I'm not a big milk drink fan, but have been making the occasional latte with my new Silvia.

Almost every time I attempt to steam the milk, it takes two tries. On the first try, using the procedure below, the milk gets hot but doesn't really foam and comes out way too thin. If I try exactly the same procedure again, I get perfect microfoam (well, sometimes it comes out a little too thick, but I can deal with that.)

Here's what I'm doing:

1. Turn on steam switch.
2. Wait until heater lamp goes out (PID says temp is about 275-285 F).
3. Purge water from steam wand. There's usually a fair amount of water in there.
4. Pour cold milk into pitcher.
5. Plunge wand into milk, open steam knob.
6. Raise wand until tip is about 1 cm below surface.
7. Position wand at edge of pitcher so milk swirls.
8. When milk temp reaches about 80-100F, push wand down so tip is in middle of milk.
9. When milk reaches 140 degrees, close steam knob and remove wand.

If I do this once, I get thin milk. If I do it again right away, I get great microfoam. During the first attempt, the milk temperature rises very quickly and it seems like the milk is getting too hot before foaming takes place. Could it be that the steam temperature is too high immediately after the heater lamp goes out? Do I need to let the steam run a little bit too cool it down? Or, could there still be a lot of water in the wand and I need to purge longer? Is this a common trait of Silvia's?

It sounds like you're not paying proper attention to the heating element cycle.

Search for 'Steaming Performance' in my review or Google steaming milk rancilio silvia for videos/how-tos from many authors and sources. There's also other misc. hints and tips in the FAQs and Favorites, search for 'Rancilio Silvia and Rocky'.

HB wrote:It sounds like you're not paying proper attention to the heating element cycle.

Search for 'Steaming Performance' in my review or Google steaming milk rancilio silvia for videos/how-tos from many authors and sources. There's also other misc. hints and tips in the FAQs and Favorites, search for 'Rancilio Silvia and Rocky'.

Right you are, Dan. I had read the tip about keeping the heating element light on at all times while steaming, but wasn't doing it consistently. Also found a useful tip that I should be able to hear the water boiling. I can see it's a little more complicated, but your profiling steps should help me get the pattern down. Had a decent froth this morning, though there's room for improvement.

This may belong in another thread, but I followed the links you recommended and found several threads about Silvia that I hadn't read. Perhaps the most important tip I discovered was to open the steam valve to release boiler pressure before the shot and cracking it for a few seconds at the start of the shot to manually preinfuse. I tried these steps this morning and, lo and behold, the blonding point is taking longer to appear, so my double shot volume and time are now comfortably in the range of the golden rule. More important, the shots taste a lot better. I think this might be the most useful thing I've learned about Silvia besides the need for a PID.

I also found lots of posts indicating that Silvia doesn't respond well to overdosing. I had been heading down the ~14g path anyway, but it was good to see corroboration on Silvia's dosing preferences. I'm getting a real sense of how head space impacts the shot and why the LM ridgeless basket works better than the stock double and the triple that came with my bottomless PF.

Along the same lines, I also found and read cannonfodder's Dialing in a new espresso machine, a step by step guide. It was incredibly helpful to my understanding of how to determine the dose for a given coffee and machine. I hadn't been paying enough attention to the condition of the puck after the pour, and how it can vary with the dose. I applied the techniques this morning while dialing in a new coffee, and was able to quickly find the best dose (or range of doses) and move on to dialing in the grind. There's some fine tuning I can do with both of these parameters, but I felt cannonfodder's procedure got me into the ballpark faster and more definitively than my previous attempts at dosing. The final arbiter of dose is taste, of course, but I think a more mechanical approach is in order given Miss Silvia's sensitivity to head space.

I don't know how I missed these threads. I've certainly read a ton here and elsewhere on espresso preparation and Silvia's quirks. One of the problems I have with this endeavor is that there's just a mountain of information to sort through. The How-Tos help a lot, but it seems to me there needs to be an article dedicated to helping newbies with Silvia (I may volunteer to write one after I've lived with her for a while. I think there are a handful of critical steps that need to be followed to avoid frustration with the Harsh Mistress of Espresso. Also, I think cannonfodder's dose dialing technique should be in the How-Tos. I really didn't know how to approach that problem before reading his thread.