Are you having trouble making your milk foam for your coffee? It's not as easy as you might think, and some people say skimmed milk is easier to foam than full-fat milk. But it's not just about the type of milk you use; it's also about how fresh it is and how you store it.
The Sound Test
One way to check if your milk is good for foaming is by listening to it. Here's what you can do:
- Start foaming your milk as usual.
- Get your ear close to the container (we call it a pitcher) where you're foaming the milk.
- Listen carefully.
What to Listen For
- If your milk sounds like a fizzy soda, that's a sign it might not work well for making foam. Each pop you hear means a bubble in your milk foam is bursting, and that's not what you want.
- But if you're using high-quality milk, you'll hear just a few soft pops. As you keep swirling the milk, you might hear a bit more, but it should generally be quiet.
Why Does This Happen?
The difference in the sound of your milk foam is because of something called glycerol. Glycerol is a part of the fat in milk, making up about 4% of whole milk, but skimmed milk has almost none. When your milk is fresh, glycerol sticks to the fat and doesn't cause a problem. But sometimes, it gets free. Free glycerol messes up the foaming process by bursting the bubbles too soon. Full-fat milk is more affected by this than skimmed milk. But don't worry, if your milk is fresh, this problem doesn't usually show up in either type.
Storage Matters
One reason for milk foam trouble is how you store the milk. Milk doesn't like light and heat, so if your milk comes in a clear glass bottle that sat in the sun for a while, it might not work well for foaming. The same issue can happen in some cafes that keep their milk in glass pitchers in glass-fronted fridges. To keep your milk good for foaming, store it in a dark, cool place. Interestingly, long-life fresh milks come in more opaque packaging than many standard milk products.
Milk in supermarkets usually has a shelf life of no more than 10 days, and the foam quality can drop significantly in the last three to four days, even though it still tastes fine with cereal. So, it's tough to say definitively that one dairy is better or worse than another.
Special Cappuccino Milks
Lately, you might have seen "Cappuccino Milks" in stores. These milks sometimes have extra protein, even though milk already has plenty. In some unusual cases, they remove half the fat and add thickeners and stabilizers to make it thicker like full-fat milk. These milks are often ultra-high temperature processed, which not everyone likes. When we look at the milk's protein content, it's about 3% of its weight, but only about 25% of this is the type of protein we want for coffee.
When choosing milk for cappuccinos, we usually want it to taste good, be sweet, and have a creamy texture in its natural form. But oddly, we don't always expect the same quality from milk suppliers as we do from our coffee suppliers. Even though a cappuccino is mostly milk, we often think "milk is milk." To see the difference, you can buy five different milk brands and try steaming them. This way, you can check how they perform and taste for yourself.
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