Learn more about Mixology Mnemonics Mixology Mnemonics Part 5 – Imagery.  Mixology Mnemonics Part 1 Learn More. 

Mnemonic Mixology Imagery

Why Imagery? There is plenty of evidence that the use of imagery drawn by students is effective and enhances learning.



While imagery is not always required in Mnemonics when dealing with drink recipes, images can be quite useful when assigned specific encoded values tied to various recipe aspects such as garnishes, glassware, and specific fractions of ounce measurements.



While it’s true that an important part of what we’re dealing with memorizing drink recipes is fractions of ounces, overall the main component of what distinguishes each drink from another is its list of ingredients, and after that what category the drink is in.



The category then generally helps us determine what proportion each ingredient in the recipe should be, and what glassware and garnish to use. IN GENERAL this lightens the load of how much we’ll have to memorize to learn each drink, but those are our fluffy feel good “I can make 100 drinks” drink recipes.



We only need to be sat down and handed a six page double sided drink recipe test of drinks in different categories to realize that there are plenty of twisting turns and frustrating exceptions to every drink category rule (and a bunch without categories). Those are our over-packed bar and nightclub drinks, bars populated with people from every walk of life, from every region of the United States, and half the countries of the world all at once drinks, where you’re at the bar, all seats filled, entertaining the Red Hat Gang, twelve surfers from Cali, five German Businessmen, four hookers and a pimp, a bunch of Navy “Fleet Week” guys (just arrived on shore from everywhere in the USA on shore leave), and a couple hundred people wandering in off the street interested in drinking and dancing, plus all of your regulars (and there’s no access to Google!).



So for those “hard drinks”  (and the ones that don’t quite fit in their respective categories neatly) each ingredient must be individually memorized and modified by the liquid measure, garnish (or not), glass, and build method (build in glass, shake & strain, blend etc.). According to research conducted by Fiona McPherson¹, memory techniques work very well with lists using the Story Method format². So while we can and should still use sentence stories such as “Kills Bad Guys” to remember the names and order of ingredients in a layered B-52 (Kahlua, Bailey’s, Grand Marnier), we can augment the effectiveness of the simple story list by embellishing it both with stock images that stand for set values as well as any images you require to help you later with your recall. These images can either be woven into the existing storyline, or used to form parallel story lines dependent upon (as in closely associated with) the ingredient story list. Fiona McPherson’s work has revealed that text combined with images works best.



Creating your own drawings doesn’t require that you be gifted in drawing; doodles and stick figures will work just as well as more fleshed out drawings. I prefer to use colors in my drawings. The focus is on improving your long term retention of what you’re learning, not drawing (though over time your drawing ability will improve).



DESIRABLE DIFFICULTY


Not everyone reading this blog will understand the intrinsic value of the enhanced memory/recall methods and techniques I’m teaching here. Some motivation to learn the methods is required, and not seeing any value in acquiring  the skills will lesson the concentration of the learner because the material will seem to be too “boring”. For this and other reasons those individuals will fail to grasp many of the most important concepts. For those people this advanced learning section of the blog will provide little or no value and be gobblidygook, confusion they cannot clarify in the mental state they are in, and the skills taught here are not a desirable difficulty, i.e., they’ll be impossibly hard for them to learn and use.


While that is unfortunate, it is to be expected. This Mnemonotechnique and learning methods section of the blog is advanced for that very reason. Similar to reading and computer skills, some simply won’t be able to be convinced that these methods provide any benefits in converting information learned more effectively from into long term memory. For those of you who do grasp the value and have strong desire and understanding, and who lack the ability to remember and some time later recall all details precisely, this section of the blog provides a very desirable difficulty level, and those people are this portion of my blog’s desirable audience.


THE IMAGERY PROVIDED BELOW


This article will provide you with specific imagery assigned exact meanings. You are expected to use these images wherever you need to help you remember specific details that continually fade from your ability to recall naturally without them.


Drinks are built both with very specific ingredients AND with very specific pour amounts.

Acrostic Memory Aids – Every Good Boy Does Fine

Acrostic memory aids (first letter of each ingredient is used to make a meaningful sentence using other words starting with that letter) such as “Every Good Boy Does Fine” for learning the notes EGBDF in music, and in making drinks, the universally used:“Kills Bad Guys” used to help you remember that a B-52 is made using Kahlua (Kills), Baileys (Bad), and Grand Marnier (Guys). That’s called an “Acrostic”, and in bartending they’re useful for helping recall ingredient names.



