New local brand Oatside among the tastiest in Indonesia’s oat milk craze ⁠— for half the competitors’ price

Oatside is an oat milk brand made in Indonesia. Photo: Nadia Vetta Hamid/Coconuts Media
Oatside is an oat milk brand made in Indonesia. Photo: Nadia Vetta Hamid/Coconuts Media

It’s safe to say that oat milk has taken over the plant-based milk market in the past couple of years. Its taste and creamy texture particularly go perfectly with coffee, making it a new favorite among baristas and coffee drinkers alike.

Compared to other alternative milks such as soy and almond milk, oat milk is said to be more environmentally friendly due to its lower water and land required for production. Just like other plant-based milks, you can also make your own oat milk at home, but it’s quite tricky to get it right since oat becomes slimy when mixed with water (trust us, we’ve tried). For the sake of practicality and taste, boxed oat milk is the way to go.

Due to high demand for oat milk, you can easily find popular imported brands on online marketplaces, though a 1 liter box usually goes for around IDR95,000 to IDR120,000 each. After almost a year of routinely purchasing oat milk, we realize that our wallet has become that much thinner, but it’s really hard to go back to other kinds of milk.

Lo and behold, Oatside, an oat milk brand made in Indonesia, popped up as the answer to our financial woes. We first learned about the brand thanks to a milky discussion on Twitter, and the promise of it being locally made and half the price of our go-to oat milk tickled our fancy. 

It did not take long for us to order all three of Oatside variants on its official store on Tokopedia. On the e-commerce platform, a box of the Barista Blend and Chocolate flavors costs IDR50,000, while Chocolate Hazelnut costs IDR55,000. That said, we have noticed several premium online resellers selling a box for as low as  IDR47,500 each, so there is that option if you want to save on several ribu rupiah.

Our first impression of Oatside is that it is near-indistinguishable from our favorite imported oat milk ⁠— more specifically for the Barista Blend and Chocolate flavors. The latter’s taste reminds us of our favorite chocolate milk from our childhood, while the Chocolate Hazelnut is as tasty but with an added hazelnut kick. All Oatside variants contain 10 percent oats, canola oil, and Calcium Carbonate as stabilizer; with Chocolate and Chocolate Hazelnut flavors containing cocoa powder and palm sugar, as well as hazelnut paste for the latter.

Overall, we thought Oatside is a great coffee accompaniment, or you can even use it to make smoothies. You can’t go wrong with drinking it straight up, either, but we find that the taste truly shines when the drink is sufficiently chilled.

For the non-conformist hip kids, Oatside’s boxes feature witty copy. Our favorite is a text on the Barista Blend that reads, “No animals were harmed in the making of this OAT M*LK. Except our marketing team, who worked till 3am to design this carton.”

There are also illustrations on the boxes, which appear to be step-by-step guides on how to live your life to the fullest featuring a bear mascot. Said mascot also appears on Oatside’s website and Instagram page.

While imported oat milk brands can easily be found at coffee shops in Jakarta these days, we won’t be surprised if Oatside replaces them soon.



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