You receive many good tip from previous post. My best advice is to practice with cold water and few drops of soap untill you manage the stretching and heating phase properly. With more power, the first phase is really quick and require adaptation.
Stem wand at max angle, tip 3/4in 1/3 from the side to middle and you should see the swirl and ear air succion from the start. Enjoy your new setup and the learning that comes with it

I just wanted provide some update on my progress. I am starting to get somewhat nice milk (see picture). I can get that milk with a really small pitcher (about 10 oz, so I guess I am using 4-6 oz of milk). However, there is no way with the big pitcher. To get some volume, I have to go up to about 130°F, if I want the milk to integrate and start at around 100, there is not enough microfoam and I can not do anything with it.

With the small pitcher, the whole steaming time is about 6-8 seconds, but I do notice I get a lot more rotation.

PS: It is not the best rosetta in the world, but that's a huge 16 oz cup!

Thank you everyone again for your inputs!

Looks like you are progressing well! I would second the earlier suggestion about lowering your boiler pressure. I've got mine where it fluctuates between 0.9 and 1.0 bar and it made a world of difference for micro foaming from the factory setting od 1.1 bar.

The earlier post about over stretching is spot on.

When dealing with larger volumes in larger pitchers I find steam tip placement to be more critical. You might try getting closer to a 45 degree angle, with the tip closer to the wall of the pitcher to get it pushing around. I am probably over exaggerating on 45 degrees, but stream wand straight down in the middle of a large pitcher, on my equipment, is the opposite placement, and doesn't work as well.

Small pitchers (20oz or less) swirl from any angle, although some tip angling/placement helps here too.

And, there is more lag time with larger volumes. You may not see the swirl for 45 seconds or so with a given placement of tip/angle on home equipment. So being patient helps.

jwCrema wrote:You might try getting closer to a 45 degree angle, with the tip closer to the wall of the pitcher to get it pushing around. I am probably over exaggerating on 45 degrees, but stream wand straight down in the middle of a large pitcher, on my equipment, is the opposite placement, and doesn't work as well.

After multiple machines over the years, I figured out that the angle of the holes (relative to the axis of the steam wand) varies from model to model and helps find the best angle of the wand to the milk for ideal microfoam. Open the steam valve with the wand perfectly vertical and you can easily see this angle. The closer the steam jets are to horizontal, the less you want to angle the wand relative to the milk's surface. Too horizontal a jet will blow across the surface more than into it, creating the larger bubbles we don't want but not creating enough cavitation to feed air into the steam stream.

The stronger the steam jet, the further below the actual surface you can place the bottom of the tip and still get cavitation for good air injection. Big, powerful machines seem much less sensitive to wand placement and angulation than less powerful ones, in my experience. I've never owned a pro machine, and I'm sure it's not this simple - but it almost seems from watching as though you could just shove the steam wand on a big pro machine into the center of the milk and get great microfoam without even surfing the tip during stretching. And even my little Oscar's 4 hole tip gets the milk rolling very well while stretching. The only reason to submerge the tip is to stop aeration before the foam's too thick.

I had difficulties in the past due to being "cheap" with how much milk I would use. I use a small pitcher and would fill it up about 1/4, which would make the milk heat up way before good microfoam could form which in turn resulted in me steaming the milk too long and scalding it.

I'm still getting the hang of it, but as others have stated, cold milk, and a cold pitcher of a size relative to the amount you're steaming. A thermometer can help, but I use the tried and true method of killing the steam when the pitcher starts to approach burning your hand (one hand on the handle, the other on the side/bottom).

Also the wand should never be outside the milk when steam is coming out (as in don't open the steam valve then stick it in, also don't take the steam tip out of the milk while there's steam coming out. Usually you only make that mistake once).