Keurig Milk Frother

The nice thing about Keurig is that they offer a full line of products that compliment the Single Serve Coffee Maker. One item is the Keurig Milk Frother. Now you can make all of your favorite coffee shop drinks at a fraction of the cost. The Keurig milk frother makes the drinks you make at home as fancy as your favorite restaurant. Lattes, hot chocolate and coffee drinks will have that special touch.

This stainless steel milk frother has an 8.5 ounce capacity. The one piece pitcher is easy to use and easy to clean. The beautiful think is you just push one button for perfectly frothed milk. At just 7 inches by 4 inches it is easy to store. The only attachments you will need are the stirrer and the whisk and they are included.

Using the Keurig Milk Frother

To use the milk frother, all you do is add milk and push the button. Fortunately, for our waistlines, 2% or skim milk works the best. For frothed milk, simply push the button and stir the milk into froth. If you just want hot milk, just remove the whisk attachment and heat the milk.

While the Keurig coffee machine doesn't make lattes exactly, by adding this froth you can easily make a latte at home. Here is a little trick to make your favorite latte.

A typical caf latte is made with espresso, steamed milk, and a layer of foamed milk. Here is a simple recipe you can make even without the milk frother.

Coffee Latte Recipe to make at home!

Brew 1 K-Cup of dark roast coffee. (Good choice suggestions: Green Mountain Espresso blend, Sumatra Roast, or maybe Caribou's Mahogany Roast)

Pour 4 ounces of the brewed coffee into a separate mug

Heat 6 oz of milk in the milk frother

Pour just 4 ounces of the heated milk into the mug with the coffee, and stir

Add 2 ounces of frothed milk to the top of the latte

Make it special! Add sweetener to taste and garnish with shaved chocolate, cinnamon powder or nutmeg.

If you don't have the milk frother, you can heat the milk on the stove until it is hot. Again, pour 4 ounces of the milk into your cup, but keep back the other 2 ounces. Put the 2 ounces in your blender and blend until it is foamy. Pour this on top of your latte.

Your clean up will be quicker, and your milk will heat a lot faster with the milk frother.

The secret to cleaning the frother is, number one, only heat the amount of milk you are going to use immediately, and number 2, clean it as soon as your can. Don't leave the froth sitting there for any length of time. Carefully and thoroughly clean both pieces, and don't submerge the pitcher in water.

For a really special drink you can make at home, add one-half of a capful of flavored syrup, such and French vanilla, caramel, or white chocolate to the milk BEFORE you heat it.

Your next dinner party will leave your guests talking about the great restaurant quality latte or espresso that you can make at home.

Understanding Coffee Maker Cup Size

Why don't I get twelve cups of coffee from my 12-cup brewer?

It's the holidays and the extended family is staying at your place. You brew a full pot in your brand new 12-cup Cuisinart. Relatives jockey for their morning joe, but only the first five in line get their fill. The pot is empty. Urgh! You knew you'd have a houseful -- that's why you bought the large brewer. What went wrong?

A "Cup" of Coffee Does Not Mean 8 Ounces

Coffee maker cup sizes are not standardized. The number of ounces that make up a "cup" varies by manufacturer. The same company can even have models that differ amongst themselves.

For example, in a Bodum 3-cup French press, a "cup" measures 4 oz. But if you are using the 8-cup Bodum French press, a "cup" comes in at 4.25 oz. But wait! Bodum also makes vacuum brewers and a "cup" in one of those is around 5.7 oz. Confused yet?

Experts even disagree when trying to name the most commonly used cup measurement. Votes are split between 4 oz., 5 oz., and 6 oz.

One thing is for sure: a "cup" of coffee does not fill up the typical 12 oz. coffee mug found in most American homes.

Ounces per Cup in Popular Coffee Maker Brands

Bunn: 5 oz

Bodum (French Press): 4 oz to 4.25 oz

Bodum (Vacuum): 5.7 oz

Capresso: 5 oz

Cona: 5.5 oz to 5.7 oz

Cuisinart: 5 oz

Krups: 5 oz

Proctor Silex: 4.5 oz

Technivorm: 4.2 oz

Zojirushi: 5.1 oz

To complicate things even further, coffee brewing instructions frequently tell you how much ground coffee to add for every 6 ounces of water. You'll see this metric on the back of a can of Maxwell House as well as published by coffee authorities such as the National Coffee Association of U.S.A., Inc. Further proof of the lack of standardization.
 
Metric Conversion

So what's up with the folks at Zojirushi? Did they sit down and decide that a cup of coffee should be 5.1 oz (5.0721, to be exact)?

Coffee brewers designed and marketed outside of the US frequently start out with metric measurements. The brewer capacity will be in liters, and the corresponding number of cups will be a nice round figure in milliliters.

When these brewers are sold in the U.S., the cup capacity remains the same, but the milliliters are converted to ounces - and frequently end up as fractional ounces. Which look weird.

Zojirushi is a Japanese housewares company. Their 10-cup Fresh Brew thermal coffee maker has a capacity of 1.5 liters. That comes to 150 ml per cup. But when we convert the Fresh Brew to ounces, the 1.5 liters becomes a total capacity of 50.721 ounces - or 5.721 ounces per cup. Still weird -- but understandable.
 
Supersize It

Another thing to consider when realizing that your 12-cup brewer serves less than six people, is the tendency of Americans to supersize. We love our SUVs and our Big Gulps. Coffee is no exception, as evidenced by the recently introduced "Trenta" size at Starbucks. The Trenta holds a whopping 31 oz, a full 11 oz more than Starbuck's already-huge "Venti" size.

"Bigger" is a trend in our society, and it skews our expectations. Instinctively, we want a "cup" of coffee to fill up our favorite ceramic mug or our insulated travel mug. And those everyday items are BIG.

Our household coffee makers have not adjusted to these expectations. Cup volume is more in line with historically smaller serving sizes and in line with a global perspective. (You won't find a Trenta-sized anything in a traditional European coffee house.)

Divide to Conquer

That the number of mugs you can fill from one pot of brewed coffee differs so much from the number advertised on the box is actually a common source of consumer dissatisfaction with a coffee maker purchase.

But a little bit of division is all that is necessary to manage expectations when it comes to coffee maker cup size.

When shopping for a coffee maker, I recommend completely ignoring the advertised number of cups.

Instead, pay attention to the maximum number of ounces that the water tank holds. Then, measure the capacity in ounces of the coffee mug or cup you typically use. Divide the tank capacity by the mug capacity. This tells you how many times you can fill your favorite mug - or how many real-life servings to expect.

Remember:

A brewer's advertised number of "cups" refers to a serving size, and not a unit of measure

Coffee maker serving sizes are much smaller than we've come to expect

When you need to feed a crowd or fill travel mugs for a long commute, keep these things in mind and everyone will get their fill.