A quick fix to play around with is using the tip of a toothpick to close one of the holes in the 3-hole-tip. This creates a lot more spin and thus better foam. I was so happy with the effect of this that I permanently closed the rear hole with some solder.

That said, I had a Pro, the larger tank version.. the Europiccola is definitely gonna be a bit trickier due to smaller boiler volume but I'm convinced it can be done if you go with a small pitcher (I used a motta 0,25l which is about 8oz I think), steam the milk individually for each drink and don't aim at drinking your lattes from buckets like people sometimes do.

Thanks everyone for all your helpful comments and videos.

Blocking two of the holes with paper clips has led to some very good results - though the protruding tips don't make it easy to wipe clean!

Once I get the milk sussed I can see from this forum that I'll be obsessing about tamping pressure, naked portafilters and bean grinders. Sounds like fun..

Steve

I guess it should be said, when steaming with the 3 hole tip with all holes open, you have to place the tip dead centre and pretty much straight down.

Dear All,

After a few months of trial and error I can finally report some good results (see pic). Thank you everyone for all advice. I will share my experience in case helpful to anyone else out there struggling to get to latte art heaven.

I've been carefully watching baristas every time I buy coffee, but have concluded that what they do and what I have to do is not that comparable because of the amount of steam that comes out of an industrial machine.

I have a pre-millennium La Pavoni with a fixed steam wand. I replaced the stock 3-hole nozzle with a single hole one, kindly supplied by brooklynshot. A tiny strip of PTFE tape helped to seal the joint, which was leaking steam and affecting the milk frothing slightly. (As well as being unhygienic since old milk was building up at the joint. I'm sure the use of wooden toothpicks to block holes has to be a bad idea for the same reason!)

I've been very close for a long time, but have found the milk is not quite evenly textured, meaning that I get a blob of dense stuff at the beginning of the pour, and some lovely white dense stuff at the end, but somewhere in the middle, although the milk looks good, (definitely not 'thin', i.e just hot milk) it doesn't do what everyone else's seems to in the youtube videos! Very frustrating and couldn't work out where I was going wrong. Now I have.

I've generally followed the advice of a lot of people who have come before and some things that do seem to help are:
- You need to have good crema on your shot. Letting it stand for too long before you pour isn't good, so you need to be ready to go as soon as your shot is pulled. (Fresher the coffee and firmer/ more even the tamp seem to be the biggest factors here).
- Pre-chilling pitcher and milk in freezer while machine is warming up is a good idea
- Fresh milk is important - even if it tastes fine, if it's a week old it's not going to work.
- Full fat milk is definitely easier.
- Having a pitcher small enough and the right shape is going to help. (My machine just can't generate enough oomph of steam to really get a large pitcher mixing properly).
- Opening the steam valve while the head is below the surface is crucial. Otherwise you get instant froth that you have to work to break down. Similarly not having the nozzle too high at the milk surface is important. You just want that 'tschk tschk' intermittent noise, as widely documented.
- Even though my steam wand is fixed on my machine, the angle can be adjusted, so I have made it more vertical (though this makes it harder to get the pitcher in and out without spillage!)

The two things that have pushed me over the top however, are these:
- I now realise that all along I was getting *too much air* into the milk. Less is more. I was always thinking that I needed to see that there was foam during the stretching phase so that I could mix it in in the texturising. I think this is wrong. At the point where I stop stretching now (~80 degrees F), the milk looks pretty much like it's straight from the fridge. It's during the texturising that the colour and the consistency change.
- The biggest thing I was doing wrong was *not mixing aggressively enough* in the texturising phase. If 90% of the milk is churning round nicely but 10% is sitting out of the vortex at the surface, then that stuff is not going to end up the same consistency. That was the slightly denser froth that was blobbing out at the start and the end of my pour. Machines like mine have a small boiler. Size is important and you need to make the most out of what you have. So the trick is to find the right position and angle of the nozzle *for your pitcher and fill level* so that the whole thing is turbulent. I haven't got one, but I think a pitcher with a bell shaped bottom, or inward sloping sides probably helps too.
By finishing stretching earlier, I now also have more time to texturise (before the thermometer hits the red zone) so I think this is helping as well.

Now I just need to work on my pour. I followed advice and got myself a small, shallow cup which seems good to learn on.

So anyway, finally I can be sure that the machine is not the problem, it was me all along. I hope the above proves helpful to someone.

Steve