Vonshef Electric Milk Frother review
Vonshef Electric Milk Frother
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This gadget steams and froths milk so you can create lattes and cappuccinos in the comfort of your own home.
The Promise
Vonshef boasts that you can make hot chocolates, fancy coffees and lattes ‘like the professionals’. The machine is quick and quiet, taking less than two minutes to steam milk to optimum frothiness and heat.
Two interchangeable whisks allow for variations in the thickness of the foam, and the frother will heat the milk to a warm-but-not-boiling 65 degrees – so the drink can be consumed immediately without danger of burns.
What We Found
Our resident coffee hound, Stuart, who is thirty, single and spends an uncomfortably large proportion of his wages on his daily coffees, leapt at the chance to save some money by indulging his mocha-latte habit at home.
He took the Vonshef Electric Milk Frother home and plugged it in next to his kettle, where it looked very much like the kettle’s stylish offspring.
The frother is cylindrical and silver, about half the height and width of a standard jug kettle. Stuart made his first coffee, experimenting a bit to get the coffee strength and chocolate sweetness right, then turned to the frother.
The two whisks are tiny attachments: the frother is basically a spring twisted into a flat circle and is about the size of a large coin. The steamer attachment is even tinier – about the size of a small coin, but blocky and rectangular – imagine a plane propeller that has been cut down to stubs and then shrink it to the size of a fingernail!
Stuart immediately began to fret about losing the whisks, but then found that they do fit (just about) into the lid of the steamer – so one can be fitted and the other stored in the lid, when the device is not in use.
First he used the frother, filling the milk to the requisite mark (about 125ml of milk) and pressed the button to start the process. As promised, the frother is very quiet in operation, and the frother attachment is efficacious, fluffing the relatively small amount of milk up to fill the whole inside of the device.
Stuart was initially very impressed with the froth: it was firm and solid. However, once mixed with coffee and stirred about, the foam lost its density very quickly, collapsing down to a fraction of its size and making for a rather sad drink.
The steamer attachment worked better: the initial volume of milk allowed is larger, and the smaller attachment doesn’t aerate the milk so much. This seems to enable the milk to retain some of the extra volume instead of collapsing completely.
Ratings
Efficacy:
Initial efficacy is good, but the frother attachment doesn’t make long lasting foam. 3/5
Quantity:
The quantities of milk used are miniscule, allowing for small or medium drinks to be made – making the frother very much a ‘singles only’ gadget… 1/5
Ease of Maintenance:
The frother is easy enough to maintain, needing only to be wiped out after each use. However, there is always a ‘skin’ of burnt milk on the bottom of the cup, which must be removed before the item is packed away or reused. This is easy enough to do, but an annoyance, especially when one is in a hurry. 3/5
Overall:
It is possible to produce good-looking fancy coffees that would not raise eyebrows in a high-street coffee shop. A lift-out container, and the whole item being twice the size would make it even better: allowing hosts to impress their guests with coffees that do not have to be made one at a time! 3/5