How Acrostics differ from an Acronyms. Acronyms are formed using the first letter of each word, arranged in such a way that a new word is formed from those letters. SPAM for instance, which is formed from Sour Mix, Pineapple Juice, Apple Pucker, and Midori – SPAM – to help recall the ingredients in a Jolly Rancher.



Remembering measurements requires something else though, not JUST the exact ingredients. The “Golden Rule” for shooter drinks like the B-52 (and the Jolly Rancher) for instance is that usually shooters are 2 oz. total, and usually everything is poured in equal proportions (3/4 oz. of each ingredient in the case of the B-52, and 1/2 oz. of each in the case of the Jolly Rancher).

WELCOME TO ADVANCED BARTENDING AND AN INTRODUCTION TO MORE ADVANCED MNEMONICS TO MOVE FORWARD

What is “Advanced Bartending”?

Advanced Bartending is the entire process of managing a full room to setting Bar and Liquor Room Pars, to the Mechanics of Speed Bartending, understanding wines, and a lot more.



So to start, advanced bartending isn’t just memorizing a lot of complex recipes, but memorizing both the basic and the more complex recipes is definitely a part of it. When you go to YouTube and watch some of your favorite “WOW!” bartenders mixing fancy drinks you think are fascinating, watch the eyes of the person making the drink as they make them. About half of the time the person making the drink is looking down at a single spot to the side of the bar where they have the recipe sitting open for them to look at. That’s because they don’t know the recipe well enough to make it when it’s called for. So while they have the appearance and can talk the talk with confidence, it’s because they’re in a controlled studio environment and can do re-takes as many times as needed. In a real working environment (where you’ll be when you’re making your drinks) there is no do-over or looking down at a little recipe cheat sheet. You need to actually know your stuff. 



It’s understanding and properly applying scientific techniques to mixing drinks. But even if you know all of the science and subtleties, and can produce entire arrays of magnificent, incredibly complex cocktails – if you’re looking at a book to do it (and can’t quickly recall every detail of each drink exactly as written), then you’re not really an advanced bartender; you’re just someone who can follow a set of written instructions.





These images are going to be very useful, but will require some instruction in order for you to use them most effectively. NOTE that the 1/4 oz. objects look like a ball, cut at the pole into FOUR SLICES – each slice is 1/4 of a sphere. Hollowed out and laid on the side they look like bandshells (where musicians and actors perform).

 

 

IF THAT SHAPE BOTHERS YOU and you cannot easily enough imagine it as 1/4, then use (drum roll please):



The Mnemonic “Fork and a Fourth”



…the image of a FORK “A fork and a fourth”, and the end of a fork is divided up into four tines. Ta Daaaa!!!



That works too. Right now I like the bandshell as a quarter (ounce) idea because I can place all sorts of interesting props, people, and action imagery easily into it (as many ingredients all at once as I want!). Forks are ok though; for poking into things or hanging things off of, and there’s absolutely no reason we can’t use them both in the same mnemonic construction. 🙂 



MEASURES: The first group of images (directly above) is the most important because without knowing exact measurements of every ingredient, you don’t know the recipe. So this group of images provides imagery that is easy to recall.



Some of the graphics are “container” objects. Groups of ingredients can be stored in each of these containers. One of the containers is a Baby Carriage, for instance, which represents 3/4 of an ounce. So you can place several ingredients into the baby carriage. Let’s say Banana Liqueur (picture a banana), and Grand Marnier (picture a grandmother)…



So without using a lot of imagination here we have a grandmother with a banana pushing a baby carriage. If that doesn’t work, then Inside the baby carriage we can can place a baby girl who is old and wrinkly (a grandmother baby) holding a banana, or any other number of images we can conjure up. If there were Southern Comfort or any other ingredient in the drink that was 3/4 of an ounce, we would throw that into the picture too. 




Does this seem like “way too much work” to you? If you’re one of those people who can look at something 3 times and boom, you’ve got it permanently embedded within your memory, then sure. This is too much. By permanent I mean that you have it in a month, or even a year. You’ll still remember that a “Jazzy” is 3/4 oz of Banana Liqueur and 3/4 oz of Grand Marnier (NOTE: There may be an actual “Jazzy” cocktail, I don’t know. If there is, this isn’t it – but if there ISN’T then I invented it and this IS it.) If you Don’t have one of those “I can memorize the entire dictionary in one sitting” type memory’s, then this is way is easier, but requires planning and work up front to prepare your information for elaborative encoding. You’re taking responsibility for processing your information.



Then, after doing that all you need to do is picture the carriage as it relates to the drink (We’ll just call it a “Jazzy”). So we hear “Jazzy” and we see the grandmother listening to a jazz concert and she’s holding a banana while pushing a baby carriage. The carriage LOCKS IT IN that these two ingredients (Grand Marnier and Banana Liqueur) are 3/4 of an ounce.  



