Dreo BaristaMaker

Verdict

The Dreo BaristaMaker is a fantastic milk frother for making hot and cold drinks in a classy and almost professional manner. It looks great, is easy to use and offers some serious control and versatility for what is essentially a single-use appliance. Results were brilliant across the board too, with velvety-smooth and thick foam from a variety of milk types.

Introduction

The Dreo BaristaMaker continues the brand’s trend of offering clever kitchen appliances at very reasonable prices.

At first glance, it may look like a humble milk frother, but the BaristaMaker is a seriously powerful piece of kit for making drinks hot and cold, including coffee, hot chocolates, milkshakes, and more.

For £119.99/$99, it’s in the same ballpark as the Hotel Chocolat The Velvetiser, one of our favourite milk frothers, as well as some excellent kettles including the Dualit Pour Over Kettle.

I’ve been testing the BaristaMaker just to see if it can live up to its serious billing, and whether it’s a contender for the best milk frother we’ve tested.

Design and Features

• Stylish stainless-steel frame
• Clear control panel
• Reasonable capacity

The BaristaMaker arguably has a bit more style than Hotel Chocolat’s The Velvetiser, with a brushed stainless steel body that both looks fantastic and is easy to clean, too. It’s a machine in multiple parts, with a base that contains a heating element and all the controls, as well as a detachable jug for pouring milk into.

The overall construction here is excellent, with the BaristaMaker being wonderfully sturdy thanks to that stainless steel frame, which extends to its detachable jug, too. The jug itself has some pleasant heft to it, but it remains light enough and with a comfortable handle to be especially controllable for precise latte art.

The pair of impellers that this machine ships with are plastic, although offer a pleasant, smooth finish. Much like the singular one found in the Velvetiser, they magnetically attach to the base of the BaristaMaker’s jug. One of them is a more traditional whisk attachment, which is used for stirring, while the other is a unique impeller designed for frothing milk that’s hot or cold.

The front of the BaristaMaker houses a set of four controls and a small display. On the left-hand side, you can choose the type of foam you create and the type of milk being used, while on the right, you can choose the temperature in several stages and the speed at which drinks are stirred.

Inside the BaristaMaker’s jug are a series of markings, with a minimum fill line, then a Max fill for if you’re doing Latte Art, a max fill line for the froth mode, and further up is a max fill for the stir mode. They’re nicely printed on the inside and legible.

It takes a bit longer to froth milk in here than the Velvetiser, taking 3.5 minutes regardless of the type or quantity of milk you put in. With this in mind, the jug that the BaristaMaker has is larger, with a total capacity of 250ml froth capacity, and a 450ml stirring capacity. For reference, the Velvetiser only has a 220ml capacity.

Performance

• Thick, smooth results
• Worked well with different milk
• Latte art is a clever inclusion

In my time with the BaristaMaker, I made a variety of drinks, hot and cold, to best gauge how well it performed. Across the board, it produced some fantastic results with thick foam and consistently excellent performance.

A natural starting point was using the Hot Latte function with some whole milk to see how well the BaristaMaker makes a conventional coffee. It took three and a half minutes to froth the milk and came out tasting great, with a rather thick micro foam.

I then moved over to using an instant hot chocolate in powder form with some semi-skimmed milk on the clever Cold Thick Foam setting. This also took three and a half minutes and produced a result especially similar to extra-thick chocolate milk. The ability to do cold drinks such as a cold chocolate right out of the box is what sets the BaristaMaker apart from the likes of the Velvetiser.

It also worked well with semi-skimmed milk for some iced coffees too when I tried an iced maple latte by making espresso and letting it steep in an iced glass, before making whole milk on the Cold Thick Foam setting and adding in it with a dash of maple syrup. 

To give the Stir Mode a try, I made a pineapple hot chocolate with some Hotel Chocolat Caramelised Pineapple and whole milk. I turned it on High and set the temperature to 150°F, coming out warm and well blended. It was arguably even more velvety than in Hotel Chocolat’s own Velvetiser.

I also tested the BaristaMaker with oat milk on its Hot Cappucino setting, as the machine can also do other kinds of milk, including Oat, Almond, Soy and others besides. It took the requisite 3.5 minutes, and came out especially frothy.

In addition, I used some Jersey milk for a Hot Flat White on the BaristaMaker’s half-and-half setting (the closest I can get), which was especially pleasant. The half-and-half setting also worked fantastically well for a Cold Thick Foam-based iced chocolate, too.

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