I was making coffee this morning and I really didn’t do a good job of texturing the milk - in fact, one might say I textured the milk a little too much. There was far too many large bubbles and it looked more like a bubble bath than silky smooth textured milk. It got me wondering - has anybody ever put foamed coffee milk into a vacuum chamber to reduce the bubbles? Would it just eliminate the bigger bubbles, or would it eliminate all bubbles leaving you with just warm milk? Would there be a sweet spot of vacuum pressure that would result in the perfect texturing? Knowing how scientific coffee brewers can get, this could be a game changer!
When I first vocalised this though, it seemed completely random - why on earth would you put coffee milk into a vacuum chamber? There is some logic behind my thinking though, so hear me out. In jewelery making, when using the lost wax casting method, you need to remove all bubbles from your investment casting mix. This might be to prevent explosion when it gets hot, but it also might be to improve the findelity of the final cast. To get the bubbles out, the investment mix (including the wax itself) is placed in a vacuum chamber. The low pressure formed in the vacuum results in all the air bubbles effectively ‘boiling’ out of the mix. It’s quite amazing to watch bubbles come out of the plaster-like mix as the vacuum increases.
Bubbles being removed from an investment flask inside a vacuum chamber.
Image from Beth Cyr via Instructables
Having done investment casting before, I’d made that link between an existing process and wondered if it would apply to a new situation. I believe that this is where innovation happens - in having a diverse background and being able to draw on that background to apply to new scenarios. Get out there, explore, learn something completely different. You never know when it might come in handy… or might just leave you coming up with crazy questions!
Cover image courtesy of Jackson Schaal via Unsplash
