Tale of two steam tips for the La Pavoni

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Dev
Posts: 248
Joined: 9 years ago

#1: Post by Dev »

My espresso making experience with the La Pavoni has been exceptional but my milk frothing abilities has been subpar with the one hole steam tip. The foaming has improved when a turned up the pressure to .9 bar but no matter what I did the milk was not able to move strong enough to texturize.

I have produced latte quality art from my Gaggia Baby Class with the Rancilio wand in the past so my technique was not the problem. I came across a persons advertisement on EBay who custom makes high quality one hole steam tips for the La Pavoni and the advertiser mentioned that the tips are counter sunk so the back end meets as flush as possible to prevent creating a vortex or wake that disrupts the flow of milk when it spins back on to it's self. I thought I would give it a try and it works, actually it works too good and if I'm not carful it will spin the milk out of the pitcher.
Here is the new tip next to the old one.


Here is the old tip. Notice that the back end is not tapered and as a result it creates a turbulent flow.

Here is the new tip, notice that the end of the tip sits flush.


My first attempt has produced good latte art quality milk. I think it's all operator now to make it better by technique but certainly it was the old tip that was holding me back. I hope this discovery helps someone that is as frustrated as I was.