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Steaming Milk with Breville Cafe Roma - 2008/02/23 06:34I am completely new to espresso machines, bought a Breville Cafe Roma yesterday on a friends recommendation. I prefer capuccino to espresso so milk steaming & frothing will be important to me from a machine.
Should I be getting water out of the steam wand?
When i set it to steam, the "Heating" Light immedieatly goes on and stays on telling me that the thermoblock must be being powered to get hot enough to produce steam. Is the "Heating" Light supposed to be always on when steaming? Also as soon as I set it to steam, the pump turns on and stays on. (I think its the pump, its a dull thud every second or so, like a vibration pump I think)
Anyhow, in the 1st 20 seconds of steaming a bit of water pours out and in that period 7.5ml of water is produced. This seems like a lot. I would think introducing water to the milk is not good.
If I let it steam for a while (1 minute), then stop it, replace the pitcher with an empty on, turn it back on and steam again for 1 minute I get another 17ml in that minute. Again seems like a lot since steaming/frothing milk takes a while and there isn't that much milk there in the first place.
I am out of milk now so I can't experiment But I get the feeling even as I start to learn to get a better consistency in the milk, it will be difficult because of the water that the steam wand produces.
Is the water in the milk bad and if so is it unavoidable with this machine? Do I need a boiler machine for decent steaming? I can still return my Roma.
Thanks,
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colin
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Re:Steaming Milk with Breville Cafe Roma - 2008/02/24 12:06We steer people away from any machine that has a thermoblock. And yes, you should hear some pump action when a thermoblock is working. Sadly, what you describe is generally how a thermoblock steams milk; not well.
Here at the coffeecrew website, we think the strangest thing to hit the marketplace are these machines with thermoblock boilers. It is old school. It did not work then and it does not work now. Obviously, the accountants at Breville wanted to save a couple of dollars and opted for the t-block as opposed to a real boiler. In short, a thermoblock boiler is a lot like your car radiator -- a long coil of fine copper or steel tubing wrapped around a heat source OR it could also by a piece of cast metal (mystery metal) with a labyrinth water path through it -- again heated by an external source. Thermoblocks are generally manufactured with the cheapest materials available, meant to heat small amounts of water quickly - and yes, your steam is always infused with water.
Here is an excellent article on thermoblocks from one of Australia's best coffee experts.
Our adage: No one who loves espresso coffee would let their water or coffee come in contact with one of these budget nightmares!Colin is the Senior editor and creator of the CoffeeCrew.Com Website
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