This allows for easy encryption and storage of multiple ingredients within each container. We can also use images that aren’t containers, but that have “hooks” in the form of arms, or branches so that they too can hold more than one thing. While these types of containers are useful, they aren’t required or necessary.



Some of the most complex drinks will have upwards of 20 ingredients that are of varying measure. So encrypting two or three 3/4 oz. ingredients in a baby carriage, and four 1/4 oz. ingredients in a Band Shell (quarter sphere), are easy with a little practice recalling those recipes at spaced intervals. In this way, the drink recipes are moved from short term memory to long term memory.



GLASSWARE: The second grouping of graphics is for glassware.



A simple, easy to picture, place, and remember picture of a Spatula sticking out of a drink (placed in handle down, like a stirrer for example)…

Does that look like a stupid picture of a spatula in a specialty glass? It might, but the glass isn’t important – what is important is the spatula. If you already know and can infallibly recall every single glass that every single drink goes in, you can skip this part of the training and go ahead to garnishes. If you sometimes forget whether a tropical or tall drink you’re making goes into a Collins or Specialty glass… then you need something you can use in the construction of your elaborative mnemonic encoding to represent the specialty glass. For me, “Sp” for Specialty and “Sp” for Spatula work fine.

 

I can turn the Spatula into a lot of things and add them to all sorts of things. 



…quickly lets you know with dead certainty that the drink belongs in a Specialty Glass. It doesn’t matter WHAT glass you use to put the spatula stirrer into, or even what part of the thing you’re memorizing has the spatula in it. 



MIND YOU – not ALL drinks will need to be beefed up with tons of Mnemonics. Your natural memory will save the day most of the time. 





GARNISHES: Though diverse, tend not to be too difficult to recall.



I’m including just three “Flags” or as I prefer to think of them as “Butterflies”. I don’t need to use any pre-set images to remember other garnishes. If I have any issues I come up with them on the fly. That said, knowing that one of the “butterflies” below are NOT being used, and that the drink does have a garnish helps me narrow down what the garnish is.



I like butterflies. I find flags to be boring and lackluster, while butterflies on the other hand are easy for me to picture in my mind, flitting, playing, or chasing down some figure in the Mnemonic construct. My favorites are the little “Yellow” Butterfly (Lemon Wheel and Cherry), and the “Armored” tough skinned Butterfly made with a Pineapple Wedge and Cherry garnish.




PROPORTIONS: Here’s the first graphic again.



With this one I’ve added in several sample bottles. The German hat (Dieter, 1 1/4 oz.) on top of the Amaretto. The hatchet (chops in half. 1/2 oz.) hacking into the Grenadine. Then there’s the hollow quarter sphere (which is a bandshell, representing 1/4 oz.) and a bottle of Midori. Down below the Tie (1 oz.) is around the bottle neck of the Bombay Saphire. …3/4 oz Rye 1 1/2 oz Cognac A Dash of Russels Bourbon A Splash of Lemon Juice… And all that recalled just now without studying by simply seeing the various measuring tools in my mind’s eye, and with them, the quickly associated ingredients put there as examples.





Here’s a little something extra to show you some of the permutations I’ve gone through in the past trying to get the imagery right to see what worked, and what didn’t.



This image is one I worked on using the Blue Hawaiian and the recipe I had to encode:

 

I keep a pad with pens and colored pencils nearby when I’m encoding my data. I don’t HAVE to do it that way, but it makes it more fun and increases the efficiency a lot. 



First there’s a Shed in the image. The Shed means it’s a Shake & Strain (SHed = SHake), but I don’t need that level of detail, I know it’s a shake and strain already because it has fruit juices, and more specifically, it has Sour Mix which is made to be shaken.  So I’ve abandoned the sheds.

There are multiple elements in the drawing that I’ve abandoned. I’m just doing a kind of brainstorming thing when I create these the first time. I do quick drawings and add in ideas. After a few hours or a few days when I think about the drink I see which parts of my drawing come to mind. 



In this case I have my friend Dieter (who represents 1 1/4 oz) holding a bottle of light rum, and he’s also chopping a blue orange in half (Blue Curacao, 1/2 oz). But below that I also have a Blue Smurf (or a blue man) on a surfboard made out of a Spatula (Specialty glass), but he’s holding a Pineapple in one hand and a Cherry in the other to represent the garnish (Pineapple and Cherry Butterfly or Flag). This is the drink which made me experiment with the idea of the “Armored Butterfly” as the image to stand in for the actual garnish, sort of like “Mothzilla” the giant killer moth monster from Japan. So now I can add an armored butterfly into the action story line of any drink I’m working on. 



