The common french press is probably a better tea brewer than most dedicated teapots when it comes to quality loose leaf tea. The large leaves of specialty loose leaf tea expand a whole lot when steeped meaning they need a lot of space and the infusers of most teapots are way too small for that. You don't get such issues with french presses!
Honestly the french press has to be one of the most versatile tools for hot drink stuff. Like they're great at brewing both tea and coffee AND you can foam milk really nicely with them too! And they're typically very cheap and available in almost any store that sells kitchen supplies!
@Satsuma Oh yeah I should mention this is a very quick process. Like once you've got the milk heated it takes only something like 15 seconds of frothing to end up with very foamed milk
@njion interesting! i imagine it produces a much cooler foam than a traditional steam wand, since all the air you are adding is room temp
i’ve used similar hacks to whip cream so i suppose it logically makes sense it works for milk foaming also but i’d never considered it
@Satsuma I don't think air temperature matters much here cause ideally you wanna end up with roughly 60°C milk with both methods. Actually you might wanna heat up the milk a bit more for this in case the room temp air drops the overall temperature of the foam
@Satsuma 60°C is kinda just the general goal for foamed milk cause it's hot enough that after being added to coffee it doesn't make the drink too cool but also it's not so hot that you burn the milk
@Satsuma It's very shrimple:
1. Heat up milk to about 60°C
2. Pour it into the french press
3. Frantically move the plunger of the french press up and down repeatedly (making sure the mesh goes above the surface of the milk at least at first to introduce air into the liquid)
4. Once the milk is foamed to your liking you're done. Enjoy!
If you keep moving the mesh within the bounds of the milk after you're done mixing in air I'm pretty sure you could even end up with something pretty close to microfoam. I don't have much experience with this because by the time I learned about proper milk foaming for coffee I already had access to a steam wand but I have successfully foamed milk with a french press before and I know that some people have figured out techniques that do this well enough for latte art. I don't know those techniques but if you're not interested in latte art the steps I described above should produce good enough results.