I just want to make a good heart for my wife, been months now and i can't fogure out what I'm doing wrong
teied different kinds of milk, dofferent steam heads (1, 3, and 4 holes)
and it's not working 🙁
this is on the Lelit Anna with 3 holes on the steam wand
by iSpaYco
26 Comments
Disclaimer: I’m not the best. But it looks like your glass is a little tall and you’re not pouring enough of a base before starting the latte art. Maybe a little over aerated but that kinda appears to be the least of your problems.
I am no master, but the difference from what I used to do at work is getting a bit more frisky with the tip in your milk. Introducing that steam deeper and getting it all in there gave me a thicker pour
Milk is too flat, and you’re pouring slowly and not getting foam. Do more surfing and pour more strongly.
I get my steam wand deep and centered for a few seconds until I get good movement, then I lower the milk so the steam wand is higher up in it and get my aeration, then go to the side to get my whirlpool
Your steam power looks pretty weak to me. Make sure your steam is up to temperature and it’s fully steamy, not watery. Next, your steaming should happen in two district phases. In the first phase, introduce all your air as soon as possible after you start steaming, not gradually. With the steam wand just at the surface of the milk, do 2 or 3 big “rips” at the beginning when your milk is its coldest. Introduce no additional milk after that. After that, put the tip deeper in the milk. The second phase is all just rolling and heating until you’ve reached your target temperature. I like to go for about 150F.
Also, you want to avoid that squelching sound as much as possible, not linger on it. The fact you’re hearing it means your steam wand is neither high enough (in the first phase) or low enough (in the second phase) below the surface of the milk.
Also use full fat milk. Other milks don’t work as well. If this is skim or non dairy, that would help explain it.
Don’t dunk the tip at the beginning, just tip over the surface until you get volume, then go deep.
You need to swirl the steamed milk way more for one. You can see how the milk doesn’t quite look cohesive as it pours with visible bubbles at the edges and it’s quite watery at first and then thick and frothy at the end. It should be much more uniform.
Try purging the wand longer, I purge for around 10 seconds into the steam cup and 30ml of water will come out first.
Get the milk pitcher spout closer to the surface of the cup. The surface tension is broken from higher up so you end up with most of your pour going under the surface.
If needed tilt the mug more to help get the pitcher closer
I’d say, yes, it’s the cup but you’re also incorporating too much air. That sound that sounds like ripping paper should only go on for about 5 seconds, then lower the steam wand and let the vortex do its thing until you reach around 60-65 C. Tap your jug and swirl the milk afterwards to bust bigger bubbles.
Put the tip of your spout much closer to the surface, just a small fraction of an inch above it. Put down more of a base and/or use a smaller cup to do it. Start with the cup tilted enough so when you start the pour it is almost overflowing. Commit to the pour, start fast, and go faster as you progress. Tilt the cup towards horizontal as you pour so it won’t overflow. Your goal is to get the milk to skate across the surface as you are pouring.
Watch the steaming and pouring videos by Lance Hedrick and Emilee Bryant multiple times, until you have them memorized.
So, you are putting little “air” into the milk when steaming, try to leave the tip closer to the edge of the milk to make it creamier.
Another thing is that you want to put the cream of milk in the espresso and not the thinner milk that remains at the bottom. Mix to make it more homogeneous and add equal parts of crema and milk to the espresso.
It’s a little difficult to explain in text, but there are some videos on YouTube that explain it well and take a cool camera angle to see what it’s like.
Cup should be tilted 45 degrees towards the milk jug. Once youve incorporated the milk with the espresso, push the spout of the milk jug closer to the surface of the cup. This will give you more space to create a pattern in the middle.
Only the first 5-10 seconds should be used for incorporating air. You’re starting too high in the beginning making huge bubbles, dip it below the tip then turn it on and slowly creep it up til it sounds like paper tearing. The milk should start to get just past hot, then dip it lower below the tip and now it’s time to swirl the milk by tilting the cup with the tip full submerged and aimed at the side of the cup.
Wait til it’s too hot to keep your hand on the pitcher then turn it off, tap and swirl.
