7 Best Milk Frothers for your Home Espresso Setup (2025)
Honorable mention
Melitta Montalatte Milk Frother $100: Once Melitta graduates from “anything to the pot” to “my coffee making experience, my coffee making experience,” and, with the exception of the filter, if you don’t know that Melitta made a notable contribution to the coffee space worthy of attention, then forgive you. RitualGuy. Melitta has been quietly locked in the coffee gear space for a while, and its new Montalat milk foaming is on the same tier land as many other gadgets. It’s easy to use. Work without knocking on socks. Pouring can be easily corrected if you want to decant the liquid into a suitable foaming pitcher once the foaming process is finished.
Photo: Pete Cottel
Maestri House Electric Milk Frother $70: Marketing copy of the Maestri House website related to electric milk says “Barista Finesse of Temperature and Thickness”, so it’s safe to assume that it’s another weird Amazon brand that always appears along with the brands you actually heard when searching for gadgets. The manual told me to choose a medium form of cappuccino, 150 degrees, 150 degrees Fahrenheit, 30% thickness, so I fired it and wanted the best. There was considerable separation between the liquid at the bottom and the dry foam at the top. This was perfect for a more classic style cappuccino with espresso, wet milk and dried losses. The amount of steaming pitchers on the counter and sloshing around the liquid did not fuse the dry bubbles with the liquid, so the latte art was out of the question. The dried chunks of foam at the top of my drink were comfortable on some bites, and it reminded me of a much easier time when the latte and cappuccino were the only drink that was fused with espresso with foamy milk. Anyway, this is a reliable bubble wrap, with a simple interface and predictable results at a decent price.
I don’t recommend it
Bodum Barista Electric Milk Frother $60: Bodum creates a ton of gear in all kinds of price ranges, and with many of the same designs of that item, it’s difficult to figure out which one looks like and why additional cash should be used for units that look roughly the same as options with additional names. In the first and third tests using doses of up to 8 ounces of whole milk, it went out of control and overflowed about three minutes after an overly long 5-minute cycle. I checked the instructions to make sure I hadn’t done anything wrong. So it became clear that this unit should be inherently stupid in its options. Press once for hot floss, twice for hot chocolate (no foaming action), and three times for cold foam. This is impossible to ruin, but there I had a hot white liquid that came out of the lid and ran down the side of the machine and onto the counter. When I finally got a good start from the car, it produced a layer on top of a layer of 160 degree Fahrenheit foam, which can almost fold like a French omelette. It almost burned and smelled like bread pudding. This is not a bubble I would recommend to anyone in any situation.