Everything You Need To Know To Steam Great Milk

Welcome to today's installment on the beginner's guide to coffee and today's video is all about how to

steam

milk

, here's how it's going to be done, first of all, let's jump right into the technique of how to

steam

milk

for obtain a really fine moussey foam texture. which you can use to serve latte if you want or just drink and enjoy because it feels so good. Once we've got the technique down, we'll dive into a few more bits and cover the science of these things. We'll cover alternative milks and different types of cow's milk, cover troubleshooting, and make sure you not only understand how to steam milk, but also what to do if you have a problem and it doesn't come out the way you want.

So let's start from the beginning with how to steam milk, the technique. Now this is a technique that you will use for any machine that has a traditional steam wand which usually has a metal tip on the end with one, two, four. holes where the steam comes out now not all machines have traditional steam wand tips so if yours doesn't you may have a weird little plastic wand or some level of automation really the answer is to read the instructions and do what the manufacturer tells you. Do it, but if you have a traditional steam wand you should be able to create a really beautiful milk texture.

So where to start? First, you'll start with cold milk, so let's steam it in a stainless steel pot. jug which is useful because you can touch the side and feel exactly how hot the milk is, we'll get to the point that the size of the jug determines how much milk you're going to steam, but you don't want to steam in a huge jug, just a little bit of milk and you don't want to steam a lot of milk in a small jug, so work appropriately, you never want to fill a jug above where the spout on the side starts, right here, that's a good top line.

In my opinion, for most jugs, you will add some volume to the milk when you steam it and the movement of the milk and the jug will push it towards the side of the wall, so if it sits above This line runs the risk of a terrible disaster. So that's your kind of upper limit and you can get various sizes of jugs. This would serve as an eight ounce drink or a 250ml drink quite comfortably. If you make them one at a time, you can probably squeeze out two smaller drinks. if you want, then you will add cold milk.

Now we will talk more about the different types of dairy and non-dairy milks later. I won't use dairy because I don't drink dairy. using this because I helped develop it and I really like it and now it's steaming like milk for the kind of practical theoretical part of what we're trying to do. You're trying to do three things when you steam milk first. Trying to heat it whenever steam gets into the milk, while the process is happening, so that the milk heats up in a pretty linear fashion during the steaming type of section, so that's number one, trying to heat it up. the milk no more. of 65 degrees Celsius, I would say I'll explain later why now there are two other things that we want to focus on when we steam milk and we'll look at them one at a time in the process, so the first thing we're going to do and we'll start doing it As soon as we start steaming milk it is essentially blowing bubbles to make foam, we have to inject air into the milk and we can do that by using the steam tip.

When the wand sits on the surface of the milk, the pressure of the steam coming out of the wand pulls the surrounding air into the milk and essentially blows large bubbles and the more bubbles you blow into the milk, the frothier the milk will be. Now you want to do this part of the process as quickly as possible, not so quickly that you lose control because you

know

that you want to do this with some intentionality and with some purpose, but you want to achieve it. This is done pretty quickly because the second thing you

need

to focus on for the second two-thirds of the process is the texture.

We'll use the steam wand as a hot whisk and take our big bubbles that we blow at the start and beat them smaller and smaller and smaller until they're so small that they're practically invisible and at that point you have what's called microfoam, you have a foam that feels just like marshmallow, smooth and beautiful to drink and You've made a

great

drink, that's the goal, so we'll heat the milk for as long as it lasts. At first we will add air and in the second two thirds we will texture the foam that we are going to beat.

Even the smallest bubbles we can make, now let's look at how to do that in a more practical sense. Now the steam ones and most machines have some movement and generally it's best to move them away from the machine, aiming towards you make a little movement there, but obviously don't do anything weird like that, I would say just move away a little. little bit of the machine and that's good, now to align things you're going to use the nozzle of the jug. The steam was going to sit inside that spout, so you can slide it all the way in.

Now, when putting the steam wand into the milk, you only want it to go as deep as the tip at the end of the wand. You can see there is always a join where the tip meets the rest of the wand no deeper than that, there's no point in not helping you, so that deep the last thing you want to do is add a bit of angle to your jug Just as you tilt your carafe for most people it is slightly to the right, but you can tilt it to the left. It depends on the type of space around your machine, but you

know

it's not at a slightly inclined angle.

