Learn from what you Already Know in Mixology Mnemonics Part 2.  Learn More about using Key Imagery to represent fractions of ounces, garnishes, and glassware in Part 3 of this series. 

MNEMONIC MIXOLOGY

and The World of Advanced Memory Systems

If you’re on this page then you’re curios as to how bartenders memorize so many drinks. For the brief two years or so that I was a bartending instructor the number one question I was privately pulled aside to ask me by worried students was “How do you remember so many drink recipes?” That was a simple question – but my answer, for how I do it, overwhelmed them. The owner of the school often came out of her office to watch me teach and said I wasn’t looking at the lesson plan set up on the instructor stand behind our lecture and training room bar. I always told her the same thing: “I don’t need the paper – I know the drink recipes.” The other school instructors occasionally got mixed up on quantities and had to check the book to make sure – with my method, I knew exactly with 100% certainty what the full recipe – to the drop, garnish, glass, and mixing method was.


 

The World of

Advanced Memory Systems

The link above will take you to the forum for the Art of Memory. It’s a great site frequented by world class memory experts, world champion memory contest award winners, memory act stage magicians, memory book authors, anonymous gamblers who memorize multiple card decks (52 decks at a time) and, and beginners just starting out who want to memorize a grocery list. I’ve been a member for a while. You’re going to want to head over to that forum, sign up (free) and start poking around to find out what the various simple to advanced memory systems there are in existence, how each one works, how each one is useful for which memorization tasks, and how to combine them so they cover each type of material that you’re memorizing. Memorizing math equations is different from memorizing a list of grocery items. Memorizing guitar frets and finger positioning is different from memorizing a piano keyboard. And memorizing complex craft cocktail drink recipes is different from memorizing basic trendy drinks and shooters.

The systems I use:

Ever heard of the Memory Palace system of mnemonics?



Picture this: you’re strolling through a grand, imaginary mansion—your very own ‘palace’—where every room, quirky statue, or hidden nook holds a juicy tidbit of info you need to remember. Known as the ‘method of loci,’ this ancient Greek and Roman brain hack turns your mind into a living map. You drop facts like breadcrumbs along a familiar path, then retrace your steps to scoop them up effortlessly. It’s your brain’s superpower for spatial memory, unleashed to conquer forgetfulness with a dash of creativity! That should be simple enough… but then there’s the Dominic System using PAO – Person, Action, Object – Complex, for the most complex of memory tasks – but you don’t have to use ALL of it – just take the parts you need for bartending and plug them into what you’re memorizing (as you’ll see in my examples below on this page)

Get ready to supercharge your memory with the Dominic System

—a turbocharged twist on the classic Dominic System, crafted by memory maestro Dominic O’Brien. PAO stands for Person-Action-Object, a triple-threat combo that turns numbers into dynamic cinematic mental scenes where YOU play the director. Here’s the gist: each two-digit number (00-99) gets a unique letter pair, linked to a memorable person (like 13 = ‘AC’ = Al Capone). Then, you assign that person a signature action (say, shooting a gun) and an object (like a diamond). To recall a string of digits—like 132578—break it into chunks (13-25-78), picture Al Capone (13) playing the fiddle (action from 25 = Nero) with a kite (object from 78), and watch the sequence lock into your brain like a vivid movie trailer. It’s a systematic, story-driven upgrade that makes memorizing long numbers feel like directing your own blockbuster!

Sound crazy and too complex? “That’s too much extra shit – why not just memorize the drink recipe?” …. only after 200 recipes that “simply memorize the drink” argument falls apart, not fast, but REAL FAST. I’ve been doing the advanced systems right from the start – and it works 100% of the time when you get the directed imagery in your head right!



And now for MY personal favorite base system – the MAJOR SYSTEM:

Introduction to the Major System of Mnemonics


Memory is a powerful tool, yet it often feels elusive—names slip away, numbers vanish, and facts blur into oblivion. What if there were a way to transform abstract, hard-to-remember information into vivid, unforgettable images? Enter the Major System, a classic mnemonic technique that turns numbers into memorable stories. Developed centuries ago and popularized in the modern era by memory experts Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas, this system is a cornerstone of memory training. Whether you’re a student cramming for exams, a professional juggling data, or simply someone who wants to recall a grocery list without a notepad, the Major System offers a creative, reliable method to lock information into your mind. In this post, we’ll explore what the Major System is, how it works, and a few examples to get you started on your memory journey.