Your milk currently has too much air, to big of bubbles and none of it is mixed in
None of the other comments are addressing the real problem here, which is milk texture. You need to think about steaming milk in 2 distinct phases.
First you have the aeration phase(there are a lot of different names for this, so don’t get hung up on it), which is what you’re doing. This is where you incorporate air into the milk by having the steam wand just below the surface.
What you’re missing is the churning phase. This step mixes all of the super foamy milk at the top with the untouched milk at the bottom. When you skip this step and try to pour, the foamy milk floats and the normal milk flows into your drink and leaves the foam behind. You want the milk to be one, homogenous, silky texture.
To get this, you want to keep your steam wand in roughly the same position, but after the pitcher becomes around body temp you plung it down deeper. Look for the milk to start mixing and go until it becomes hot to the touch. The texture of the milk should look glossy, like wet paint.
When you’re ready to pour, you can tap to get rid of any large bubbles, and swirl to fully incorporate the foam. You should be able to sink or float the milk depending on how high you pour from, and a heart should be easy to do once you have good milk.
[James breaks it down here, this is what made it click for me. You only really need to watch the first 10 min](https://youtu.be/oaKRBBpA4fw)
If youre going for steamed milk for latte (and not foamed for cappucino) the wand should be a little further into the milk. The “paper shredding noise” shouldnt really be heard much after the first second of steaming, unless its too close to the milk’s surface, which is a bit better for cappucino foam, not latte milk texture though.
I am trying to figure out this same thing, and for the same exact reason.
From what I’ve seen (and not being able to do) is that there are actually three stages:
1. Get milk to body temperature
2. Introduce air
3. Swirl until it’s too hot to touch
Keep swirling after steaming to keep it homogeneous
Then pour from a distance to sink the milk (and create a canvas), wait a couple seconds until foam comes up to the surface and creates some resistance, lower the pitcher and pour as close as you can from the coffee surface.
Easier said than done. Enjoy.
You should be controlling the paper tearing sound. That’s “stretching” the milk. You should be focusing on stretching the milk first and breaking down the bubbles into microfoam second. You’re just randomly making bubbles.
Firstly, unlike what some have said, you put too much air. It should only sound like tearing paper for about 5 seconds or so. You should spend the rest of the time incorporating the air via the vortex.
Secondly, when you pour, the tip should almost be touching the top of the espresso. Think of it like skipping rocks. Close to the surface and almost pouring horizontally.
I mean, yes all the technique stuff here is useful, but your technique is not terrible and really you should be getting much better results.
It is taking way too long, seems to me. The 3 hole tip is part of that, I don’t know anything else you can do about it but it’s definitely more challenging for me to steam milk on weaker machine.
There almost has to be something about your milk too. All the organic milk at my supermarket is ultra pasteurized and hard to steam. Store-brand whole milk should get you there.
The steam is weak it seems. It reminds me of my BBE. Because of how little steam is coming out, you need to spend more time to get more air incorporated into the milk. I hope you get to make your wife a heart latte art soon.
My wife always loves it when I do that for her.
I was in the same boat waterly milk. After watching james hoffmann video about steaming milk and he say you should alway let the milk rest a little, clean up your machine and tap few times and pour. It helped me tremendously.
https://youtu.be/oaKRBBpA4fw
Doesn’t look like whole milk, way too watery
I’ve had a similar issue, what really helped is getting more air coming out of the wand and reducing the amount of milk for a machine that runs out of steam (can’t help making that pun) this will make it the wand seem more powerful. Are you opening up the steam wand completely, or only partially? It seems like initially you opened the wand up with a lot of steam coming out, then when you dipped the wand and turned it on, only partial steam power was used.
At the beginning it’s is best to have a lot of air introduced into the milk, then spend the rest of the time getting the surface foam distributed into the rest of the un-foamed milk.
You’ve gotta kinda adjust up and down in the milk a little to find your sweet spot. You’ll know by how it feels and how it sounds. Might take a bit, but it’ll become second nature eventually.
Try steaming less milk. It’s sharia easier for me when I steam just the amount I need. You could also try transom it from your steaming pitcher to another pitcher. I would let the milk spin a little longer, with the steam wand down further in the milk, after stretching.