A Guide to Adding Cold Foam Drinks to Your Café

Cold foam drinks are the trendiest type of drink at specialty coffeehouses and boba tea shops today. Created by cold-frothing milk, cold foam provides a fluffy, cloud-like layer of added richness and flavor to cold beverages. Incorporating cold foam drinks into your café's menu can attract a new customer base and offer an in-demand twist to your beverage options.

The frothing process for cold foam involves agitating the milk until it becomes aerated. The process introduces air into the milk, creating bubbles that are stabilized by the proteins in the milk, resulting in the signature cold foam.

Here's how to best make cold foam and the necessary equipment you'll need.

Methods for Making Cold Foam

There are two methods for making cold foam: manual and automatic.

1. Manual Frothing: Use a hand-held frother or a French press to manually pump air into cold milk. The key is to froth the milk until it's thick and has formed stiff peaks, then gently spoon it over your cold brew or iced coffee. This method works well, but is effortful and time-consuming. Also, the equipment must be cleaned after each use.

2. Automatic Frothing: An automatic frother that can produce consistent results with the push of a button and is ideal for higher volume settings. The results are more consistent and also less milk is wasted in the process of making cold foam.

Essential Equipment

To offer cold foam, you’ll need the following:

A quality frother: Choose a manual frother for low volumes and an automatic for a high order volume. PASMO’s whipped cream machine creates a velvety soft cold foam with the touch of a button. It’s user-friendly and highly customizable. Use the whipped cream machine to make anything from whipped cream to cold foam. Choose from ten levels of expansion rate.

Milk: Non-fat milk generally works best, but people are now making cold foam with a wide range of dairy and milk alternatives. To find the best cold foam, Epicurious tested many types of milk and the effect of adding flavoring and concluded that non-fat milk was the winner. Allrecipes Test Kitchen concurs.

Cold storage: Keep the milk at cold before frothing.

By following these steps and investing in the right equipment, you can easily add cold foam drinks to your café's menu.