I've bought one of these, and I'll be doing a comparison video using the various hand whisks, and I'll update this post once I've used them all. Zulay Original By Milk Boss

Just to clarify, as per the comment from Andrew below, I'd suggest heating the milk in the Bodum frother, and then frothing, not the other way around, because the bubbles will be bursting while it's heating. Ideally, you want to pour as soon as you've frothed. There is something called “casein micelles” present in milk, individual tiny spherical shaped clusters each containing thousands of protein molecules. When we “froth” milk, what we're doing is disrupting these micelles by injecting air, which this protein from the disrupted micelles wraps around, creating bubbles that have some degree of stability. They make this milk frother in 80 different colours, apparently, although at the time of writing, there are 36 colours available. I nearly wrote “only”, but I then realised that to plop the word “only” in front of 36 when exclaiming how many colours this is currently available in, would be a bit daft. The KitchenCraft Le'Xpress is undoubtedly a higher powered and nicer looking version of these early hand frothers, but they're basically the same thing, and I actually think they're great. They're very simple to use, they're small and portable, and as well as using them to create milk froth for cappuccino, lattes & so on. As with the Bodum manual frother, you have to heat the milk yourself but it gives you some level of control over the texture too – and it's a super cheap option. For example, let's say you're buying a specific make and model of a coffee machine, and another supplier comes along and sells it cheaper, this pits the suppliers against each other, and we get the product cheaper. What can happen though on products which are a bit more generic, is that another supplier can come along and add themselves as a supplier to the listing, but they might not be supplying like for like, it could be a cheaper yet similar-looking product.Stovetop: these consist of a metal jug and frothing pump. You partially fill it with milk, put it on the hob, heat it up, pop the lid on and pump the handle to produce the foam. The upside is ease of use – there’s no need for batteries or electricity and they’re easy to clean, with most parts dishwasher safe. The downside is that producing froth requires more customisation than with other types. How easy are milk frothers to clean? Agitation is done by agitating the milk, as the word suggests, usually by using a whisk. If you were to put milk in a jar and froth it by shaking it furiously, you'd also be agitating it, and probably agitating anyone else who happens to be present, as an added bonus ;-). So if you want a “new age” cappuccino, or “third wave” cappuccino, then just focus on producing smaller bubbles, by introducing less air, but do it for longer than you would if you were wanting a flat white, and what you should end up with is a stiff dense foam which piles up into a mountain on the top of your coffee. The milk frothers featured in this guide were selected from a longlist of over 20 products. All were tested in controlled conditions using the same criteria for semi-skimmed milk, Oatly Barista oat milk, and Hotel Chocolat hot chocolate flakes. We then scored each product out of five against the following areas:

We tested each milk frother on how easy it was to operate, pour from, clean and how much noise it made while working. So below I'm obviously sharing the Bodum milk frother, but I'm also going to suggest a cheaper similar alternative that is sold as a cafetiere, and will work as a cafetiere, but will also work well as manual milk frothers. Steam injection is usually done with the steam wand on espresso machines, and this is the method that you'll see baristas using in coffee shops. Agitation is the texturing method used by the majority of stand-alone milk frothers, including the cafetiere method I'll discuss shortly.Removable Whisk– Uses magnetism to give a fully sealed drive for better results, and it’s easy to clean. And for those who want a ‘no-fuss’ machine, the illy milk frother is easy to operate with a simple one-touch design. It comes with three buttons – cold milk froth, hot milk froth and milk heater - and the best part is, you can add your chocolate flakes directly to the jug for tasty hot chocolate. If you have a Dolce Gusto or Tassimo coffee machine, you may think you don't need a milk frother because these machines come with milk pods, but actually, if you have one of these pod machines, buying a milk frother is a great way to improve the quality of your milkies and to save money. I think if you're wanting to create microfoam, so you really need to control the milk texture, you're probably best with one of the manual options if you're not going to get an espresso machine with a steam wand. If you're not concerned with controlling the texture, then the automated milk heater frothers are a lot more convenient. Milk texturing with a Cafetiere

The first kind of milk foam created was what we know as cappuccino foam, big bubbled foam, and what many people don't realize is that this was first created to mimic the whipped cream in the Viennese Kapuziner Kaffee. This is a milk frother, not a shirt, and I'd be amazed if a shirt was available in 80 colours, even 36 colours, even 8 colours – but why make a milk frother available in so many colours? Are people that bothered about exactly matching a milk frother with their kitchen colour scheme? At present, there's only one modified cafetiere type of manual milk frother, which is the one below from Bodum, and I'm surprised actually that there aren't a dozen competitors on the market already! However, there are lots of cheaper cafetieres that are a similar size so you can fit the jug in the microwave, and that come with a glass jug so putting it in the microwave won't create an “Under Seige” style explosion. We frothed oat milk and semi-skimmed milk scoring on how long it took, the volume increase, and how much it depletes after five minutes.Sure, and after you do this, hang your head in shame! Haha, just kidding. You can do whatever you like in the comfort of your own home, and you can even do it in the buff if you like, just be careful though, even milk at 65C will possibly seem much, much hotter than that if it happens to splash you in a rather tender area… What Bodum have done I think is very clever. They've made an all glass (except for the plunger) cafetiere essentially, but they've modified the mesh to be better for frothing milk, and they've modified the position of the plunger in terms of how deep into the jug it goes. If you have or are thinking of buying a Nespresso machine, they will try and persuade you to buy their “aeroccino” milk frother, and this is worth looking at if there's a bundle deal where you end up getting the frother for a decent, low price, but otherwise, just keep in mind that you may be able to save yourself some money by choosing one of the options below, some of which are the same kind of frothers as Aeroccino, just not Nespresso branded. Battery-powered by 3 AAA batteries, it has a powerful engine (10.000r a min) to whisk up an impressive froth in just seconds. Simply press the button at the top, and the AdHoc Rapido Automatic Milk Frother will do all the hard work. Unlike other handheld milk frothers, this model has steady movement, giving you more control over the foam texture, so you won’t have messy splashes everywhere!