We will do it to help with the second stage we are in. When trying to whip milk before you start steaming, be sure to bleed the steam wand; In many cases, you will have some condensation that you will want to get rid of and remove; In other cases, you may have a little bit of air left in the system and you don't want to accidentally blow some kind of big, uncontrolled bubble into the milk, so just bleed the wand to brew it and then put the jug back in place. Now to explain the process. a little bit better before we do it, what I'm going to do is show you the steaming water to explain to you the position of the steam wand while we're steaming, because once you're steaming, it's a little bit harder to talk about, so you have You have your pitcher in its right place, the angle is right, the desired vapor tip is just below the surface and then you're going to start vaporizing and then almost every machine out there you want to go straight to full power, right?

I don't want to go a little bit at half power, it just keeps going and I like machines that just let me turn it on all the way. As soon as you turn on the steam wand, you want to start lowering the carafe to go. the tip directly to the surface of the milk, not too high, but right to the surface, and you will know it is in the right place because you will begin to see, hear and feel the air coming in, you will just be able to hear. kind of a sipping noise feel the kind of vibrations of the steam blowing bubbles into the milk you want to do this to create as much foam as you

need

for the drink you're making for example if you're making a cappuccino I would say you want a good amount of foam, you want to have the tip on the surface until you have created, let's say an additional volume of 50 to 80, that will give you a lot of foam if you are trying to pour a fancy latte art, maybe you want to add 20 to 30 volumes just to get a thinner foam at the end, either way you are trying to do this very early in the process and as soon as you have added all the air you need.

Let's lift the jug again and stop the foaming process. All you want to do is watch the milk roll and swirl and churn, and that's why we had our pitcher at that angle to help create that vortex where the steam is just going to go. You're whisking and swirling all those bubbles, squishing them so they're smaller and smaller, if you're comfortable, use your hand on the side of the jar and when you get to the point of discomfort, it's probably around 50 to 55 degrees Celsius. Going another three or four seconds will get you closer to 60, which I think is a

great

drinking temperature, and another two, three seconds, maybe if you want to get to 65, which is where the milk peaks, so that It's the process and I will do it. again, now live and see in real time what it would be like to froth the milk jug to the side, press the steam, turn the jug down, you can hear that sipping sound and when it's turned up enough volume, I'm just going to turn the volume up again. jug and enter that blending phase approaching about 55 degrees C.

Now remove my hand. The first thing to do is put down the jar. Forget it for a second. Clean your steam wand. Take it out. He actually wants the jug. Do nothing for a moment and I'll tell you why even the most experienced person can end up with some bubbles a little bigger than they would like. The process of pausing here before tapping allows those bubbles to weaken and then pop easily and then you can start mixing the milk and frothing again until you see a shiny finish on the pitcher. At this point you can pour this into the coffee and create a beautiful drink and you can pour the milk and foam together because there is enough of it. liquid in the foam that will pour if you look in the jug and it has a matte finish when you tilt it, only liquid milk will come out and the foam will almost sit like a raft and it will sit back from the edge and you won't have any fun so make sure To mix the two together, it should be a gentle mixing motion, don't be too aggressive, you don't want to make new bubbles, but you just want to make sure you have the silkiest, brightest milk before pouring it into the drink, so that's the process, how to steam the milk, and really all you're changing for different drinks is how long you're doing that kind of stretching phase for that kind of foam. phase at the beginning of the process,

everything

else, whether it's a kind of thick moussey cappuccino foam or a very fine foam, you know, a delicate foam that maybe they want for a flat white, it's the same process, otherwise, It's like the same cold start, add the air and stir it up. as much as possible and stop, it seems simple enough, but it goes wrong for people in many different cases and we should talk about why and let's talk briefly about the science of milk foams, it becomes relevant later when we get into the troubleshooting. let's talk about foaming agents in things and we've mentioned them before in other videos, but a quick summary now it's the proteins in the milk that are primarily involved in the foaming process and the way it works is like this: they're a a bit like slightly simplified but somewhat long noodles that are rolled and wrapped around each other because some parts are actually repelled by water, they are hydrophobic and they face each other giving it its shape now that you denature it very slightly. protein and there are a couple of different ways to do it, you can heat the protein or you can essentially do it through a whipping action.

