I seem to commence everything in fits and starts these days.
After locating the nearest bartender's school (an hour and a half away from me in Riverside, just off CA-91), I went down there in person in early November to inspect the place and sign on if favorably impressed.
Well, I wasn't favorably impressed. Not right off the bat, anyway. The place was damned hard to find, to begin with: hiding in a shopping center, facing away from the one-way street. From outside, the place looked more like a used car dealership than a school: black-tinted storefront windows, all hand-painted with promotional missives like WE TRAIN BARTENDERS and so on.
Then I went through the door and everything changed.
It was as if I'd stepped into an actual bar. There was a long semicircular counter enveloping the entire western half of the room. Behind it was a positively mind-boggling assortment of bottles, ranging from old friends like Bacardi and Seagram's 7 to complete strangers like Frangelico and Chambord.
On the bar stools (and the overstuffed couches and armchair nearby) slouched a motley assortment of wannabe bartenders. Somebody ought to inform the U.S. Census. The next time they need a cross-section of the population for whatever reason, they ought to go to bartender's school. There were middle-aged women, young glamor girls made up beyond all recognition, young guns covered in muscles and tattoos, edgy types with black leather jackets, spiked hair, thick glasses and goatees.
And there's me, the World's Number One Square, standing in the back.
I had arrived just in time for the free demonstration. A lady (let's call her Nat) was up behind the bar, showing everybody how to mix different drinks. She called out to me in a jovial voice to sit down and feel free. She then proceeded (in bawdy style) to conduct a lesson in mixology. She was aided in this by some of the drinks that were on the syllabus: the slow comfortable screw and sex on the beach ranking prominently among them. She regaled us with licentious anecdotes while deftly and artfully creating cocktails. I was impressed with the ease and speed with which she conducted her work: she was mixing, pouring, stirring, garnishing, all the time lecturing seamlessly. I began to feel like I was in the right place.
After taking a look at the textbook and seeing how thorough it was (covering everything about bartending, including customer service and POS sales, not just mixing drinks), I was suitably piqued. I didn't sign on right then and there, but I did get some informational materials from Nat and contact info. I departed, satisfied that I was on the right track.
It didn't take me long to decide that I wanted to go for it.
I went back down on the 21st of November. I intended to actually attend class that day, too. Unfortunately, my notoriously bad timing struck again. I arrived on the one day out of the whole month when there was no regular class. Instead, a ServSafe course was in progress, being taught by "Wade," the head of the school. You have to sign up for it in advance; moreover, I'd walked in halfway through it.
Insert lengthy string of expletives here. Hour and a half drive, for naught.
Well, not really. I did take the time (and some of Wade's lunch break) to physically sign up for classes. I paid my deposit, received my study materials and got some homework: create flashcards for and memorize 20 drinks from Lesson 4 (two-liquor drinks).
(On my folks' advice, I'd elected to attend the weekend classes instead of the weekday classes. I'd save some gas money that way. On the weekends they had two classes per day instead of one, making the whole thing more economical. If I played my cards right, I could be finished in three or four weeks.)
The weekend after the 21st was Thanksgiving weekend; obviously the school was closed. That made the next available weekend...
...this one.
December 4 rolled around inauspiciously. I'd hit the flashcards hard during the two-week interim, studying them until I knew the names and corresponding recipes backwards and forwards. And so I walked in the door feeling pretty confident (especially having been there twice before).
I got supremely lucky. As it happened, I was the only one present who wanted a regular lesson taught. Everybody else was busy practicing their mixing. That meant I got to have a little one-on-one time with Wade. He got me oriented behind the bar. Since no actual liquors or mixers were actually used in practice (that would be both a terrible waste and an awful temptation), Wade clued me in which bottles were which. The liquor bottles were easy enough, seeing as how they still had labels, but the mixers were color-coded: red (cranberry juice), yellow (pineapple or grapefruit juice), orange (orange juice), green (lime juice), and white (cream).
Then Wade got me started on my counts. The speed-pour nozzles on the bottles let out liquor at a constant rate. A quick count of 1-2-3-4 equaled one ounce. So Wade gave me a mixing glass and a jigger and set me to practice pouring precise amounts: a half-ounce (two count), an ounce, an ounce and a half, and two ounces. After I'd practiced this for about 15 minutes, I felt confident enough to call Wade back and have him test me. He was satisfied.
First hurdle cleared!
Then I got started on my actual homework. I set myself to mixing the drinks I'd so assiduously memorized. Rusty nail, Marlon Brando, godfather, brave bull, white Russian...
