Episode: 338
Title: HPR0338: cappuccino
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0338/hpr0338.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 16:41:24

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Is this possible?
Yes.
Hi everyone, welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
My name is Klaatu and today I'm going to talk about how to make the perfect cappuccino.
This is my second episode on coffee and the first one was about roasting beans and things
like that.
I'm taking it a step further and we're actually going to make a really, really good cappuccino.
So first of all, there are a couple of things that you're going to need before we get started.
One is going to be a cappuccino maker.
So briefly on how to find a good cappuccino maker.
Go to your local department store and look in the coffee department, the appliances, look
around the cappuccino maker.
Things to look out for are number one is simplicity.
Simple is good.
It does not that complex to make a cappuccino.
You just need something to produce steam and some way to get that steam through ground
coffee or into a cup of milk so that you can then steam the milk.
If you are getting, if the cappuccino maker has much more than that and you're probably
getting something that is overly complex and probably overpriced, so just watch out for
that.
It doesn't need to be this huge monstrous beast.
It can be a fairly small thing, like I say, it just needs those two components and it's
pretty much good to go.
I have one that was given to me.
It happens to be a mystic coffee, so it's nothing fancy and it's pretty good for what
it is.
It was probably pretty cheap, I imagine.
There are a couple of downsides to it, so these are things to look out for.
When you're steaming milk, I like to have a lot of control over the steam.
This unit that I have right here is just basically it's on and off switch and you don't really
have a whole lot of control over the steam.
It's also the coordination is a little bit difficult for this switch because if you move
the switch one way, then it goes steaming milk.
If you move it in another way, it goes through the coffee and so far there have been a couple
of times where I'm steaming milk and I want to turn the steam off for a moment and I actually
at least switch it too far and it starts making coffee and that kind of messes you up.
Watch out for that.
There's also on this unit a little drip catcher so that if coffee or some water drips,
it goes into this little tray, which you'd think seems like a good idea, but unfortunately
this tray is so cheap and so badly put together that when you go to empty it, all the stuff
that's in the tray starts dripping out before you even get over to the sink, so watch
out for something that's too cheap I guess, but don't go for anything overly complex.
So there you go.
That's a cappuccino machine.
The cappuccino machine itself has really two external components.
There's the basket for the coffee, which is generally a small metal, looks like a metal
dripper with a handle and then a small metal filter that goes into that.
You don't have to buy coffee filters for these things, you just put the coffee straight
into this metal filter and place it into the coffee machine, into the cappuccino machine.
We'll get to that in a moment and then there's the coffee, the actual coffee pot itself,
which generally goes up to about four cups so that would be four shots of espresso.
They generally are numbered two and four, so I usually make double shot cappuccinos for
me and usually a friend, so I'm usually always using it for four cups and I think you're
if I'm going to go to the trouble of making a cappuccino, I might as well make a lot.
So there's a cappuccino machine.
But you're also going to need some good coffee, just like I said in my first coffee episode
I think is that the quality of your cup is going to depend on the quality of your coffee
that you've used to produce a cup of coffee.
Starbucks coffee is to be avoided.
They generally speaking sell, well to me, overly roasted coffees, they're usually really
not very good, just as a drip cup, much less when you pack it into a cappuccino machine
and force them through it, it just produces an unpleasant cup of coffee, especially avoid
in my opinion again, the quote unquote espresso roasts.
These are just really, really dark roasted coffees, designed as far as I can tell, they're
designed to taste more like espresso through a regular drip or they're not, if you're
making an espresso, you do not need an espresso roast bean.
Just get some good coffee that you like, that way you can make it as a good drip cup or
you can make it, you know, a good cappuccino, it will taste great as an espresso, does not
need to be especially roasted in some particular way.
These are all my opinions and if you're just really, really ended really crazy dark burnt
coffee, go for it.
But brands that I will sometimes let me look in the freezer here, I've got, I've got
one called Blue Grove Collection, I've got one called Magnum Exotics, I've got Gavalia
and that's about it.
Kona is what I've been into a lot lately, so if you look out for Kona, that will, that
will make a really good cup of coffee, now again having said that, Kona blend from your
local grocery stores, probably not going to be that good, you're probably going to seek
out a good quality Kona blend because, you know, your local grocery stores, those containers
that they've got where you can kind of dump out your own beans that have been sitting
there for like six months and you grind them up and you feel all professional and like
an exotic coffee, aficionato, those typically are just not going to taste very good, they're
usually blended with a really low quality coffee.
So find a good coffee.
To get started on the cappuccino itself, we need to first, we should first steam the milk.
I do this first simply because that way you can do that and you can be cleaning it while
the machine is depressurizing and then you can continue to the next step which is making
the coffee.
It doesn't really technically matter, you could make the coffee first and set that aside
and then do your steam to milk.
I've done it both ways, it's just lately I've been doing the milk first.
So the thing you need to do for that is to get two cups or however many cappuccinos
you're making and get out some milk and some half and half.