If you think about, for example, a meringue, that whipping action actually denatures some of the proteins in the egg white and forcing the water-hating pieces to separate from each other and at that point the protein-hating pieces The water is trying to find something other than water and what we've done when we froth the milk is create a big air bubble that's very attractive to the parts that hate water, so what happens is the protein wraps around it. of the air bubble on that surface, thus strengthening the bubble. It's called a surface-active agent or surfactant and that's what makes milk foam stable. or stable egg white foam, in fact most foams work this way now, what we do when we steam milk is actually mix those two things into the DNA of the proteins, right when we are whipping with the violence of the steam that grows in the milk.

In addition to heating it very quickly and very effectively, we can denature these proteins to the point that they wrap around air bubbles. If you're trying to froth cold milk, you'll notice that it can be done, it just takes it. a huge amount more effort and heat is a really good kind of shortcut, that's why steaming can be done so effectively and still get such a good texture in the end, that's why things foam up and anything that contains surfactants will form foam and that's why A great way to practice steaming milk is to not use milk, but use a little bit of water with a drop, literally a drop of dish soap.

Let me show you this is a great way to practice with as little waste as possible, but we're really talking like a drop and this would go through the same process, vaporize the same way to get a very similar result, so that's the reason why things foam, but let's talk about why things may not foam properly and for thatWe need To talk about fat now, if you've made meringues, you know that you shouldn't add egg yolk to your meringue mixture because that will cause problems because the fat in there offers a kind of competition to the air bubble, it's not water either, so what the parts.

Proteins that don't seek water happily wrap around fat, so fat destabilizes the foams. In many cases, there are exceptions to this and it gets complicated, but it is basically true in most culinary cases and is certainly a problem with milk. If you steam whole milk together with skimmed milk, you will find that it is much easier to froth or essentially make more volume in skimmed milk, the air you put in stays inside, whereas with whole milk you have to work a little harder to increase the volume. because that fat is competing with the air bubble for the protein's attention now again in the case of cow's milk the milk fats are important here because of the way the fats in cow's milk are broken down many times. of those fats called triglycerides.

You've probably heard that term at some point. It is a glycerol backbone with three fatty acids attached. When it breaks down, you get free fatty acids and you get free glycerol. The glycerol in milk is highly competitive with air for protein. Milk that has been exposed to, say, a ton of daylight, will foam worse than milk that has been stored properly, so in general, milk foam is better the farther it is from its date. expiration date because it is the type of decomposition of these fats that reduces their foaming capacity and milk that foams a lot or milk that has this problem, you will hear it almost bubbling in the image afterwards, if you bring it close to your ear, you will hear kind of The popping sound of all the bubbles just popping and you've probably experienced this and sometimes dairies say, "Oh, we changed the cows' feed or something else," often it's just poor management in the supply chain, although in some cases yes.

In fact, it is the food that changes the kind of nature of the fats in cow's milk, so in some cases, if this happens to you, you do

everything

right and then these big bubbles appear in the milk and it feels like if it were decomposing. It's not your fault, it's the milk and there is some free glycerol in there that will probably cause you some problems. The fat has started to break down and there is nothing you can do to improve that steam. There is nothing you can do in terms of technique or. Anything else milk will probably taste great if you want to use it for something, but it won't be good for frothing no matter what you want to do.

One quick thing about fat that's also worth noting is that fat affects you. release of flavor into a drink, a full fat cappuccino will have a different flavor profile than a skimmered cappuccino, in a skimmered cappuccino you will have a strong burst of coffee flavor that won't really last, but with a higher content of fat in the drink. you will have a less intense flavor release that lasts much longer and I think that is an interesting aspect of how fat influences flavor, so now we have to talk about temperature because I have given some guidance on temperature.

