Any tips on steaming with the Micra? Holy cow is the steam wand much much much more powerful than my old Silvia. I’ll get the hang of it, but I feel like is have to use way more milk cause the wand isn’t as long and is way more powerful. Which feels a bit wasteful. Any way any little tricks to this? I just turned the power down to 1 in the app. I’ll see how that changes things.
by sprodoe
16 Comments
“Oh no lads, my supermodel girlfriend’s boobs are too big, what to do?”
Regarding the wand – I made [a post about the issue](https://www.reddit.com/r/espresso/s/IMPvHKVUvI) a few months ago with a little trick.
If you find the intensity of the steam is too much, you can lower it in the LM app.
The extra milk waste? You simply look at that as an increased operating expense that goes along with driving a Ferrari, it’s pennies. Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion you can afford it.
Now I’m jealous, still on bambino plus… on day I’ll get there 😉
Enjoy
Beautiful colour. I’ve been eyeing up the black one but this is making me reconsider.
The blue is cool. Still wild to me that this doesn’t even have a shot timer
I went from Silvia to Micra, first wasting a lot of milk but now I do 85ml Milk in a 250ml pitcher. Setting 1, about 1 second air, then deeper until too hot to touch plus 2 seconds. Total is about 7-10 seconds which is great.
At 85ml foam quality is ok, not amazing (tastes awesome though). For perfect foam I need 130-150ml in a 350ml pitcher on setting 1 or 2. I just hate wasting milk what you need to do for perfect foam.
Enjoy your new coffee life! This machine is a work of art
Are you US based? I’m looking to order one of these soon and was wondering what the turnaround time was and if you had to pay any extra import duties?
Beautiful color, if I purchase one eventually it’s definitely gonna be the blue.
Enjoy!
I found sometimes I’d like to do a yolo steaming with level 3 steam power… it almost instantly heat up the milk and easy to go over… (boiling the milk)…
Level 3 also bruteforce oat milk that is hard to foam evenly…
But, yup, my gf is still scratching her head how to tame the giga-steam-wand… it is a bit too powerful for home use. Not wanting to waste too much milk. Not that I cannot afford the milk, but I still feel guilty wasting food and also don’t want to drink it…
Most online tutorials contains 2 steps of bubbling and them foaming…. what I heard from my gf is that you can simply stick the wand into the picher, hold it still, turn it on, wait for it to feel burning to your hands, done. It is a bit tricky to stick enough into the milk… something like your steam wand can occasionally espose to the air when there is a vortex in the pitcher.
What sized pitcher are you using? How much milk are you trying to steam?
I have no problem steaming 6oz on my mini in a small pitcher at full steam power but I am not sure the wand is different.
Use the lowest steam setting you can, and buy a small pitcher. Even then, the milk will come up to temp way sooner than your old Silvia so you will have to get used to the new steaming wand and you need to start texturing the milk as fast as you can.
What mug is that OP?
It took me a few weeks to really get a feel for my steam wand as well.
I have a 4-hole tip on my Wendougee Data S, and it’s so powerful that there was a real learning curve to getting good milk. I started by turning the temperature down, but over the last 2-3 weeks I’ve increased it after getting a handle on how to steam properly.
If you can set the boiler temperature, I’d definitely recommend turning it down to start with.
I only steam about **200–220ml** of milk, so I don’t have to throw any out. If I get big bubbles because I’ve sucked in too much air, I’ve learned to move the wand down and then slightly toward the center to incorporate them into the milk.
This turns the vortex in to overdrive and it becomes incredibly strong, so I have to lower it quite a bit, to not suck up more air.
In the end, it’s really just about learning how to handle the power. It took me a few weeks, but now I get good milk almost every time.
Smaller pitcher. I also turn the picture around 180 degrees when steaming. Yes use the opposite side of the spout on the pitcher. This helps with reach in my experience with Micra for over 2.5 years.