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.
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 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.
Site Author, David J. Curtis: David Curtis, a seasoned professional with decades of bartending and bar management experience began his career in Midtown Manhattan, NY, tending and managing bars before diving into Manhattan’s bustling nightlife club scene. Over the years, he has mastered high-volume, high-pressure bartending as the lead bartender in iconic Midtown clubs and tended bar briefly in the Wall Street area, generating over $1,350,000.00 annually in personal drink sales. He has since extended his expertise to establishments in Georgia and now Tampa in Exclusive Platinum Service Awards Clubs, Florida. David’s roles as a Bartending Instructor at the American Bartending School in Tampa, while maintaining a second job bartending, and his years experience of managing bars, and working as a Brand Ambassador along with his extensive professional library of over 1,000 bartending books, highlight his dedication to continually refining his craft. He holds a diploma in Bar Management and is BarSmarts certified by Pernod Ricard.
Footnotes 👇
- 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.[↩]