What Is the Major System?

The Major System (sometimes called the “Major Mnemonic System”) is a phonetic-based memory technique designed to encode numbers into words, which are then transformed into vivid mental images. First documented in the 17th century by Johann Winkelmann and later refined by others, it gained widespread fame through the works of Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas, particularly in their book The Memory Book (1974). The system assigns consonant sounds to the digits 0 through 9, based not on their spelling but on how they sound when spoken. Vowels and silent letters are ignored, acting as “fillers” to build meaningful words. These words are then linked to images, tapping into the brain’s natural preference for visual memory over rote recall.


Here’s the standard phonetic code as classically defined:


0: S or Z (soft sounds, like “zero” starting with z)

1: T, D, or TH (one vertical stroke, like a “t” or “d”)

2: N (two downward strokes, like “n”)

3: M (three downward strokes, like “m”)

4: R (the “r” sound relates to “four” in some languages)

5: L (Roman numeral L is 50)

6: J, SH, CH, or soft G (curved shapes resembling “6”)

7: K, hard G, or hard C (angular like “7”)

8: F or V, or PH (script “f” looks like “8”) as in Phone

9: P or B (mirror image of “9”)


To use it, you convert a number into a word by matching its digits to these sounds, then visualize that word in a memorable way. For example, the number 32 becomes “man” (M=3, N=2), which you might picture as a man in a bright red hat. The system’s beauty lies in its flexibility—once mastered, it can encode dates, phone numbers, or even entire sequences like pi, which is an endless calculation, to as many digits as you wish to dedicate time to memorizing.

Examples of the Major System in Action
Let’s walk through a few examples to see how Lorayne and Lucas might have taught this technique:


Number: 15
Code: 1 = T/D/TH, 5 = L

Word: “Tail”, “Doll”

Image: Picture a dog wagging a bushy tail. If you’re memorizing a list and item 15 is “buy milk,” imagine the dog’s tail knocking over a milk carton. The absurdity makes it stick.

Number: 49
Code: 4 = R, 9 = P/B

Word: “Rope”, “Robe”, “Reap”, Ruby”, “Rabbi”

Image: Visualize a cowboy swinging a rope. If 49 represents a historical year (e.g., 1949), imagine the cowboy roping a giant calendar page. Lorayne loved emphasizing vivid, exaggerated scenes like this.

Number: 73

Code: 7 = K, hard G, hard C, 3 = M

Word: “Comb”, “Kimmy”, “Game”  

Image: See a king (K) combing his golden hair with a jeweled comb. If 73 is part of a phone number, link it to the next digits with a story—say, the king combs his hair before a call.

These examples showcase the system’s core principle: numbers become words, words become pictures, and pictures become memories. Lorayne and Lucas stressed practice—start with two-digit numbers, build a personal “dictionary” of words, and soon you’ll recall 10-digit strings like a memory champion.

This draft provides an engaging intro, a clear definition rooted in Lorayne and Lucas’s work, and practical examples. Let me know if you’d like to tweak the tone, add more detail, or adjust anything else!

That’s ONE of my all time favorites… but there’s one more:

Introduction to the Aboriginal Journey Method

Imagine walking through a landscape where every rock, tree, and riverbend holds a story—a map of knowledge etched into the earth itself. For over 60,000 years, Aboriginal Australians, part of the world’s oldest continuous cultures, have used such landscapes to preserve vast amounts of information without writing. This technique, often referred to as the “Aboriginal Journey Method” or “songline method,” transforms the physical world into a living mnemonic device. Unlike Western memory tricks that rely on repetition or abstract lists, this method weaves facts into narratives tied to specific places, making them unforgettable across generations. Today, Australian scholars like Lynne Kelly and researchers from Monash University are uncovering how this ancient practice not only rivals but often surpasses modern memory techniques, offering insights for education, science, and beyond. In this post, we’ll define the Aboriginal Journey Method, explore its mechanics, and share examples of how it works in practice.

What Is the Aboriginal Journey Method?

