If you walk into any café in Australia, there’s a high chance it’s running a La Marzocco Linea PB on the bench. In fact, Victorian Sales Manager at La Marzocco, Anthony Burke, estimates the number of machines in the wild to be into the thousands. How, then, does the Italian machine manufacturer go about upgrading such an icon of the country’s café scene? The answer lies in the steam wand and what La Marzocco has dubbed ‘SmartSteam’.
“We’re forever grateful for the reception our machines have had in Australia, especially the Linea PB. It’s a proven workhorse and has stood the test of time, which is why you see them on so many benches – they last a long time,” says Anthony.
“SmartSteam has been developed to add a level of automation to milk steaming – specifically to milk temperature. As baristas, for so long we’ve been judging milk temperature by feel alone. This new technology introduces an easy route to achieve consistent milk temperatures and efficiencies, time and time again.”
Not retrofittable to existing Linea PB machines, SmartSteam is integrated with a probe in the steam wand and is operated using the existing buttons and menu of the machine. It enables two pre-selected milk temperatures to be set, alongside a Kid’s Milk setting.
“Cafés are using it in a couple of ways,” says Anthony. “Some baristas are setting one temperature for dairy and another for non dairy. Others are setting a standard milk temperature and then an extra hot option, which takes the guess-work out of ensuring the liquid is a safe temperature.”
How it works
If you place a traditional Linea PB alongside one equipped with SmartSteam, very little appears different to the naked eye. It still has all the features that have made it so popular among Australia’s café owners and baristas – the only (key) difference is a short probe poking out from the steam wand.
“The probe measures the milk temperature 20 times per second,” says Anthony. “Because it’s submerged in the milk while it’s being heated, the probe feeds back real time data to the board to provide immediate, advanced temperature judgment.”
The SmartSteam tip also aids in the texturing of the milk, with La Marzocco’s innovation team taking inspiration from the technology within the brand’s popular Wally Milk automatic steamer.
“We’ve learned quite a bit from the Wally. The jet of air from the steam tip creates a natural whirlpool in the jug due to a slightly different positioning and pitch of the steam,” he says.
“This is our second generation of SmartSteam. The first had a very different system that added air into the milk constantly as it was steaming, which often resulted in overstretched milk.
“We’ve learned a lot from developing the Wally in between those generations. Now, with this generation of SmartSteam, the engineering challenges were largely mitigated by those prior learnings.”
Any Linea PB equipped with the new steaming technology includes a manually adjustable jug platform, which Anthony says will also be available for purchase without the SmartSteam machine.
“For years we’ve seen baristas use all sorts of contraptions to rest a jug on the side of the machine to save them standing there the whole time the jug is spinning,” he says.
“So we’ve created a platform where users are able to adjust the height and tilt to save time and assist with whirlpooling. This new setup can add a level of automation, or enable the barista to stretch the milk as normal and then, once the recipe is right, rest it on the platform and let it finish.”
How to use it
The new system has been created to be as intuitive as possible for baristas, while online users will find simple-to-follow tutorials on how to set up and use SmartSteam, although it has only just become commercially available in Australia, it has already been put through its paces in the market through the manufacturer’s La Marzocco Local events and a well-received debut at MICE26.
“It’s an intuitive system that baristas will find easy to use. I’ve seen this myself, because La Marzocco Local travels the country. There’s a barista competition attached to the event, which now use Linea PBs with integrated SmartSteam,” says Anthony.
“I’ve seen firsthand how baristas jump straight on and start using them seamlessly. That’s filled us with a huge amount of pride in the product. “At MICE, we had utilised the tech in the Roasters Playground and it was the most talked about thing on our stand. That’s what everybody was gravitating towards and talking to us about.”
Alongside helping the barista create the most consistent cup possible, Anthony believes many of SmartSteam’s benefits lie in reducing milk wastage in day-to-day operations.
However, does the process of learning how to use SmartSteam result in jugs and jugs of wasted milk? Anthony says absolutely not. “The first jug I tried using SmartSteam, I learned a few lessons. By the second, it was happy days, just perfect,” says Anthony.
“It requires a slightly different movement because the wand is locked into position. It doesn’t move freely in every direction like a normal steam wand and that’s because it has a lot of cables inside. If you allowed a full range of motion, they’d end up getting twisted.
“So, when steaming you might need to work more towards the side of the machine rather than in front of it. What’s more, with a traditional steam valve you’re modulating the pressure as you turn it – it slowly comes on. With this valve, which is called a solenoid valve you’re getting all the steam pressure immediately because it just opens and closes.”
When developing new technology, La Marzocco prioritises the ease of maintenance for technicians as much as ease of use for baristas. As a former employee and coffee technician for the likes of Allpress and Brewtech, Anthony has been around coffee machines as a technician for much of his career and knows the importance of equipment that’s easy to maintain.
“It’s important to leave the tip and the probe clean so they can do their job effectively, so we recommend soaking it in a milk cleaning shift,” he says.
“Apart from that, maintenance will be much easier than a traditional wand because they don’t need to be rebuilt every time you get a service – it’s just open and close, that’s it.
“People often assume that advanced technologies require more maintenance, but solenoids are very simple. It’s just a valve – you hit the button and it opens and lets water or steam through, and then it closes again.”
This article was published on page 62 of the August BeanScene magazine.
