My name is Mike Jones, and I'm a barista at
Third Rail Coffee right by Washington Square
Park in New York City.
I'm going to teach you some basic coffee-making
skills.
Alright, I'm going to show you how to steam
milk with an espresso machine.
The wonderful thing about espresso is that
besides just a straight shot and an Americano,
there's a multitude of milk drinks you can
make.
But first you have to know how to steam it
right, which is a little bit tricky.
So this is the steam wand, and this turns
it on.
Some machines will have a button that you
push, or a level that you pull, this one is
a knob that rotates.
You want to start out with high quality whole
milk that's cold as well as a pitcher that's
also cold.
So we have that in there.
Now there's a few motions that you're going
to want to go through when doing this.
The first is to submerge the tip of the steam
wand just below the surface of the milk.
Start off with the pitcher straight up, and
then angle it, this way when you turn it on
you'll create a whirlpool.
The first thing you do when you turn it on
is let a little bit of air in, but you only
want to do this for a few seconds, otherwise
you'll end up scorching the milk.
Once you've let the air in, you sink the tip
of the wand in and just let it whirlpool until
it gets to the correct temperature.
So now I'm going to steam this and show you
how it should look.
The first thing you always want to do is purge.
There can be buildup of milk or water in the
tip and you don't want that going into the
milk.
Alright, so again, I'm just going to let some
air in.
It's going to make a slight hissing sound,
and then I'm going to make a whirlpool.
Then again, always purge afterwards to get
that milk out of there.
So once you've steamed it, you can give it
a couple knocks.
You'll see that there's just a few bubbles
in there.
And then swirl it around to incorporate all
that foam you just made.
You'll see it's nice and glossy.
This is called micro foam.
If you see too many spidery bubbles, that
means that you've either let too much air
in, or not enough.
Alright, that's perfect.
And that's how you steam milk.
