Nunas wrote:Avoiding milk inhalation of the steam wand (with or without sugar) is easily avoided. Just don't leave the wand in the milk for any time after shutting down the steam.

After steaming milk, I give a quick burst of steam into a pitcher of water, prior to purging the wand into a towel or sponge. This helps dilute milk that gets sucked up into the wand. Like you, I've never had to clean the inside of a steam wand (although I do remove the tip annually for scrubbing).

I've been doing this ever since I had a machine that can froth even from a super-automatic machine. Reading about maple syrup sounds interesting and might try that if I ever buy maple syrup again but I feel like something like maple might dominate the taste of the coffee or show through too much.

I use Kirkland agave syrup and the container is pretty easy to control the flow as it is considerably vicious and comes out of a small hole. I just usually do 2-3 "pops" of syrup into the milk jug and froth away.

The agave doesn't show any taste of itself and found it to be a great sweetener for drinks. That and Monkfruit sweetener to be the closest to real sugar (I can't tolerate even trace amounts of Stevia, for example, I'll pick up on it instantly.)

I and everyone else prefers this way because the milk itself becomes sweet and you don't have to do any additional stirring since pouring the milk into the cup with the espresso shot mixes it already.

Never had issues of a clogged steam wand. Although, I'm struggling to keep the steam wand on the BES920XL clean compared to the steam wand on the CC1 when I had that.

Sometimes as a dessert type drink for the evening, I turned on the machine just to steam the milk with the Kodiak berry syrup to make a berry smoothie type drink. The microfoam gives it that nice texture of a smoothie-like consistency.

TomC wrote:I've toyed around with sugar and maple syrup, even simple syrup in the past. I'd have to continue working on some sort of micro-dosing though, because it always ends up too sweet, unbalanced and distracting. Maybe I'll start using drops off the back of a demitasse spoon or something. I tried last night to just add a tiny bit of Vermont maple syrup into the steaming pitcher and it still ended up too much and undrinkable.

By the statistics of this thread, being able to properly steam milk for its natural sweetness is an outlier.

Nunas wrote:Good point, I should have mentioned this. Avoiding milk inhalation of the steam wand (with or without sugar) is easily avoided. Just don't leave the wand in the milk for any time after shutting down the steam. With my Magister HX (knobs), I left the steam on a tiny bit (not enough to splash) while pulling the wand out of the jug. With joysticks such as on my Synchronika, If one removes the jug immediately upon shutting off the steam, the bit of residual pressure in the wand will continue to flow, thus preventing inhalation. Following this procedure I've never had to clean the inside of a steam wand.

Take a pitcher of boiling water and soak your wand then scrape the inside with a toothpick. Your technique could be cleaner but I doubt its perfect. Also, unscrew tip, unless its glued on with all that sugar and see.

crunchybean wrote:By the statistics of this thread, being able to properly steam milk for its natural sweetness is an outlier.


Take a pitcher of boiling water and soak your wand then scrape the inside with a toothpick. Your technique could be cleaner but I doubt its perfect. Also, unscrew tip, unless its glued on with all that sugar and see.

I find it funny that you equate someone wanting a sweeter drink with a lack of skill. Some, including myself someone's want our drink sweeter than milk is naturally. Thus we add sugar or something else to the drink to compensate.
I'm not even going to go into the silliness I go through to keep my machine clean.