I want to try to make a home-made steamer for heating up drinks, mostly milk, that works like the steam attachment on an high-end cappuccino maker. Yeah, I could buy a cheap one like this but there’s a challenge of making my own that actually works.
Do you think there’s much more to a steamer than just heating up water and directing the steam through a tube?
The flask would be filled with water and closed with the stopper. The stopcock goes in one hole and the copper tubing in the other (I feel slightly dirty saying this). The flask is put on the stove with the stopcock open. When the water is boiling I’ll put the tubing into the milk and close the stopcock, forcing the steam into the milk.
Does this have any chance in Hades of working the way I’m imagining it? I like it because in concept it is very simple. One issue could be that the copper tubing will cool off the steam too much. Could I insulate it somehow? Or maybe use high-temperature plastic tubing (is there such a thing?). The copper has the advantage being easily bendable.
As long as there’s always a way for steam to escape I don’t think I need to worry about pressure building up.
Any thoughts on how I could improve the basic design? A flask with a wider bottom might boil better (and faster) but I didn’t find any.
I can’t imagine it’s a good idea to put a pyrex flask directly on a stove. My guess is that it’ll shatter very quickly. Even if works a few times, it’ll happen eventually (probably right away with electric).
If you really want to do it this way, why not go full out lab setup and get a stand with a ring and a screen (sorry, I don’t know the proper terms) and a Bunsen burner. Might as well do it right instead of sending (slightly) pressurized boiling water and glass all over the place.
I don’t think the flask will be a problem. There are glass kettles that are specifically for heating water and as far as I can tell there’s nothing special about them other than being Pyrex.
That’s what I’m saying, though, ‘nothing special’ pyrex glass can’t be put directly on a stove, it’ll shatter. An Erlenmeyer Flask is designed for a much smaller amount of heat than what a stove top puts out.
Doing some googling, I’m getting mixed results. Some people saying they’ve had no problem doing it dozens of times, some people said it shattered the first time and lots of in between. If you’re going to do it, as someone suggested, have a way to remove it from the heat, somewhere to set it and have closed toed shoes on in case something goes wrong.
How about just sticking the tubing in the hole on a tea kettle? Same result but a lot safer.
This all-glass kettle is made from “laboratory quality borosilicate glass” and “can be used on gas or electric stovetops”. Which is the same thing as Pyrex, right? The flask is Pyrex as well.
The flask is appealing because it’s easy to stop up and direct the steam into a tube. It’s easier to see what’s going on in a glass flask but I suppose that’s a minor advantage.
Actually, no. borosilicate is what Pyrex used to be made out of. A while back the company sold out and the new people use a different recipe which shatters much easier. We’ve threads about it here. In fact, a Pyrex* baking dish blew up on Adam in a recent episode of Mythbusters. IIRC, he had it on an open flame.
*It looked like Pyrex, for all I know it could have been dollar store garbage, I don’t know.
It’s very simple and–surprisingly–it mostly works. I’m using food-grade, high-temperature tubing. The stopper is from the hardware store but I will be exchanging it for a food-safe silicone stopper; the black rubber gives off an odor when it’s heated and I can taste it in the finished product.
It works but it is slow. Once the water is boiling it takes ~5-10 minutes to get a drink up to temperature. Do you have any ideas on how I could increase the boiling rate? Two thoughts I had:
Wrap some sort of insulation around the neck of the flask. The problem is finding an effective insulator that is food-safe.
Put an object(s) in the flask to give more surface area for the water to heat and boil, something like clay pie weights.