Steaming milk with Rancilio Silvia V1 steam wand

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entropy4money
Posts: 84
Joined: 9 years ago

#1: Post by entropy4money »

Hi,

I upgraded my gaggia classic and I replaced the stock paranello with a single tip Rancilio Silvia V1 steam wand. I could steam milk and get decent microfoam with the paranello but it took effort and it was never "perfect". The single tip Rancilio Silvia V1 was suppossed to make things better but it made it worst... I get no foam at all, all it does is heat up the milk until it starts boiling... which destroys all the sugars.

It doesn't matter where I place the tip, how much milk I use, it will just heat it up and not steam it. Steam is coming out of the wand at a very very loud annoying noise. No matter where I place the tip I can't get the paper tearing sound, just an extremely high pitch loud noise. Could it be that the steam is coming out way too hot? or it isn't properly installed?

thank you

EspressoForge
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Joined: 16 years ago

#2: Post by EspressoForge »

entropy4money wrote:Could it be that the steam is coming out way too hot?
I would say unlikely, if anything it sounds like your steam pressure may not be high enough. This could have been compensated for with the smaller hole on your old tip as a guess. Steam tips need to be matched to the boiler size, you could slap a LM 4-hole steam tip on any machine, but most machines won't have the steam capacity to keep up with the size holes.
or it isn't properly installed?
When you open the steam-wand without milk there, does it look strong? Like before? Better? Worse?

My final advice if you think the new wand is good, but you just need to get used to increased power, would be to try steaming cold water with a single drop of dish soap in it. This gives you practice on getting the milk swirling correctly without worrying about messing something up, you can always dump and start over if you have fridge water or a pitcher in the fridge ready to go.

entropy4money (original poster)
Posts: 84
Joined: 9 years ago

#3: Post by entropy4money (original poster) »

Hi,

I'll start practicing with water. pressure seems strong enough. I think I am just not used to steaming with the new wand, and it seems to be less forgiving than the paranello. Basically, I am just getting hot milk swirling inside the pitcher.

emradguy
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Joined: 10 years ago

#4: Post by emradguy »

The panarello is designed to give foamy milk without any user skills. You're now using a real wand, so you need to learn how to do it. No shame in that. Focus on getting a vortex/swirl/whirlpool...whatever you want to call it. Once you can do that right after you open the valve, you can start working on controlling air balance. It may take pitcher tilting, and will definitely take patience and practice. For me, when I had that wand on a stock v1 Silvia, I found that tilting the pitcher about 30 degrees (bottom of pitcher pushed away from me towards the right) and keeping the tip just below the surface about 1cm (1/2") away from the wall towards the pitcher center was ideal. I'm sure other got results just as good with different angles.
LMWDP #748

entropy4money (original poster)
Posts: 84
Joined: 9 years ago

#5: Post by entropy4money (original poster) replying to emradguy »

Yeap. Lack of practice was the problem. I am doing much better now.

Thanks!!!

ajf
Posts: 63
Joined: 10 years ago

#6: Post by ajf »

The thing that I found made the biggest improvement to my milk steaming, was switching from reduced fat milk to organic whole milk. I tried reduced fat organic milks, and non organic whole milks. Neither of them was as good as organic whole milk. I also tried several different varieties of organic whole milk, and they all worked as well as each other.
Actually, the thing that really made the biggest improvement was about 9 months of practice.

Alan

entropy4money (original poster)
Posts: 84
Joined: 9 years ago

#7: Post by entropy4money (original poster) »

Wanna hear something funny?

So I tend to get my milk raw from a small family farm on Monday mornings, and I leave it at work in a fridge and take it home at the end of the day. It happens that a co-worker gets goat milk on a similar container and left it in the fridge I left my milk. The day I got my Rancilio silvia steam wand, I took her milk instead of mine by mistake and didn't know it until yesterday she told me she lost her goat milk.

So I was trying to steam goat milk this whole time!!! and it was very challenging. Now I have actual cow's milk, and I get very nice microfoam :).