Rocks glass, filled with ice, an ounce and a half of primary liquor, a half ounce of secondary liquors...
I banged away at it for two hours, not even pausing to eat. I had to stop and refill all the bottles I was using, too, because I ran out after a while (busy night at the bar). To do this I had to painstakingly fill up every bottle in the little sink there behind the bar, and then apply the correct amount of food coloring to tinge it the appropriate shade (brown for brandies, whiskies and rums; yellow for Galliano and crème de bananes; and purple for Chambord and blackberry brandy...but the gins and vodkas were easy).
I was practicing, I discovered something quite startling: I was having fun. I had been unsure, deep in my heart of hearts, whether I truly wanted to learn to be a bartender, and then be one. That afternoon I got some reaffirmation from above (or rather, to the side, from the liquor shelves). It was a kick to be standing there and serving up cocktails at flank speed. My imagination had no trouble populating the other side of the bar with an ensemble of witty, memorable, colorful folk. The rest was bliss: conversation, jokes, and good-natured ragging, all the choicest bits of social interaction.
Yes, I did intend to finish school and become a barkeep. Seemed to good to pass up all of a sudden.
After I thought I had a handle on the drinks, Wade came and gave me a time test. After every chapter, students are expected to memorize and master the mixing of select drinks from that lesson. They must mix twelve of them in six minutes or less.
Now, I'll grant you that Lesson 4 (the one I started on) is the easiest lesson of them all, but I was still mighty pleased with the time I got: three minutes and forty-five seconds. Even Wade said it was "pretty fudgin' good" (only he didn't say "fudgin'").
I cleaned up behind the bar, made sure I had all the bottles refilled, got the green light to clear out from Wade, and vacated the premises with a happy bubble of sunlight floating around in my ribcage. I'd made a go of it. I'd had an auspicious start. Things were looking good. I hadn't butchered my time-test, I'd memorized the drinks perfectly, had gotten a handle on the preliminary techniques of mixing, and (most importantly), remembered why I was there in the first place.
The next day, Saturday, was cream drinks and cocktails. There were only ten items on the cream drinks list, but we were warned that they were challenging to mix in under six minutes due to the intricacy involved: chilling a stemmed glass, pouring into a mixing glass, shaking, and straining. Dan was teaching today, and he was entertaining and accommodating. After the lesson I practiced for a while behind the bar, trying to develop a rhythm as Dan had suggested.
I shot out for a quick lunch at Carl's Junior (yuck, the Six-Dollar Cheeseburger only had meat, cheese, pickles and onions...what bullsqueeze!), then came back for the second lesson. It was cocktails: 40 of the most common, popular drinks served in drinking establishments.
Hot diggity dog! Cocktails, my favorite!
It was a very interesting lesson to watch. Dan mixed, poured, and expostulated, his hands whirring about behind the bar. We students present watched in fascination, occasionally asking a pertinent question.
Then the lesson concluded, and we broke up for the day.
I'm not concerned about having 50 drinks to memorize by next weekend. I'll figure something out. I can't wait to hear about shooters and shots...
Monday, December 7, 2009
School of Hooch
I seem to commence everything in fits and starts these days.
After locating the nearest bartender's school (an hour and a half away from me in Riverside, just off CA-91), I went down there in person in early November to inspect the place and sign on if favorably impressed.
Well, I wasn't favorably impressed. Not right off the bat, anyway. The place was damned hard to find, to begin with: hiding in a shopping center, facing away from the one-way street. From outside, the place looked more like a used car dealership than a school: black-tinted storefront windows, all hand-painted with promotional missives like WE TRAIN BARTENDERS and so on.
Then I went through the door and everything changed.
It was as if I'd stepped into an actual bar. There was a long semicircular counter enveloping the entire western half of the room. Behind it was a positively mind-boggling assortment of bottles, ranging from old friends like Bacardi and Seagram's 7 to complete strangers like Frangelico and Chambord.
On the bar stools (and the overstuffed couches and armchair nearby) slouched a motley assortment of wannabe bartenders. Somebody ought to inform the U.S. Census. The next time they need a cross-section of the population for whatever reason, they ought to go to bartender's school. There were middle-aged women, young glamor girls made up beyond all recognition, young guns covered in muscles and tattoos, edgy types with black leather jackets, spiked hair, thick glasses and goatees.
And there's me, the World's Number One Square, standing in the back.
