Steam Tips for Techno (and Marzocco and Brasilia and...)

Steam tips, left to right:

  1. Stock Techno tip. 5 large holes. Nice looking, hard to steam with, especially in a small (pint or smaller) pitcher. If you stuff three of the holes (two adjacent side holes and center hole), works very well.
  2. Penultimate Techno tip. 3 large holes. This is the tip I've been beta-testing for Reneka, the actual new tip is rounder and steel instead of chromed brass. This is the tip I now use most of the time, great for a large (liter) pitcher, OK for a small one. Still takes some effort to get microfoam.
  3. Tall experimental tip. 3 large holes. This is very comparable in performance to Tip 2, but the holes are further apart, which is problematic for some steaming angles.
  4. Short experimental tip. 3 small holes. This is an astounding tip for microfroth. Almost impossible to get wrong, I can effortlessly microfroth milk with this in a 3 ounce shot pitcher. Problems: (a) very slow; (b) on a big pitcher of milk, sometimes causes the Techno to overheat (since steam element comes on while steaming).
  5. Brasilia tip. 4 large holes, close together. I bought this for around $5, hoping it would be te same Brasilia tip Barry J. raves about. It isn't.

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My rankings:

For large pitcher: Best - 2 & 3 (tie); OK - 4, 5 (watch out for overheating with 4); Bad - 1

For small pitcher: Best - 4; OK - 2,3; Bad - 1, 4

Note: In my opinion, the original tip with 3 holes stuffed is still better than the new Reneka tip for both large and small pitchers (not as good as #4 for small pitchers, better than #4 for large ones)