You need half and half here, you can try to use 2% milk or something like that but it's
not going to froth correctly, I think you'll find, half and half has the right amount
of fat and cream or whatever to really froth correctly.
So what I do is usually use a mixture of 2% and half and half because the half and half
is just too expensive for me to get and use just half and half.
I drink enough coffee and cappuccino to make that really an expensive venture so what I try
to do is I'll use 2% plus some of my friends don't really like to have just pure half
and half with all their drinks.
So I'll use about maybe 3 to 1 mixture of half and half to 2% milk and the amount that
you put into it, the amount of milk that you put into the cup obviously just depends
on how far you want to stretch the cappuccino, the actual coffee, how creamy you want the
cappuccino versus how coffee like or how espresso like.
Obviously if you have a lot of milk, a lot of cream and stuff then it's going to be a
creamier cappuccino.
If you have less milk and more coffee it's going to be more like an espresso with frothed
milk on top.
So it's really up to you as to which one you prefer and if you don't know which you prefer
you'll just have to do it both ways and experiment and find out what you like best.
So I usually do let's say a 3 to 1 mixture.
So I like 3 tablespoons of 2% milk and 1 tablespoon of half and half.
And now we've got 4 tablespoons of milk and we need to put the water that we'll use
for the steam in the cappuccino machine and for that there's usually some kind of
indication on the cappuccino machine as to how much milk you should put in if you're
just steaming milk.
You can also on some cappuccino machines they'll have you dump everything in all at once
and you just kind of have to steam your milk and kind of when that's finished then you
switch it over to the coffee making portion and it redirects the steam to your coffee.
So it just depends on what your coffee maker does.
This one is fairly dedicated to there's the steam part and there's the coffee part and
I don't know.
I mean I guess I could do it all at once but I prefer to do them separately so I'm going
to put about, probably about 4 tablespoons of water into the cappuccino machine and
turn it on to steam.
So now it's going to build up, you know it's got to boil the water and start it steaming
which is a pretty quick process and once the steam is flowing we start steaming the milk
and this is actually the hardest part of making a cappuccino.
Getting the milk just right, getting it to froth correctly, getting it just so that's
the hard part and there is a secret to this that you will now learn from me.
Essentially the idea is to get the milk, the body of the milk, you want to raise the
temperature of that.
A lot of people think that in order to froth it you just need to start at the top and
kind of barely to merge the milk into the steam nozzle so that the steam just kind of
causes the milk to froth and that will cause bubbles but that's not going to cause a proper
froth.
So what you do is fully submerge the steam nozzle in the milk.
So really push that milk, the cup with milk, the cups with milk one at a time obviously
up so that the nozzle is almost touching the bottom of the mug which is one reason you're
not going to be able to use very tall mugs for this.
You want to depending on your cappuccino machine but usually they don't really allow for
very tall mugs.
A lot of times the shorter the mug the better.
So you're going to want to submerge that nozzle as much as possible and really start just
heating the base of the milk just for the bottom up basically.
Keep it moving.
You want to get all that milk just the whole temperature you want to get up there and
you'll actually feel it through the mug.
If you've got just a normal ceramic mug you'll feel the heat once the milk starts getting
really hot you'll feel that at the base of the mug if you put your hand on it carefully
because it is hot.
And then as once you feel it's getting hot then you can lower the mugs so that the
steam nozzle goes towards the surface of the milk.
And you want that nozzle right underneath the surface of the milk.
You don't want it to go above the surface or else it will spray milk everywhere.
You want it right below the surface and the sound the pitch of the steam will change
and you'll really kind of get a feel for this if you practice enough that you want it
just underneath the surface of the milk so that starts actually boiling and causing
it to cause the skin to form over the milk but instead when you boil milk on the stove
the skin just kind of forms over the surface but since we're doing it with forced steam
it's causing the milk to bubble and causing it to skin at the same time and so that creates
the froth.