The Aboriginal Journey Method is a mnemonic system that encodes knowledge—such as navigation routes, tribal laws, or ecological data—into stories linked to physical locations in the landscape. Often expressed through “songlines” (a term for the sung narratives that map the land), this method relies on the human brain’s natural affinity for spatial memory and storytelling. As explained by Lynne Kelly in The Memory Code (2016), Aboriginal cultures use the environment as a structured “memory palace,” where each landmark serves as a cue for a piece of information, and a narrative ties it all together. Scholars like Tyson Yunkaporta, an Indigenous educator, emphasize that these narratives often feature vivid characters—ancestral beings, animals, or spirits—making the information emotionally engaging and easier to recall.

Recent studies, such as those by David Reser and Yunkaporta (published in PLOS One, 2021), highlight its effectiveness. Unlike the Greek “memory palace,” which places data in an imagined building, the Journey Method uses real, tangible places, enriched with cultural stories. For example, a sequence of trees might represent a food-gathering process, with each tree tied to a verse in a song. This dual layering—spatial and narrative—creates a robust memory framework, proven to enhance recall significantly more than rote learning or even Western mnemonic techniques. It’s a dynamic, oral tradition, passed down through ceremonies, songs, and dances, ensuring survival-critical knowledge endures.

Examples of the Aboriginal Journey Method in Action
Here are a few examples, inspired by contemporary scholarship and Aboriginal practices:

Navigating the Outback: The Butterfly List
Scenario: In Reser and Yunkaporta’s study, medical students memorized 20 butterfly names using the Journey Method.

Method: An Indigenous educator led them through a campus garden, crafting a story where each butterfly species was a character interacting with a specific landmark (e.g., a rock or tree). For instance, “Monarch” might be a king resting on a stone, while “Swallowtail” swoops near a twisted branch.

Outcome: Students recalled the list nearly three times better than with the memory palace, linking the narrative journey to the physical path they walked.

Ecological Knowledge: The Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle
Scenario: Nutrition students at Monash University learned the eight-step tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, a complex biochemical process.

Method: A story was set in a garden with eight lemon-scented gum trees. Each tree represented a step (e.g., citrate to isocitrate), with a tale of a spirit transforming food into energy as it moved from tree to tree. The smell of the trees and the story’s progression anchored the sequence.

Outcome: Students found it “creative and fun,” with recall outperforming traditional study methods, as noted in the 2021 study.

Cultural Memory: Songlines of the Euahlayi People
Scenario: As described by Kelly, the Euahlayi people of New South Wales used songlines to recall trade routes.

Method: A song narrated a journey past landmarks like rivers and hills, with each verse detailing resources (e.g., ochre at a red cliff) or meeting points. Singing the song while traveling reinforced the memory.

Outcome: This method preserved knowledge for millennia, with oral traditions even recording sea-level rises from 7,000 years ago, validated by modern geology.

These examples illustrate the Journey Method’s power: it’s not just about memorizing but about connecting deeply with place and story. Australian scholars today see it as a bridge between ancient wisdom and modern learning, with applications far beyond its origins.

So what’s all that got to do with BARTENDING???? MEMORIZING CLASSIC, CONTEMPORARY, MODERN, AND TRENDY COCKTAIL AND SHOT RECIPES?


Ahhh… THERE, my friend, is the rub, as Sherlock Holmes would have said.  

It is the beginning of your journey into the mysteries of unlocking your ability to memorize every set of new drinks you will ever need or want to learn, more accurately and in less time than you could have imagined, and with absolute and complete confidence and total accuracy in every detail without having to check – straight from your head – and be able to tell any fellow bartender exactly what the exact recipe is from total, trained, recall.



Now you can move on to Page Two: 
https://uporonthe.rocks/bartending-lessons/mixology-mnemonics/  

How to memorize fractions of ounces when bartending:

Mixology Mnemonics I'm a member of about a dozen Facebook Bartending and tightly related groups. In the largest group where things go off the hook most often, the mention of Mnemonics brought out rabid attacks and comments such as "Why not just learn the drinks? Learning using mnemonics is a whole lot of extra shit!"? They become very upset and irrational, won't discuss memory techniques, and aren't open to learning or examining any research or test results.  In one scientific study (Morrison, C.R. & Levin, J.R. 1987. Degree of mnemonic support and students' acquisition of science facts. Education Communication and Technology Journal, 35[2], 67-74) just using the Keyword method alone, where students applied the keyword method their recall (pulling the info directly out of their brains without any clues or multiple choice) was 80%, vs 16% recall when they didn't use the keyword mnemonics. So what that means is, if they had 100 drinks to remember the recipes for, they got 80% to 81% (for these two scientific study groups of students) right using the keyword method, but only either 16 drinks or 45 drinks out of 100 right, if they didn't use the keyword method, same amount of study.  What this study clearly shows is that just using keywords alone, this one single type of mnemonic, bartenders who use this method are FIVE TIMES better than bartenders who don't (80 divided by 16 = 5), and ONE POINT SEVEN TIMES better than bartenders who had the choice to use them or not use them. That is a MASSIVELY huge difference. In the same mnemonic study research group of subjects, when students were not told to use any method at all, just to "try your hardest to remember", without being told to use, or not use keywords, where they did use keywords, their recall was 81%, but where they used whatever non specific study methods came to mind (or which they were familiar with [whether effective or ineffective], including keywords), their recall was just 45%. In both cases, NOT using keywords resulted in what would be graded as an F.  So that's where I am starting, with what's been researched and proven to be effective in scientific double blind (the most accurate and trustworthy) studies. What I've done myself though, is to take a multi mnemonic method approach to learning, and specifically focused on exact pour amounts, from fractions of ounces, to splashes, to dashes, to drops... as well as remembering which glassware and garnish are assigned to each drink.   And that's just one of the differences that makes this site unique¹ - starting right now, as of today.  One of the most often asked questions I got as a bartending instructor was


"How do you remember all of the drink recipes?"

That's a really good question!

Fortunately for me, before I became a bartender I had already studied advanced memory techniques (the "Classical Art of Memory", as the Freemasons call it, and "The Major System") while in my last years of High School reading The Memory Book by Harry Lorraine and Jerry Lucas. Had I learned those techniques when I was in the 7th and 8th grades I'd probably have become a doctor, engineer, or lawyer instead of tending bar. There are many different types of Mnemonics though, and at the time I learned to tend bar, I became familiar with some, but did not know all of them.

So, as a new student to Bartending, I had full access to the power of the most advanced Mnemonics of that day.

And now, fortunately for you here on my site, I have learned many more extremely powerful techniques to help you learn complex drink recipes with absolute accuracy (1/2 oz., 1/4 oz., 1/3 oz., 3/4 oz., 1 1/4 oz., plus glassware and garnishes, etc. so that you'll never be one of those sub-par average type "Some of this, and some of that" bartenders who will never become the best, and rise above the rest.

Oh sure, SOME OF YOU who come to this site may have been blessed with totally terrific, super nifty, whiz-bang, near perfect memories (or you keep telling yourself that) and you don't have to work at it, BUT IF YOU'RE NOT one of them - then this part of the site (which I'm in the process of adding in as of today) will help you get to perfect total drink recipe recall, even if you have to try a little bit harder, because it's worth it, and because once you master the techniques you CAN do it!

First let me point you to a site I still use on occasion right now that goes way beyond what I started out with when I was learning from Harry Lorraine and Jerry Lucas when I was a kid. It's Dr. Anthony Metivier's website MagneticMemoryMethod.com . I'm a member of his Master Class (a few hundred bucks a year, but if you're advanced, it's well worth the money, and rewarding him for his research, content, and dedication is my great pleasure).

So that said, besides the drink recipe portion of this site (and my wonderful articles ranging from brilliant, to tongue in cheek, to absolutely insane) I'm going to teach you how to memorize exact drink proportions, glassware, garnishes, and ingredients using a multitude of proven systems. You're going to be able to adapt and personalize the way you apply various systems (singly or in combination) to each drink you find you're having trouble with, and in general save a lot of time wasted searching, and become far more confident in yourself, both behind the bar, and in life in general as you apply the methods and systems we'll go over. I may include live and/or recorded video specific to this subject as well.

Of course, even without these methods and systems you'll be able to memorize a lot of drinks, but you will find (even after bartending for years, or decades, that SOME drinks will ALWAYS slip your mind and drive you nuts, sometimes because they're complicated AND you don't have to make them a lot, or more often, seemingly without any reason at all because they LOOK ridiculously easy every single time you have to remind yourself what's in them again (for the 9 millionth time!).

Don't go running to Google.

