sparkling isn’t as hard as you’d think it is. There’s nowhere in the user manual that says the M1 is dishwasher safe, so I’d recommend washing all the parts by hand. I know cleaning a juicer is one of the worst aspects of making homemade juice, but I didn’t experience any of that headache while cleaning the M1.

After I removed the pulp using the handy blade frame and strainer, I simply washed the pieces with hot soapy water. Yes, cleaning all of the bits out of the strainer was a little frustrating, but that’s par for the course. Obviously cleaning nut pulp out of a strainer is going to be annoying. Thankfully, it wasn’t as annoying as I’d anticipated.

Nama M1 review: Verdict

Will I use the Nama M1 again? Honestly… probably not. At least for nut milk. Buying raw nuts is actually way too expensive here in the U.K. for me to justify making my own nut milk, especially when I can get nut milk from the grocery store for about £1.50 a liter. If I were a regular oat milk drinker, though, things might be different — oats are very cheap, so the Nama could make good financial sense.

Likewise, if you’re a huge wholefoods/zero waste fan, and you often find yourself making your own nut milk and having to strain it out using cheesecloth, then the Nama M1 will make your life so, so, so much easier. I was absolutely gobsmacked the first time I used the M1 and realised making nut milk could be this straightforward. You simply pour in the nuts, add water, add optional flavors, and go. It’s as easy as that.

So, whether or not you should buy the Nama M1 relies on the answer to this question: do you make nut milk regularly? If the answer is, eh, maybe, then do not get the Nama M1. I can already sense it collecting dust in your kitchen.

But if the answer is yes, then by all means, get the Nama M1. It’s absolutely fantastic at what it does, and is a complete game-changer for nut milk lovers.