He said 55 is a good starting point to put it out at that temperature, it's very drinkable right away, it has a nice sweetness but no hotter than 65. And actually that's because at 68 degrees Celsius the milk starts to change permanently irreversibly, think about it. like cooking an egg, once you have cooked the yolk, there is nothing you can do to undo that process, it is a permanent change in the proteins, they have been permanently denatured above 68 degrees celsius, the proteins begin to permanently break down and, in some cases, they literally just break. they separate and some stuff will be released which adds some kind of unpleasant cooked egg smell to the milk and that is inevitable, if the milk spends any time above 68 degrees celsius it will essentially break it down and it won't taste as good and that's why Really good cappuccinos are never that hot now because of the way heat affects the proteins if you steam a batch of milk and don't pour it from the jug; in fact, you just let it cool and put it in the refrigerator cooled it down again when you steamed it the second time, the proteins would start to fall apart sooner because they were affected the first time you steamed it, the first time you steamed it. you heated them, so you can't reuse the milk effectively. to steam and make it taste as good or produce such a good texture, you just damaged the proteins twice as much and they can't give you the texture or flavor you want, now the perceived sweetness of milk is an interesting thing that It's also temperature related, since the sugar in cow's milk is usually lactose anyway and is designed to be sweeter at body temperature, I hope for fairly obvious reasons, but the further you get from body temperature , whether hot or cold, the sweetness will be less intense, so very, very hot cappuccinos or flat whites will taste less sweet than pleasantly hot ones and if you let them cool a little more they will become increasingly Sweeter and sweeter now with alternatives. milks the sugar profiles are a little different sucrose has a different temperature curve than lactose so you may notice some differences there but with lactose in particular there is a quite different sweetness curve around the temperature.

Now I said that we talk about alternatives. milks because they are becoming more popular and common in cafes and homes all over the place, and in general, the kind of rules of why they foam and the textures they create are pretty similar now, like I said, I have a personal interest here and in creating a product that foams like milk, yes, you're thinking about how to use something like coconut for fat content or how to use oats for sweetness or fava beans to give it a foamy look to create some kind of alternative based on plants and doing it right it's hard to make something that foams like milk is hard but there are more options in the world today, I can't deny that's the truth, there are things that just don't work as well if you're trying them out. you take out, you'll find that some don't foam as well or they don't hold or retain foam, you'll find some variations in the texture in your mouth, you'll feel all those kinds of things because you get the kind of fats.

Working in conjunction with foaming agents is always a bit tricky, but it seems like if you don't want to drink dairy, there really are more options than ever and I'd say you should be able to treat them exactly like dairy in foam. process, so the last thing I want to talk about is steam wand tips or how to set up a machine to work well, because there's something we need to talk about here, which is the idea of ​​almost pressure versus flow when it comes to steam. Many steam boilers are set at a particular pressure, you will see a pressure gauge that might say 1.2 bars or something, that is the pressure of the equipment you have and I would say generally a lot of pressure, one more bar of pressure is well what if if you are struggling to steam milk, reducing the pressure doesn't really help you because that pressure is what will make the milk spin.

A lot of pressure helps create a vortex in the milk, but you may experience a situation where you are trying to steam. just a little bit of milk and it feels like there's too much steam to work with and the process is over before you've even started. Those situations are where you want to change the vapor tip to something like a low flow. Tip, the pressure of the steam coming out remains the same, but less steam may escape, which will slow down the process. It will give you more time to do what you need to add air at the beginning and do the texturing process. vortexing on the second two thirds is definitely something that is easy to do with most machines, they are relatively universal in terms of threading and for most machines there are options available for hole size and number of holes in the steam tip. so if you're struggling, don't reduce the pressure, reduce the flow, change the steam tip, that's my kind of advice for steaming very small amounts of milk.

I don't know about you, but I think I deserve some cappuccino. that's what I'm going to do this is about 150 mils I'm going to put a double short here we're not going to get into recipes today that's going to be a separate episode of the beginner's guide to coffee where I'll go over all the key drink types based of espresso and I'll cover the kind of recipes and recommendations on that kind of thing, but in this case I'm going to take a shot, steam some milk and serve a delicious drink with the texture of milk well filmed is a wonderful thing to drink, but now I want to hear from you in the comments below, tell me what you are struggling with with steaming milk.

Did this help? Did this make the process a little more meaningful? Is this a problem solved for you or is there still something frustrating you. Let me know in the comments below. Share your problems. We'll see if we as a community can help you, but for now I'll say thank you very much for watching. and I hope you have a great day