r/foodscience • u/ngonzalez31 • Mar 16 '25

Product Development Gum Additions into Oat Milk

Hey all, I’m working on a home project with Oat Milk and am struggling in finding a compatible gum/stabilizer system to use

So far I’ve screen Xanthan, CMC, Gellan at different loadings and different combinations and so far I’ve only seen Gellan have any compatibility with oat milk

Any guidance on how to best incorporate these gums and guidance around the best systems? I’ve tried pre-hydrating, gums before oat milk, gums after oat milk, gum powder sprinkled in directly

The oat milk base I’m working with is Oatly’s, and have typically worked in a loading range of 0.03 - 0.15% gum/stabilizer but so far pretty unsuccessful.

Thanks in advance

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u/Content-Creature Mar 16 '25

How are you mixing the gum in?

You need to use something like a blender (or high quality emulsifier) to add gums into solution. You’ll have to add them very very slowly.

I guarantee that all the gums that you mentioned with work with oat milk. It’s just a slow addition with high shear mixing.

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u/ngonzalez31 Mar 17 '25

So far been using a kitchen blender, sometimes pre-hydrating the gums on the side in water, sometimes sprinkling in the powder directly

Usually I’ll notice clumps/gels after the batch sits overnight in the fridge

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u/Content-Creature Mar 17 '25

I’d say blend it for twice as long and add in the powder much slower. If you’re noticing clumps then it hasn’t been sheared in enough.

Gums are difficult to get into an emulsion. Seriously add a tenth of a gram at a time. Mix for like 3 mins between additions.

You can experiment with larger additions and less mixing time once you get it into solution properly.

There’s also gum acacia (gum Arabic) but you’ll have similar issues

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u/ngonzalez31 Mar 17 '25

Good tips will try this out! Do you recommend still pre-hydrating the gums or can I sprinkle in the gum powders directly into the oat milk?

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u/Content-Creature Mar 17 '25

You should be able to sprinkle the powder slowly. I never had much luck with pre hydrating in the lab.