MEMORIZING “One Half” OUNCE INGREDIENTS

BartenderLife

3 years ago

THE HATCHET EDGE GUARD 1/2 OZ CANOE!

New Update on memorizing complex recipes (lots of ½ oz this, ¾ oz that, 1¼ the other thing, 6 drops…, dash of… bla bla — tiki, old classics, 15 new house specialty drinks of the month your insane manager dreamed up while watching old WWII Nazi torture movies, etc).

This post is about a new container object you can use for HALF OUNCES, and it’s good.

In the system I’ve been developing tomremember all fractions of ingredients I have been using hatchets buried in limes, lemons, the tops of Amaretto bottles, etc, but TOO MANY DAMNED HATCHETS in some drink memory associations.

One hatchet modifies one (at best two) ingredients because the hatchet goes into the ingredient – thus the ingredient becomes the container for the hatchet. And the ingredient is done. It can only hold one hatchet.

Containers are GOOD. Containers can hold lots of ingredients. So I thought about what container, logically speaking, is used to hold the cutting edge (the THING that cuts ingredients into half [ounces in this case]) of hatchets and axes? And the idea came to me of a Canoe! It’s big, memorable, can have people and actions associated with it to make action scenes – AND – you can still use a hatchet anywhere else you think will help.

Here’s 0J Simpson’s hand in the Zombie recipe cutting a lime/ lemon in half (½ oz lemon juice, ½ oz lime juice). It works but it’s still kind of clumsy because I have to remember a “lime-lemon”.

Here’s my hatchet in the “Yellow Bird” going into my chocolate which tells me “½ oz White Cr De Cacao” and that’s ok, but the Yellow Bird’s other wing is hatcheting a banana in half for the ½ oz of Banana Liqueur in the drink. My bird only has two “hands”!

So this is a shooter. Everything the same – ½ oz of everything. No biggie, but it shows you how there could be a problem if a tiki drink or house specialty with 8 ingredients had 3 or 4 calling for a half oz each. Too many hatchets! Better to have one bucket and put them all inside the same one to play together.

So here’s the latest eureka light bulb logical insight my formerly brilliant mind came up with upon waking this morning – ladies and gentlemen – the CANOE! 🙂 (See my Mnemonic for the Clover Club as an example of it in action.)

BartenderLife

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.

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