How to froth milk for latte art with a French press

Have you ever gone to a nice coffee shop and they serve you a cup of coffee with incredible draws on it? That is made by latte art.

Heating and texturizing your milk correctly is the first and fundamental step to creating an incredible latte art. In coffee shops they have special machines and trained staff to do it, but there is a way to do it at home and get some good results.

In this article I will show you how you can froth your milk with a French press, so you can start to try your first latte art at home. Also, we will see the differences between frothed and steamed milk, and which milk is the best one for this process.

Article index:

Frothed vs steamed milk

Milks you can froth

How to froth milk with a French press

Step by step

Final thoughts

Frothed vs steamed milk

Although they are usually used as synonyms, there are some differences between frothed milk and steamed milk.

Both of them pursue the same goal: texturize milk to prepare some specific drinks. A short way to explain their differences is that steamed milk is a more professional way to prepare your milk to do latte art. Frothed milk is a more homemade way to prepare your milk for your drinks.

Steamed milk is what baristas make with a professional machine. In this process they add hot water steam to the milk, creating a fine and precise foam which is perfect for latte art. Mastering this process is very hard, and can take several hours of practice to do it, without counting the extra hours of practice you can need to create a nice latte art.

Frothed milk, the homemade way to do steamed milk, consists in using any tool you have to froth your milk, to imitate the results of textured milk for latte art. It is a cheaper and easy way to prepare your milk, and you can do it with many tools. In this article we will learn how to do it with a French press.

Milks you can froth

You can froth or steam any milk. Whole, 2%, soy, almond, 1%, etcetera. Any milck can be froth but some of them will give you better results than the others. Whole milk and 2% are the better ones. This is because the high amount of fats and proteins creates a creamier texture and a thicker foam.

You can also use these milks either hot or cold, but the first option is by far the best one. In hot milk, protein molecules unfold and increase their ability to trap air, resulting in a creamier milk. If you are willing to do a cold drink, you can froth cold milk but do not expect as good results as with hot milk.

How to froth milk with a French press

In Coffee Devotion we have a post in which we talk about the benefits of the French press, and one of them was the versatility it has. One of the aspects that we were talking about is the ability to froth milk for latte art.

As we mentioned before while describing the differences between frothed and steam milk, French press will never give you such a good result as a professional milk steamer machine, but results are very good and you can make them with almost non equipment.

Frothing milk with your French press will give you the opportunity of texturing milk to create drinks that can imitate the ones you can get in great coffee shops. This is an excellent way to start dabbling in the world of textured milk, so you can know if it is worth it to buy a special machine or not.

Step by step

1. Prepare the equipment: you will only need a crencha press, your favorite milk and a way to heat it up.
2. Heating the milk: the optimal temperature for frothing milk is around 150 ° F or 65 ° C. You can heat a cup of milk in the microwave at max for 40 seconds and you will be near this temperature. If you want a more precise method, a cooking pot on the stove with a thermometer will be the best option.
3. First air injection: put the hot milk inside the French press jar and put the lid on. In this step you want to add a big amount of air into the milk. For this, raise the mesh filter over the level of the milk and rapidly push it to the bottom. Repeat it 5 times. After that, your milk will have a good amount of air inside and now you have to texturize it correctly. It is important to avoid overloading the milk with air.
4. Achieving the perfect texture: now that we have the correct amount of air we need to find the perfect texture for the milk. For this we will do short moves with the  mesh filter but never overpass the level of the milk, because we don't want new air on it. Move the mesh filter with short and fast moves inside the milk for 20 seconds. You will know that the process is done when the milk has doubled its volume in comparison with the regular milk that you started with.
5. Hit and serve: gently hit your French press with your hand so you can break any big bubble of milk. Your frothed milk is ready to be used in your coffee.
   

Final thoughts

Without a doubt the French press is an excellent machine to brew coffee but also it can be used for other things, just like to froth milk.

This is a very good way to start texturizing your milk at home before buying any fancy machine. For sure a milk steamer will do a better job than a French press, but I invite you to try this method before and then if you love texturizing milk and you want to spend some more money on it, go ahead and buy a milk steamer.