Can you freeze almond butter?

Update: Please also see my other almond butter posts:

• Homemade almond butter (using roasted almonds)
• Raw almond butter

After making that batch of almond butter, I got curious: what if I went nuts (heh) and made a whole pile of this stuff? Can I freeze the extras? Well, there's no better way to find out than to actually do it, is there? So I went ahead and put what's left of the almond butter into the freezer, took it out the next day, and waited for it to thaw.

What happened next?

Not much, that's what happened next. A bit of a skin had formed on top of the almond butter, but after giving it a few stirs, I couldn't detect any changes in flavor or texture as a result of the freezing. I suppose a better test would have been to taste the before and after versions side by side, but, well, maybe next time. Update 2009-03-12: Next time came (see the bottom of this post). Side by side tasting done. No differences.

Wanna try it yourself? These are my numbers:

• Quantity: Around 7 oz (estimated 190–200 g) homemade almond butter, or a little over 3/4 cup (190–200 ml).* My recipe originally made a little over one cup of almond butter, but some already got eaten.
• Freezer temperature: -4 °F (-20 °C)
• Freeze time: 24 hours
• Thawed at room temperature. Exact temperature not recorded.
• Thaw time: around 6 hours.

Curiously enough, people are being advised not to freeze peanut butter (PDF), with the reason that the oil will separate. I can only surmise that this advice is given with mass-market peanut butters in mind, though. Without emulsifiers and stabilizers, the oil in all-natural peanut butter will separate anyway, and I can't imagine how it would freeze differently than almond butter. But I'll have to make and freeze some peanut butter to see if that's true or not.

Anyway, to get back on topic:

Q: Can you freeze almond butter?
A: Yes. You. Can.

__________________________
* Of course there was no way to remove the almond butter for weighing by itself without leaving some of it behind in the jar, so instead of trying that, I tared with another jar of the same type and size, which should be pretty close. The jar is also only marked in rough graduations, so the volumes are eyeball estimates.