This is something that's obviously going to happen after practice you're going to need
to get the technique down eventually but that's how you start by heating up the body
of the milk and then raising the nozzle so that it's just underneath the surface of the
milk and you'll get the feel of it it's a combination of the feel and the sound and
you'll feel the milk starting to boil and you'll hear the froth start to form and just
keep that nozzle right underneath the surface of the milk and you'll get it and then I keep
moving it around after that to just to kind of really let that milk get hot and then
just keep it keep the temperature up and keep it frothing and once it's hot enough
it will almost start to froth itself you'll still have to get it under the surface of the
milk but it does it pretty easily once the whole of the milk is hot most people's mistakes
is that they don't get the body of the milk hot enough before they start to trying to form
a froth so that's how you do that keep in mind too that this is steam and if you've never
been burned by steam you've never been burned there's nothing quite like a steam burn so be
very careful do not get near the forced steam out of this nozzle it will hurt if you get burned by
it once all your milk is frothed and you only need to do this as many times as you have you know
as many cappuccinos you're making once that's finished you can then depressurize the machine all
told usually it takes about 90 seconds to steam one cup of milk that's just what I've kind of
found rough estimate it generally takes about 90 seconds could be more to be left depending on
how much milk you've got and beside you know the different proportions of your mug and things
like that but that's generally what it takes me is 90 seconds per cup and you'd be amazed at how
far the the water that you filled into the cappuccino machine lasts just four tablespoons or so
will will steam two or three cups of milk very very well now when you take the steam when you take
the milk out of the steam make sure that the steam is off because otherwise again it will splatter
milk everywhere because it's just air being forced onto a surface of liquid so turn that off first
take it off and then do the next cup once you're finished steaming it all you want to make sure
that you depressurize your cappuccino machine because if you don't when you try to open the lid
to pour more water in to make coffee you will be met with all kinds of steam and perhaps
a minor explosion of some sort so make sure that that is that that's all depressurized and the
way to do that is either just leave the steam running and that's what I usually do for a little
while and then I and then I clean off a nozzle because after you've steamed a couple of cups of milk
molding one some of that froth will will stay on the nozzle so you'll need to clean that off so I
just use a kitchen sponge and clean that off I shouldn't really be cleaning it off while it's
steaming always depressurizing but because I'm experienced I do that anyway but I wouldn't do it
how far are you not not at first anyway once that's cleaned then you can either keep letting it
just blow off the steam or if you want as long as you don't have any coffee in the gasket yet
you can redirect that steam through the coffee portion and that's going to be a lot of steam
and then some hot water and stuff like that so you really need to be careful when you do that
either have a good good mechanism for catching all that like a kitchen towel or some kind of
container or just don't do it just let it steam off through the nozzle through the milk steam
the milk steamer either way once it's depressurized then it's safe to open the coffee machine
open that up first we'll fill this gasket up with coffee and we'll fill up the coffee pot with
water I'm going to do the full four cups so I can get two cups of two cups of two shot cappuccinos
of this and pour the water in the cappuccino maker make sure that the coffee is twisted in tight
usually it's a matter of putting the coffee holder into the machine and then twisting it to the right
so it's just like a give it a good give it a good turn to wherever it tells you to stop
just do it all the way to the end and that's obviously I mean like I say this is a pressure
system so you need to make sure that all the parts are secure you know you want to screw the top
back on the the coffee maker securely you want to screw that make sure that the coffee container is
completely in in its little place so once you start building up this pressure in the in the
machine things don't pop off or fly out go everywhere and burn you and make a big mess so then
you turn on the coffee machine and you wait and what it'll do it'll boil all that water and it will
force steam through the coffee beans now and this is what makes a really really concentrated
sort of pure essence of coffee espresso and you'll kind of know when it's finished I mean
it kind of depressurizes itself at this point because you're just letting it run till it's finished
but sometimes I'll I'll turn the knob just to make sure all the pressures out
and redirect the steam through the nozzle just to make sure it's really really depressurized and
once it's depressurized then you can take the coffee pot pour half into one cup and be sure you
want to pour in a straight stream you don't want to pour all around or else you'll dissolve all
your froth because there's one steady small stream and then into the next cup and then for
presentation purposes because we all know that everything tastes better when it's presented
properly and nicely I take a knife just a butter knife or a spoon or whatever and I kind of
give the froth a twirl around because now there's this coffee stain in the froth that we don't want
to really be very obvious so just kind of give it a nice swirl maybe make a devian logo in the
top of the froth you know whatever you want to do and then if you want to garnish it which I
usually like to do because it does look nice that way I'm generally speaking I'll put like maybe
some some powdered cinnamon ground cinnamon on there just for looks really or if you have flakes
of chocolate or if you can have a chocolate bar hanging around somewhere a chocolate chip even
just get grab a kitchen knife and you can kind of kind of scrape off little shards of chocolate
don't make them too heavy because then they'll sink to the bottom of the cup so just kind of
it's kind of shaped it's just chocolate shavings is all you need or if you want to do the whole
sprinkles thing you know if it's Easter and you want to do something extra colorful you could get
those cake sprinkles and sprinkle that on top you know whatever you think the person you're serving
this to is going to appreciate most I generally stick with ground cinnamon or chocolate because
those are tasty and more or less natural so that's what I use and that's it now you're finished
one thing you'll want to do before you really sit down to enjoy it probably because it'll stay hot
for a while is clean out the you want to clean the grounds out of the coffee basket
which is pretty tight in there right now there okay and the way that I do that is you hold it
over a trash can you would use that same butter knife or spoon that you just twirled the
froth with to dig out the coffee because it's going to be really really packed in there tight
be amazed at how tight it gets packed in there after all that steam is forced through it and then
just rinse out the coffee pot itself and that's about it that's how to make a really really good
cappuccino and impress your friends and once you've started making really good cappuccinos
you will you will not want to have cappuccino elsewhere you will be amazed at how
how unappealing in a cappuccino now from you know some Starbucks or from your local cafe
will will seem because once you get good at it you can make a mean cappuccino for yourself exactly
how you want it so it's really really good so give it a shot try it out thank you for listening
to H.P.R. sponsored by caro.net so head on over to C.A.R.O.E.C. for all of her singing