I build websites too and know Search Engine Optimization. So I know that when you do a search for "Keoke Coffee" this week, you'll get one website for the recipe up on top of the results, and in two months you'll get a different website showing up with a different recipe, and then a week after that, a third site will rise up with another recipe, so you're never making it the same way twice, and thus you'll never really learn "the" (your) recipe.

Don't Rely on Google!

Know your drinks instead. When it's super busy is when you'll get five or even twenty drink orders in a night that you've made before, but can't remember now. And that's the kind of thing that'll get you swamped or "in the weeds", looking like an amateur, and waking up gasping for air at night having nightmares about work.

What are you going to do then? Stop making drinks for everyone at the bar each time someone orders one of these drinks you've forgotten, dry off your wet hands, and grab for your phone to look them up?

What happens when you're in a place that won't allow you to use your phone? What happens when you lose or forget your phone or the battery dies? Or worse,  you're on a new job and the boss is watching you and you don't know your drinks, it's 5 deep, and everyone's screaming "Bartender!"?

I'll show you the techniques and talk about them, adding a few tips to each of the recipes too over time (beneath, so you can get the recipe quickly), so you can check out different ways of approaching memorization.

How Hard Is Learning These Methods? 

Sometimes they're pretty simple techniques, rhymes, goofy easy to remember sentences, a single word (acronym), and a few easy to picture objects, actors, and actions going on in a place that's familiar to you... Something as simple as the Keoke Coffee above might be "Ke-O-Ke, KBB" (Kahlua, Brandy, Brown Cacao), which works for me. It may not for you though, and so I'll go over different methods YOU can employ to make it personally, permanently, memorable tailored to you and how you learn.

Amazingly enough, I've been up all night now, and it's already after 1 PM (and I'm still writing!), and two things occurred to me. One is that no other bartending website offers Mnemonics as an integrated package into it (And the reason is that bartenders who are also instructors and ALSO expert in mnemonics don't grow on trees!) And the second thing that occurred to me (some time ago) was that NO Mnemonic Site exists to help bartenders memorize - and what we do is ALL ABOUT very specific and exact memorizing!

What about the bartending schools?

When I went to school, we weren't taught using any systems. But I had my own, so I never missed them.

A lot of schools (if not all schools) today use the method of taking the first letter of each ingredient to make sentences using other words starting with those same first letters to mean the ingredients of the drink, such as for the B-52 layered shooter (B-52 being the famous "Flying Fortress" bomber used by America in WWII).

So for the B-52 bartending schools everywhere use "Kills Bad Guys" to mean equal amounts of Kahlua, Baileys, and Grand Marnier. But that is the ONLY system they use. The first letter of each ingredient becomes the first letter of each word in the Mnemonic phrase: B-52 "Kills Bad Guys."

That's fine to a point

But what are you going to do for the Dizzy Buddha which has ELEVEN INGREDIENTS? Memorize "Voluptuous Bartenders Create Drunken Silly Killer Alcoholics, Making Powerful Offensive Gangsters." to remember both the exact proportions AND the liqueurs, liquors, mixers, and syrups of 1/4 oz. Vodka, 1/4 oz. Banana Liqueur, 1/4 oz. Coconut Rum, 1/4 oz. Dark Rum, 1/4 oz. Southern Comfort, 1/4 oz. Kahlua, 1/4 oz. Amaretto, 1/4 oz. Midori, Splash of Pineapple Juice, Splash of Orange Juice, and a Dash of Grenadine?? (and that's fairly simple because there's no garnish, and everything is quarter ounces, splashes and a dash).

 NO WAY!

That "Acrostic" (first letter of each ingredient starts the first letter of each word in the sentence - but no indication of amounts, of glassware, of method, or of garnish!) system only goes so far before it leaves you hanging.

My combination of methods, specifically adapted and developed for bartending, use all of the many techniques, PLUS memorizing glassware, fractions of ounces, AND garnishes. And that's just one of the differences that makes this site unique.

The goal with these combinations of methods and systems is ideally to create elegant, simple, easy to maintain, retain and recall solutions, that are fast to refresh accurately at a glance when reviewing. And with practice, you will be able to.

 

Footnotes 👇

1. The other area of focus is the quick access to each of the simply laid out, all in one glance drink recipes on the site through the "500 Drink Recipes" link, and how each drink has (or will have) footnotes with extended information for you to learn at your leisure.[↩]

Footnotes 👆