Finally I fill it with warm water, give it a small squirt of washing-up liquid and leave it soaking until the next time it is required (often 2 hours or more). When the whisk is immersed in milk it will appear to weigh less due to its buoyancy and so it will be more easily lifted. Inside there is a motor with magnets on the spindle which interact with the magnets in the whisk and spin it around. Traditional coffee purists among us may have chosen to focus on the quality of the bean or espresso machine, but for some of us, the enjoyment is all in the perfect, luxurious foam.

It didn't take long to discover that the Aeroccino 3 is the perfect morning gadget—even if you’re half asleep you can operate it without fear of messing up or, even worse, burning yourself.

We used this every day for a week and the results were consistently top-notch, with rich, dense foam. In recent years, making a cup of coffee at home has stepped up several notches, with instant granules shunned in favour of barista-worthy beverages. It can also be more difficult to froth a non-dairy milk, like almond milk or soy milk, with a frother. Boil water in a kettle – put some in a plastic jug, carefully add soda slowly – it will ‘fizz’ then add to the dirty frother.

There’s even a manual function allowing you to increase the whisk speed and temperature to your own specifications, but with six pre-set programs that tick all the boxes, we can’t see why you’d want to. So far the Tesco 6pt seems for some reason to be a bit disappointing (and their 4pt to a lesser extent), it's producing a somewhat watery, flimsy foam. You also aren't supposed to wash the parts above 158 degrees—most home dishwasher cycles don't exceed this, but you should avoid any high-temperature rinse or dry settings and check your dishwasher's manual to be absolutely sure.

As for the base, you can't immerse it or run it under water, but it also shouldn't get very dirty at all as it's completely isolated from the jug. While it's not completely silent, the barely audible sound only travels a few inches, so if you’re concerned about living in a tiny apartment with a sleeping significant other or roommate, it’s probably the last sound that would wake them. Integrated into the aeroccino, it creates a creamy milk froth and makes cappuccinos, latte macchiatos and other milk-based coffee recipes.

This is probably a bit more cautious than necessary, but we can't recommend doing anything with this machine that its instructions forbid.Because of its frothy nature any air bubbles in the congealed layer give it a high thermal resistance and the heat is not so easily conducted away by the new liquid milk sitting on top.