After a single hands-on session with a professional ex-barista (Ben @ La Marzocco), I identified all of the mistakes I was making and went home that afternoon and steamed the best milk I've ever steamed on the same machines I had written off as inferior and underpowered.

Care to share any of what you learned? As I said, I did get some training from a pro, but it was with a big powerful machine and all 5 students got great microfoam easily.

Sure.. here were my discoveries that day:

Mistake #1: Temperature. I was following the "steam until your hand can't hold the pitcher" rule. My tolerance for pain turns out to be very high because I was steaming milk way too hot. This caused me to steam past the optimal microfoam texture.

Mistake #2: Too much air. I focused too much on stretching, when in fact most of my time should have been spent texturing and heating. Stretching can be done with gradually or instantaneously. It's merely the quantity of air you've injected into the milk. My method is to simply inject air within the first few seconds, and then lower the tip to let the steam heat and break up the bubbles into microfoam.

Mistake #3: Move around too much. With trial and error you need to find the approximate location where the milk will roll once the tip is submerged. Once you have that position, start right above it. Then all you need to do is lower the pitcher right after you stretch. This removes the guess work because any time spent trying to find the position is time wasted on texturing. Texturing only occurs when the milk is rolling, so the more time it is rolling, the finer your microfoam will be.

Anyway, here is a demo of this on my LM Linea Mini. And here a video of the same exact technique on my Cremina 67. Keep in mind these demonstrations are by no means perfect as it is much more difficult to steam a single quantity of milk than it is to steam larger amounts.

Do you find the post-steaming milk swirling to be important? I wasn't doing much of it and was mainly focusing on the stretching and texturizing. However, I never had pours like Dritan where I could pause, restart, and push the previous microfoam with the next mini-pour. Today I did a bunch of pitcher spinning after steaming and it seemed to make a difference. Still far from perfect, but it was my first time having a shot at a tulip rather than more contiguous forms like the rosetta and heart.

To the OP, the comments on boiler size and wand tips are spot on. For specifics, I've found my Profitec Pro 700 to be really good with steaming (2.5L steam boiler). The LMLM is even better. But I still think the user is the bigger factor. I'm sure I could make same crappy microfoam if I had an LMLM .

I agree with Scotty on size once one gets above a La Pavoni. My Pavoni struggles and that's the nicest way to state it but it also has a tiny boiler and a 800watt element.

My Cremina steams like crazy as does my Salvatore Famosa Sienna which is based of a Maximatic. Both of which have larger boilers and I think 1000watt elements.

And Scotty if you are ever in Colorado and want to give a tutorial let me know

Very nice. I'm making mistakes 1, 2 and 3. As a Cremina owner (and Maximatic and commercial machine), I think a La Pavoni should work well too. I'll test it and will post here.