Steaming milk is hard

[plonq]

Yesterday evening I suddenly found myself craving a London Fog¹. While a sensible person would have craved something easier to prepare, like water for example, I found myself jonesing for something that I probably couldn't make. I had tried making these in the past with mixed success by whipping up cold milk with a hand-held milk frothing device and then microwaving it afterwards, but the results were usually as messy as they were unsatisfying and I decided that it was time to haul out the heavy artillery.

I have a stove-top bronze-age espresso maker that I inherited from my mom when I moved into my basement suite back in the 80s. I seldom use it because it makes me nervous - in fact I think this may be the first time it has seen daylight in close to 10 years. I dusted it off, rinsed all of its parts and checked the fittings. I was mostly concerned about the state of the rubber fittings, but none of them appear to have deteriorated over the years. I filled it up, struck up a flame on the stove and sat back to let it build up steam.

I am guessing that my mistake was in not knowing the first thing about how to steam milk; the baristas make it look very simple. I'm no barista. Ultimately I wound up with a container of hot milk with about 1/4" of reluctant foam on the top (which dissipated as soon as I poured it into the tea and flavoured syrup). I suppose I could have kept stubbornly steaming the milk, but I didn't want to scald it beyond the point of being usable. The final product from my experiment was a drinkable, if somewhat disappointing hot beverage.

Steamed Milk: 1
Me: 0

Our other cats sit, or lie about the house; Merry drapes.


¹ I don't know how many version of this drink there are in the wild, but the one that I know is made from vanilla-flavoured steamed milk and Earl Grey tea.

Comments

[tzisorey.livejournal.com]

Having taken a barista course - I'm pretty good at it :)

Not sure how to put it into words, though...

You need to have the steam wand just "kissing" the surface of the milk (so you move the milk down as the foam rises) - a little lower than the "gurgle" and a little higher than the "Shshhhhshh".
You also need to have the wand and pitcher angled so that it forces the milk to kinda stir itself, so that the foam gets folded into the milk.
When finished, knock the pitcher on the bench to pop any really large bubbles, then kinda swirl it around for a few seconds to get a glossy surface.

Also, milk choice - low-fat and non-fat are easier to GET foam, but the foam vanishes quickly. Full-cream milk is harder to foam, but it lasts longer.

[pfcottontail.livejournal.com]

My brother agrees with this!! Also, it helps if you use a cold pitcher to hold the milk, and use a thermometer to make sure it's properly heated beforehand (so you get steam and not hot water).