In December the European Bartender School invited me to be a special guest at their ‘Introduction to Bartending’ event; held at their school in London. I love watching as a proper cocktail is made at the bar, so I jumped at the chance to go behind the scenes at a top school for future bartenders. Better still, I was able to take two friends along to share in the experience, so on the day I made my way over to Bermondsey with Pippa and Fran.
We even got to meet Tom Dyer who’s a heavyweight in the bartending and flair industries, with over 70 awards under his belt.
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| img c/o Tell Your Story Photography |
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First off we learned what any good bartender needs to master: the art of free pouring. This is how bartenders accurately pour the correct quantity for each cocktail ingredient without having to use a measure.
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After a rocky start, I soon got the hang of the technique and was amazed at how easy it was to pour out a perfect 25ml measure every single time. It’s all down to counting as you pour.
Naturally I celebrated with a mojito.
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Things got a bit tricky when we were encouraged to have a go at free pouring with two hands and two bottles at once – I lost all coordination at this point, so it was lucky that we were using practice bottles filled with water!
Once we’d all got to grips with this basic skill, we moved onto learning a few classic cocktails.
…after I was given a little step up! #shortgirlproblems.
We had our own ‘bar’ to work with fully equipped with everything that we’d need, and followed the lead of our instructor who talked us through each step, all the way from free pouring the ingredients, to using a cocktail shaker, to finally laying out a napkin with a flourish at the end.
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As you can see my free pouring was a little bit on the stingy side. This was due to me trying to make the cocktails with one hand whilst filming it all with the other (I gave up on cocktail 3 as two hands were definitely required!).
We even got taught a few tips on how to make more than one cocktail at once, which might just look showy if you’re at a bar, but actually it’s a technique used to make sure that everyone in a group gets their cocktail at a similar time!
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Then we had a short break and were treated to one of the most DELICIOUS cocktails I’ve ever tasted. It’s made with Licor 43 and really REALLY tasted like lemon meringue pie. Alcoholic liquid lemon meringue pie. OMG yum.
If you’d like to make it at home, head over to Fran’s blog for the recipe.
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So at this point we’d mastered free pouring and we’d (kind of) mastered mixology. It was time to add in that missing magical element: Flair.
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This was the most challenging, hilarious and scary part of the day. We were taught a routine which involved chucking bottles of liquid in the air and attempting to catch them behind our backs. I was absolutely rubbish at this as I panicked every time I had to catch the bottle and was too scared to catch it properly.
I did master spinning a napkin and catching it on the back of my hand and twirling a straw on my finger though, which are the safer ones to reattempt at home!
It’s actually very physical and left us all a bit bruised afterwards from trying to bounce bottles off of various parts of our hands and arm, as well as plenty of spinning and twirling. After 20 minutes we’d been through a proper workout.
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Rather than showing you my feeble attempts, here’s what it looks like when a professional ‘flairs’! (Sorry for the dark start to the footage, it gets lighter halfway through when I changed the setting!).
A big thanks go to the European Bartender School and their sponsors Licor 43 for inviting me along to take part in this special event. I had an absolute blast, picked up some brilliant tips and gained a new found respect for bartenders….and these guys sure do know how to have fun too! 😉
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Have you tried making cocktails or doing any ‘flair’ work? Or even thought about learning how to bartend professionally?
Photos marked c/o Tell Your Story Photography are courtesy of Oana Brasoveanu. You can check out her gorgeous Instagram feed here: https://www.instagram.com/oanabrasoveanu/ .
For more information on the European Bartender School visit barschool.net.
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