DIY Hand Mixer Whips Coffee Into Shape

Along with the substantial rise in bread baking over the last few months, many people have been whipped into a frenzy over this tasty-looking frothy coffee beverage called Dalgona. It’s like a caffeinated meringue made from instant coffee, sugar, boiling water, and a whole lot of air that is then spooned onto milk or milk and ice.

Sure, you can use a whisk to mix it up if you don’t mind doing so continuously and vigorously for at least a full three minutes. [HimanshuS8] quickly got tired of making his wife’s coffee this way, and designed a small electric hand mixer especially for this task. [HimanshuS8] happens to be a hardware design engineer, which is why it looks so minimalist and beautiful.

The inside is just as beautiful, mixing junk bin parts like the 6 V motor from a cassette deck with printed gears and beaters. At the risk of reviving an old debate, we hope [HimanshuS8] used food-safe filament for those. If you replicate this, you could try to design it around standard metal beaters instead. Check out the demo after the break while you wait for the water to boil.

Coffee makes everything better, including 3D prints — the high cellulose content in coffee waste has been shown to drastically improve print strength.

13 thoughts on “DIY Hand Mixer Whips Coffee Into Shape

  1. Kristina, your name would make me suppose that you are aware of the frappé coffee, a 60 years old tradition, now re-invented as dalgona. Since its making is a well known procedure, allow me a small tip: whip initially with only a little water, adding most of it later. This way the frothing will take place much much faster, with smaller bubbles. And this way you probably will not need a special device.

    1. Is a frappe really the same as a dalgona?

      It looks and tastes and is made differently to the way Starbucks makes my cookies and cream frap.

      They just use squirty whipped cream on top.

      1. If the froth is made out of plain (frothy cream or milk) it is not a frappe / dalgona. The core feature of the recipe is the frothing of the [(instant coffee) – (sweetening agent?) – (very little water or milk)] mixture. Then adding the more water or milk.
        For the differences, i believe the core concept is the same, although each hand, tool, more time here or there, that ingredient or the other, makes the final product have a different personality.

    1. Matt Perger’s coffee shots look a whole lot like cafè crème (/crema) we are drinking in Switzerland since at least the 60s (so I’ve been told, I wasn’t around back then yet).

      (made in a portafilter, ground a bit more corsely than espresso with more water than espresso (150 ml or so) in about the same time as an espresso).

      What is/was old is new again.

      1. It used to be that way. Some time ago I was in a hotel where they had no little machine in the room, only some instant. Well, caffeine is caffeine, so I tried it and was pleasantly surprised. These days it is possible to get decent instant coffee that doesn’t taste like stale, burned coffee.
        That being said, that dalgona sh*te is hoorible.

  2. “tasty-looking frothy coffee beverage”

    With the emphasis on “looking”.
    After weeks of having been relentlessly spammed with this stuff in my Google timeline, I gave in and tried it.
    It’s disgusting.

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