How can I remember drink recipes for bartending?

BARTENDING AND DRINK MEMORIZATION

Quite a few bartending students have asked me how I’m able to memorize so many drinks. When I learned bartending in 1979, 1980 we did not use Mnemonics. However I had a system of my own which I employed known as “The Major System”. Today there are many memory tips and tricks for bartenders in schools just starting to learn. The technique relied upon uses (primarily) Acrostics and Acronyms, with some rhyming from time to time. An acrostic is where you use the first letter of each ingredient to form a meaningful sentence with words starting with the same letters as the ingredients. The sentence should be easy to associate with the name of the drink, and easily relate to the drink’s name. What memory aids like these do is help to chunk more information into memory by encrypting it, but also make it make more sense as a sentence, than just be a list of ingredients – at least until you know it well and don’t require the memory device or “crutch” any more. Acrostics are a form of “elaborative encoding” which is a way of saying you’ve danced around what you’re learning and performed a lot of time doing mental tricks, often involving imagery, that helps you quickly recall a recipe by hearing its name. Acronyms work a bit differently because now the first letter of each ingredient is used to make a word. So “Clap,” for instance, stands for Cherry Heering, Lime Juice, Angostura Bitters, and Pineapple Juice. There are a few disadvantages of Acronyms and Acrostics which aren’t difficult to overcome, but time and effort are still needed. People often think that Mnemonics should make all memorizing super fast and easy, but the fact is that what it’s really best for is making learning (memorizing) super accurate for many details “chunked” together. It’s the elaborative encoding that makes the chunking so efficient. By making the encoding meaningful the drink name itself can be used to prime the memory. But Acrostics and Acronyms only go so far. They’re great for memorizing lists of name ingredients, but they don’t do anything for garnishes, individual ingredient quantities, or glassware. The advantages of Mnemonics systems is that there are many, and they can be combined to encompass lists, quantities, methods, garnishes and even drink history. Today I drew out my means of encoding a Singapore Sling into memory. It’s somewhat elaborate, fairly refined, and combines different forms of advanced Mnemonotechnique.The main thing is that it works to allow me to recall one or two things to recall the entire recipe. In this case “SING”apore primes me to think “Sing and Clap” and the location Singapore cross references with another once thought of as exotic location, Tahiti (and Paul Gauguin, the impressionist painter, a friend of Van Gogh). Mind you, when asked by students how “I” remember so many drinks, more often than not it doesn’t do any immediate good to anyone I’m describing my methods to for the first time to show them too many drawing examples (as with the one above). More often than not they’re either humored by what I show them, or thoroughly distressed, knowing that they’ll just have to continue plodding along at their own pace and hope it’s adequate. But having shown them what it is I’m doing to firmly and permanently lock down recipes in memory, I’m showing them the direction for them to go if they want to improve their ability to learn very well and with total confidence in precise recall of any drink, no matter how complicated. Some of what I show them (and am showing you) will help right away, but some other areas of advancement you’ll either want personal coaching for, or you’ll need to read a few books about. Depending upon how hard or easy a time you have grasping all of the concepts, you may require more personal training. Based solely upon the picture above, that I drew (and am recalling from memory) I have: CLAP – ½ oz Cherry Heering, ½ oz Lime Juice, dash Angostura Bitters, 5 oz Pineapple Juice. Below that I’ve got Gauguin (for “GG”) for 1¼ oz Gin and ⅓ oz Grenadine. Finally there’s a bandshell with a Monk in black robes. That’s another bit of elaborative encoding. Benedictine monks wear black robes. That bandshellnis my convention for “¼ oz”, so that tells me that there’s ¼ oz of Benedictine in this drink, and also ¼ oz of Cointreau. The rest is simple and doesn’t need encoding. The Singapore Sling is served in a large house specialty glass (or a hurricane glass will do), and it gets a pineapple wedge and cherry garnish (which I like to refer to as an “armored” butterfly due to the tough skin of the pineapple).