Everytime I make my Cappuccino/CaffeLatte by the time it gets served its only lukewarm

I make the espresso, then heat the milk and pour. Now the milk is very foamy so it does not retain heat well.

I keep heated glasses but while they wait for the milk to get done on the counter by the time it gets served they are at best lukewarm

We like em hot ?

Any suggestions from the famous Peanut Gallery please ??

Thicker cups retain heat. Also, on your machine you have a hot water dispenser, fill the cup with hot water and leave the water in it until you are ready to steam.

It sounds like you are pouring the milk and then serving the drink almost right away. If this is what you are doing and the drinks are just lukewarm, it sounds like you are not heating the milk enough. Do you use a thermometer or just go by feel? Perhaps if you are just going by feel try using a thermometer a couple of times for a reference.


Gus

misterdoggy wrote:I make the espresso, then heat the milk and pour. Now the milk is very foamy so it does not retain heat well.

I keep heated glasses but while they wait for the milk to get done on the counter by the time it gets served they are at best lukewarm

Basically, the idea is to maximize the temperature of the components and minimize heat loss. So milk needs to be hotter and the cup should not be so cool it draws heat from the milk.

Here is what I do:
1. I keep all the cups heated on top of the machine.
2. Before I start I fill a latte/cappuccino cup with boiling water from the hot water tap.
3. I extract my espresso into a separate espresso cup.
4. I steam my milk, plunging the wand into the milk at the end so I heat the milk up a bit more without making more foam than I want.
5. I dump the water out of the latte cup and pour the espresso and then the steamed milk right away.
6. It's hot.

Dear ?'er:

I found that the steaming pitcher, once filled is ideal; I just steam, put the hot pitcher on top of the machine, boiler underneath conducts through steel lid to steel pitcher.

Pull the shot - dump that directly into the Stainless Steel pitcher and drink right from it.

Instant; easy washup and go...no cups no mess.

For what it's worth.

While I am drinking and cleaning up, I place the pitcher with the combined milk and espresso on top of the machine while it's off - disconnected from AC; it keeps it plenty hot due to the conduction of heat from boiler below to the Stainless Steel Frothing Pitcher.

Walla.

John

Thanks Guys for all the ideas

The "variable" that I did not mention is that I live in the French Alpes and the kitchen in the morning is pretty cool, so its a fight to keep things warm.

This morning was successful because I took some of those ideas and combined them.

1. I preheated the Cups with hot water and let them rest until ready to use (the vibiemme does not do as good a job heating on the top shelf as other machines I've owned ie: Oscar and Racilio S1

2. Heat the milk max hot - less foam as foam tends to cool off very very quickly - but good "body" to the milk

3. Pour and deliver Quick

My only correction I need to work on now is the shot starts looking watery around the 20 second mark

I have to sneak around cause if my wife saw me practising on more coffee shots I will be sent off to the sanitarium for Coffeeaholics

Altitude is a killer. Some of your problems may be stemming from that, if you're fairly high in the Alps. If that's the case, there's a guy in the Rockies that may be able to help, Tal, at Espresso Smith.

Altitude is a killer. I use to live in Colorado. You had to compensate for altitude on everything, and I was only at 5K feet which is quite low in the rocky mountains.

I pull my cooling flush into my cup, prep my portafilter, do the final flush into the cup and then dump out the water and pull the shot into the cup. Steaming only takes 15 seconds so I do that while the shot is pulling.