Thursday, February 17, 2005


shake shake shake

a propos of yesterday's post on foaming milk in a jar, i tried it this morning.

i made up another cafetiére (you know, french press) of gillies organic sumatra tankengon gayo -- increasing my usual 55g. of coffee per liter to 65g. and reducing the time a tad -- then put 3 oz. of milk in a clean bon maman jar and shook it.

in about 30 seconds it had tripled in volume. all good -- except that the milk was covered in foam with huge soap-type bubbles, what pro baristi dismissively call "sea foam"! i took the lid off, popped the jar in the microwaved, and heated it on "high" for 30 seconds.

since i didn't want to overheat and scorch the milk, i stopped at 30 seconds, but of course depending on your microwave, you'll want to adjust. the sea-foam stayed stiff and sea-foamy as i spooned it onto the coffee.

and on the coffee it sat for about a minute before it melted away -- it just vanished, starting to fade at about 45 seconds on the coffee. maybe it needed to be heated longer?

in a pinch this method might work, but it's certainly no substitute for proper microfoam. long-time bccy pal bruce cole of sautewednesday wrote in with his take.

i wonder if it worked better for him? anyway, all of you weigh in dear readers, i'll recommend you that those of with a deep interest in the physics and organoleptics of milk foam run on over to morten münchow's site (and here, if you read danish).

morten is the danish expert on all things milk-n-coffee. he's going to do the ultimate milk foam study sometime this summer with the danish royal agricultural university.

until then. . .

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