Thanks for the tip on keeping the steam going BrewHaHa

Hopefully I can make 2 chai lattes at once now

Appa

On my Espresso, I've steamed a 20oz pitcher to the point where it was overflowing without the light going on. I purge as soon as I flip the switch, until it starts sputtering, get the milk and pitcher out of the fridge and pour the milk, run back to the machine, and purge for 5-10 sec. close the valve count to 5 and then start steaming. The "ready" light only goes on if I am too slow at the fridge, like I was this morning, but as long as I do the final purging with more than 5 seconds till the light should go on, it ends up being fine.

I did try the pump flick method a few times a while back, but to no avail, on my machine the steam just got wet and lost power.

Hi,

if you have the abilities, tools and materials, you can always scratchbuild your own wand:)

Here's the one I made from an aluminium pipe and a domed M6 nut.



The only special tool needed here is a thread maker to add the nut on the end of the wand. You can bend it on a glass bottle into any shape, but remember to fill it with sand to get nice bends. The cool thing is that you can make your own tip, so you decide how big the hole is, or how many holes to use.

Or you can always try fitting a Silvia wand, it also works great.

Cheers,
dsc.

dsc wrote:The only special tool needed here is a thread maker to add the nut on the end of the wand. ... The cool thing is that you can make your own tip, so you decide how big the hole is, or how many holes to use.

Hi Tom

It's just a few days ago that I also got a thread maker and some M6 nuts. But I put them on my original steam wand (just bended like you once suggested). At the moment I've 1 hole of 2mm diameter in my nut; it works quite good - but I wonder what number, sizes and positions of the wholes you found useful/ best; IIRC you've experimented quite a bit with this, right?

have nice cup

marco

G'day Marco,

I tried a couple of variations and found out that one 1.5mm hole works best for me. I tried working with a 2.5mm hole and it was too big, also tried a two hole tip but found it harder to froth than with a single hole. I think that a 1.5mm-2.0mm hole is optimal, anything bigger makes the boiler go empty in no time. Anything smaller makes frothing a bit too long. I also found out that the inner shape of the nut makes a difference, so I drilled the inner side of mine with a 5mm drill to change the shape a bit.

Cheers,
dsc.