I had arrived just in time for the free demonstration. A lady (let's call her Nat) was up behind the bar, showing everybody how to mix different drinks. She called out to me in a jovial voice to sit down and feel free. She then proceeded (in bawdy style) to conduct a lesson in mixology. She was aided in this by some of the drinks that were on the syllabus: the slow comfortable screw and sex on the beach ranking prominently among them. She regaled us with licentious anecdotes while deftly and artfully creating cocktails. I was impressed with the ease and speed with which she conducted her work: she was mixing, pouring, stirring, garnishing, all the time lecturing seamlessly. I began to feel like I was in the right place.
After taking a look at the textbook and seeing how thorough it was (covering everything about bartending, including customer service and POS sales, not just mixing drinks), I was suitably piqued. I didn't sign on right then and there, but I did get some informational materials from Nat and contact info. I departed, satisfied that I was on the right track.
It didn't take me long to decide that I wanted to go for it.
I went back down on the 21st of November. I intended to actually attend class that day, too. Unfortunately, my notoriously bad timing struck again. I arrived on the one day out of the whole month when there was no regular class. Instead, a ServSafe course was in progress, being taught by "Wade," the head of the school. You have to sign up for it in advance; moreover, I'd walked in halfway through it.
Insert lengthy string of expletives here. Hour and a half drive, for naught.
Well, not really. I did take the time (and some of Wade's lunch break) to physically sign up for classes. I paid my deposit, received my study materials and got some homework: create flashcards for and memorize 20 drinks from Lesson 4 (two-liquor drinks).
(On my folks' advice, I'd elected to attend the weekend classes instead of the weekday classes. I'd save some gas money that way. On the weekends they had two classes per day instead of one, making the whole thing more economical. If I played my cards right, I could be finished in three or four weeks.)
The weekend after the 21st was Thanksgiving weekend; obviously the school was closed. That made the next available weekend...
...this one.
December 4 rolled around inauspiciously. I'd hit the flashcards hard during the two-week interim, studying them until I knew the names and corresponding recipes backwards and forwards. And so I walked in the door feeling pretty confident (especially having been there twice before).
I got supremely lucky. As it happened, I was the only one present who wanted a regular lesson taught. Everybody else was busy practicing their mixing. That meant I got to have a little one-on-one time with Wade. He got me oriented behind the bar. Since no actual liquors or mixers were actually used in practice (that would be both a terrible waste and an awful temptation), Wade clued me in which bottles were which. The liquor bottles were easy enough, seeing as how they still had labels, but the mixers were color-coded: red (cranberry juice), yellow (pineapple or grapefruit juice), orange (orange juice), green (lime juice), and white (cream).
Then Wade got me started on my counts. The speed-pour nozzles on the bottles let out liquor at a constant rate. A quick count of 1-2-3-4 equaled one ounce. So Wade gave me a mixing glass and a jigger and set me to practice pouring precise amounts: a half-ounce (two count), an ounce, an ounce and a half, and two ounces. After I'd practiced this for about 15 minutes, I felt confident enough to call Wade back and have him test me. He was satisfied.
First hurdle cleared!
Then I got started on my actual homework. I set myself to mixing the drinks I'd so assiduously memorized. Rusty nail, Marlon Brando, godfather, brave bull, white Russian...
Rocks glass, filled with ice, an ounce and a half of primary liquor, a half ounce of secondary liquors...
I banged away at it for two hours, not even pausing to eat. I had to stop and refill all the bottles I was using, too, because I ran out after a while (busy night at the bar). To do this I had to painstakingly fill up every bottle in the little sink there behind the bar, and then apply the correct amount of food coloring to tinge it the appropriate shade (brown for brandies, whiskies and rums; yellow for Galliano and crème de bananes; and purple for Chambord and blackberry brandy...but the gins and vodkas were easy).
I was practicing, I discovered something quite startling: I was having fun. I had been unsure, deep in my heart of hearts, whether I truly wanted to learn to be a bartender, and then be one. That afternoon I got some reaffirmation from above (or rather, to the side, from the liquor shelves). It was a kick to be standing there and serving up cocktails at flank speed. My imagination had no trouble populating the other side of the bar with an ensemble of witty, memorable, colorful folk. The rest was bliss: conversation, jokes, and good-natured ragging, all the choicest bits of social interaction.
Yes, I did intend to finish school and become a barkeep. Seemed to good to pass up all of a sudden.
After I thought I had a handle on the drinks, Wade came and gave me a time test. After every chapter, students are expected to memorize and master the mixing of select drinks from that lesson. They must mix twelve of them in six minutes or less.
Now, I'll grant you that Lesson 4 (the one I started on) is the easiest lesson of them all, but I was still mighty pleased with the time I got: three minutes and forty-five seconds. Even Wade said it was "pretty fudgin' good" (only he didn't say "fudgin'").
