Flat White: Learning How to Make Barista-Quality Coffee at Home.
The first thing you’ll do when Jane Anderson comes to your house for a consultation, is make her a cup of coffee. This may sound like a clever move on Jane’s behalf but in fact she wants to asses all the elements of that coffee and then work with you to perfect every step.
Jane is the founder of Find The Grind: an at home coffee consultation service that helps people feel confident using their own coffee machines, to make espresso coffee.
Jane’s love of coffee started potentially younger than it should have. As a child, Jane would often spend time at her grandparents’ house, but when Jane was around 10 years old, her grandma started to serve her a cup of instant coffee mixed with milk each time she visited. Whether it was the warmth of the mug, the bitter taste mixed with sweet milk or the ritual of sitting down to a nice cuppa with her Gran, Jane’s love and passion for coffee was put in motion.
Growing up in Newlyn, Jane was in her late teens when she took on a job in nearby Daylesford at Sweet Decadence at Locantro; considered to be Daylesford’s first coffee shop. When Jane joined the team, the town was at the height of its tourism boom and Jane recalls the weekends were busy. “It was a never-ending stream of people,” she says. But Jane wasn’t allowed to touch the coffee machine without first attending a barista course at William Angliss Institute in Melbourne. At William Angliss they taught her to burn milk so that she knew what it smelled and tasted like and then, how to avoid serving it up to customers. “Growing up on a farm,” Jane says, “burnt milk reminds me of the formula we used to feed to lambs. It’s awful. I can pick it every time.” The Institute also taught her how to froth milk with her eyes closed, literally. “We were taught to listen to the sound of the milk in the jug,” she explains. “We had to learn everything on a manual machine, so that we could adjust each element as required.”
After finishing secondary school Jane went on to study Human Movement, personal training and Pilates instructing. But she says “Hospitality kind of gets in your veins. I stepped away for a little while but then ended up working in a gym that had a café, so I found myself back behind the coffee machine there, in between personal training clients and Pilates classes.”
Coffee has changed a lot over Jane’s time as a barista. “In my early days at Sweet Decadence, the more froth the better,” she laughs. “Then we had the soy phase, the chai phase, almond milk and now I’m seeing a lot more requests for oat milk and Magic Lattes,” A Magic Latte, she teaches me, is a double shot of coffee with ¾ cup of milk. “It’s a Melbourne thing,” Jane says. “I know if people ask for a Magic, they are from Melbourne.”
Getting a reputation as someone who knew a ‘little-bit’ about coffee, Jane started offering advice to family and friends who had invested in a coffee machine, but it soon extended to customers. “Customers would come into the shop and tell me that they had bought a machine, but would tell me ‘It doesn’t make good coffee,’” Jane says. “I realised I could actually make a business helping people learn how to make a good coffee, at home.”
Jane says that despite not being able to go into people’s homes during various stages of Covid, the pandemic actually helped motivate her to start Find The Grind. “A lot of people who were working from home during Covid bought coffee machines,” she says. In addition to people working from home, Jane’s customers are often people who want to be able to give their visitors a café-like experience. “People love being able to offer family and friends the option of a latte, flat white or a cappuccino. It’s a bit of a thrill to serve up something more than an instant coffee.”
Jane says that teaching her customers how to get the coffee grind and dose right for their particular machine is the first thing she focusses on. “That’s probably the most important part,” she explains. “If the grind isn’t right, you’re never going to make a nice cup of coffee.”
When Jane visits people’s homes, she steps them through the coffee-grinding process but also shows them what to look for in a good pour, how to prepare the milk and how to make the coffee hot, without damaging the taste. “I step people through the process and also show them a few little tips and tricks along the way that might seem small, but can really have an impact on the end result. A consult normally goes for about an hour to an hour and half, but I won’t leave until my client is happy with the coffee they are making,” she says.
Jane can work with any espresso coffee machine, but says semi-automatic coffee machines are better than fully automated. “Automated coffee machines don’t really allow you to make tweaks here and there,” she says.
Whilst it may have been a little unorthodox to give serve up a cup of instant coffee to a ten-year-old, Jane says that ever since starting that precious ritual with her grandparents, coffee has got her through Uni, long working hours, pregnancy, parenting and plenty of happy social occasions. “It’s like a hug in a cup,” Jane says, clasping the mug in front of her.
Through Find the Grind, Jane is not just in the business of helping people perfect their coffee-making skills, she is helping them to create treasured little moments in every single day.
This article featured in the Autumn 2022 edition of Ballarat Living Magazine.