Is your milk coffee too cold? Here’s why

After a long and frustrating research and hours of deciding whether an automatic milk system is what you really need in a coffee machine, a Coffee Mate steps in and helps you choose the right one. Your machine arrives, you unpack the box, set it up, press the button for your favourite milky coffee and can almost feel the flaming hot latte macchiato warming you all up. As soon as you take the first sip, a disappointing thought pops into your mind – well this is not straight-from-hell-boiling-hot enough! This is a very common scenario, but I’m here to explain why there’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s all in the milk

Not only there’s nothing wrong with that, in fact, it’s quite the opposite – your coffee should never be that hot. Good coffee, at least ? If milk exceeds boiling temperature, its’ velvety texture and composition get destroyed – the foam just cannot form. The approximate temperature of milk-based espresso drinks should be around 65 degrees Celsius – it’s hot enough to support espresso crema as well as cool enough to preserve the texture of milk. If milk exceeds this temperature point, you will be left enjoying coffee with milk instead of a velvety, fluffy, cloud-like cappuccino. One more thing to the list – milk tends to reveal sweetness in lower temperatures. That’s why any milk-based espresso drink, when properly prepared, has a naturally sweet flavour. Unfortunately, the closer you get to the boiling temperature, the more of this flavour is lost.

How can you make it hot?

I’m not going to leave you empty handed here, there are some ways to get it closer to that ‘hot hot hot’ scale:

• Make sure you have the proportions right. Normal coffee-to-milk ratio is 1:2, which means that if you have it wrong (for instance – program too much milk in your latte macchiato), no wonder the drink turns out only lukewarm. The right proportions=the right temperature.
• Warm up the cup. One of the basic steps before preparing any beverage is to prewarm the cup. You can either place the cup on the cup warmer (available in some of the machines) or pour some hot water into the cup and let it sit for a while, warming itself to the right temperature. In case you are wondering if there is any difference in cups itself, well yes there is! The thicker the wall, the warmer the drink. If you are dealing with lukewarm drinks, you must check out Loveramics cups.

Why is it hotter in a café?

Bear in mind that milk-based espresso drinks prepared at home by your bean to cup coffee machine are meant to be enjoyed quite quickly. Don’t expect it to sit for hours, staying boiling hot as some of the cafés tend to serve it – that is just not possible at home, as for comparison professional coffee machines have several stronger, larger capacity boilers. And the barista has nothing to do with it, in the end, we both know that you are just as good, right? 

As we have already established, overheated drinks do not reveal coffee bean qualities nor milk silkiness, and realizing this will get you one step closer to becoming a coffee expert. Don’t worry, it took me a while to perceive it too. If you are ever in doubt, Coffee Mates are here to help you start the journey of mysterious coffee world or change the way you see it. All of that and more by introducing you to some of the best in the field coffee machines.