I cleaned up behind the bar, made sure I had all the bottles refilled, got the green light to clear out from Wade, and vacated the premises with a happy bubble of sunlight floating around in my ribcage. I'd made a go of it. I'd had an auspicious start. Things were looking good. I hadn't butchered my time-test, I'd memorized the drinks perfectly, had gotten a handle on the preliminary techniques of mixing, and (most importantly), remembered why I was there in the first place.
The next day, Saturday, was cream drinks and cocktails. There were only ten items on the cream drinks list, but we were warned that they were challenging to mix in under six minutes due to the intricacy involved: chilling a stemmed glass, pouring into a mixing glass, shaking, and straining. Dan was teaching today, and he was entertaining and accommodating. After the lesson I practiced for a while behind the bar, trying to develop a rhythm as Dan had suggested.
I shot out for a quick lunch at Carl's Junior (yuck, the Six-Dollar Cheeseburger only had meat, cheese, pickles and onions...what bullsqueeze!), then came back for the second lesson. It was cocktails: 40 of the most common, popular drinks served in drinking establishments.
Hot diggity dog! Cocktails, my favorite!
It was a very interesting lesson to watch. Dan mixed, poured, and expostulated, his hands whirring about behind the bar. We students present watched in fascination, occasionally asking a pertinent question.
Then the lesson concluded, and we broke up for the day.
I'm not concerned about having 50 drinks to memorize by next weekend. I'll figure something out. I can't wait to hear about shooters and shots...
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6 comments:
Coming back to read this: I teach Ballroom on Monday night. (Which is a really bad business model I know, but Greg and Lisa really need me!)
Tonight is: Fox Trot, Swing, Rumba, and a review of The Cupid Shuffle and Electric Slide.
Next week: Waltz.
I have lesson plans in my head good for two years, easy.
Anyway, will be back.
Ballroom! No business-model justification needed! Man, I really need to learn how to swing dance/rumba/ballroom-go. What's the Cupid Shuffle?
Will await your return...
Dear dear Postman - Once again I'm so glad I found you. This is just fascinating!
I really think you and EC should go into a business together - just imagine the kind of awesome establishment you two could run together! And since Taos is halfway between Dallas and Apple Valley, you could have it here!
Why, thank you, Pollinatrix! You always say the nicest things. I really, truly appreciate it.
Oooh...yeah, she could do the books, and I could do the drinks, and we'd leave everybody feelin' satisfied. We could call it "The Whole Blooming Sententious Entrepreneur" of Taos. You could come in for free drinks anytime you wanted, especially after a busy day at the board, and we'd all have such fun explaining the name to whoever asked!
You know, I was just thinking about how we're all lined up like that: California, New Mexico and Texas. Is there a big winter storm anywhere near you?
My book keeper can do the books, other than that, I like it! Love it! Want more of it.
The Whole Blooming Sententious Entrepreneur! That's awesome.
It's only fair that we should do this in Taos because it's in the middle, and anyhow, you'll fly me out when I need to go, right Postman?
Did you hear Polly and I are getting married?
But seriously, I loved this whole post, you are just too darling and I am very, very glad you have that gut feeling and know your move to go in this direction is the right one.
I want to hear more about this. And, if it's no problem, can you suggest some period drinks for our Retro Dinner Club? I think we are going with the 1950's to start.
Sure. I'm down for flying anybody (except for idiots, and you fortunately don't qualify for that moniker) anywhere (except for maybe Somalia...well, okay, if you throw in a bottle of Irish whiskey) anytime (except...well, no exceptions).
Thanks very much! Yeah, this whole bartending thing is startin' to work out fine. I appreciate the approbation. I'll keep you "posted."
Period drinks...well, for the 1950s, it'd be hard to get much more dated than the Old-Fashioned! I think I posted that recipe up here. There's also martinis, Manhattans, and daiquiris. There's my personal favorite, the whiskey sour (Mom really likes 'em too).
I think you and your retro-posse might enjoy a Tom Collins (two ounces gin, a teaspoon superfine sugar, and an ounce lemon juice, shaken; poured into a highball glace with ice and garnished with three ounces club soda, a cherry, and an orange slice).
Sidecars are good too (2 ounces brandy, a half ounce of triple sec, and an ounce of lemon juice, shaken and poured into a cocktail glass).
Let me know how it goes. I've kept the Retro Dinner Club idea in mind ever since you suggested it and would very much like to try it if I get some interested parties, a dinner jacket, and some more brandy. I think I might need a humidor at some point, too...
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