Ok, so, so far the Blue Hawaiian is made in a specialty glass, has 1 1/4 oz. light rum, 1/2 oz. of Blue Curacao, and gets Pineapple Wedge and Cherry garnish.



You’ll note that there area a few elements left over, there’s a woman standing behind the blue guy and she’s holding a spatula to hit him with, yelling something at him… and there’s Elvis Presley below singing Blue Christmas wearing Blue Suede Shoes (I abandoned both the woman and Elvis ideas, they weren’t helping), and below that on the left there’s an armored butterfly chasing after someone (Bruce Jenner, actually) with Lemons for shoes (Sour mix), and a Pineapple Hat (Pineapple Juice).

 

I abandoned those too. They were “ok” but not great for me. For you they might have worked, but it’s not about ONE SINGLE SET OF IMAGES works best for everyone. What works best is what works best FOR YOU.



Ok, so returning to Bruce Jenner, I am using a cereal box (Total Cereal to be exact) to represent 1.5 oz. I chose Total because of the Mnemonic value of 1.5 translates to T, D, or TH for the 1, and L for the 5. The period (or dot) has no value, but the “d” in “d”ot is a 1, so 1.5 translates to TotaL (Cereal). If you know the Major System you’ll understand that. If you don’t know it then relax, just use the box of cereal to represent 1.5. I used Bruce Jenner to also represent 1.5 because he was on the box of Wheaties when he was younger, and while he’s never been a hero of mine, he’s certainly memorable. 🙂 I suppose any football or baseball player would do fine – just make sure you know they represent 1.5 oz.  I stuck a Spatula in Bruce Jenner’s hand to stand for the Specialty glass… so you see, I’m trying multiple ways to see what sticks.



So now the drink is Dieter with the Rum and Hatchet chopping the blue orange, which is: 1 1/4 oz. Light Rum, 1/2 oz. Blue Curacao
Then I’ve got the cereal box with the Lemon and Pineapple, which is: 1 1/2 oz. Pineapple Juice and 1 1/2 oz. Sour Mix.



Then I’ve got the Armored Butterfly chasing after some lady (I know it WAS Bruce Jenner, but I don’t need that to be Bruce any more… just some lady) so I’ve got a Pineapple Cherry garnish.



Next I see the blue man surfing on the Spatula – just the man, not what he’s holding – and I have the Blue Hawaiian name of the drink and the glass it goes in.



Do I need to neaten up that picture and re-draw it? 



So now, in that picture I also have a cereal box, and it has a Lemon and Pineapple on it. Those represent 1 1/2 oz. Pineapple Juice, and 1 1/2 oz. Sour Mix.



While you may feel that you can learn drinks more quickly and precisely through simple story lists created through Acrostics or by use of Acronyms, in my 40 years since first learning to tend bar I have found that the strongest most certain way to memorize with absolute certainty and precision is with a mixture of a series of encoded and interrelated images and word lists.


 

BTW, I think you might like this book – “How to Approach Learning: What teachers and students should know about succeeding in school (Study Skills Book 0)” by Fiona McPherson. I find her works helpful. Start reading it for free: https://a.co/0mnKt5A

Footnotes 👇

1. About Dr. Fiona McPherson:
   Fiona McPherson has a PhD in cognitive psychology, from the internationally-regarded Psychology Department at the University of Otago, New Zealand. She has spent the decades since that achievement following the research into how the human brain thinks and learns and remembers, and communicating that knowledge and its practical implications to a lay audience. She has done this through her long-running and extensive websites (www.memory-key.com and www.mempowered.com), and her books. Her guiding principle is that people are more likely to use effective strategies if they understand how and why they work, and know precisely when and when not to use them.[↩]
2. Extended Quote  Excerpt, F. McPherson: “The story method is another list-learning strategy, and is the verbal equivalent of the link method. Items are chained together by linking them to one another in a story. This verbal method is as effective as the imagery methods for learning lists. Which one will be most effective for you depends on which type of information (words or images) you deal with most easily. They can be used in tandem though.
   Story Mnemonic - Click Here to Learn More

   Story mnemonic:
   
   (from Mnemonics for Study, advanced strategies, mnemonics by Fiona McPherson)
   
   Strategies:
   The story method (sometimes called the sentence mnemonic) is the most easily learned list-mnemonic strategy, although it is not as widely known as the other simple methods we’ve talked about so far.
   
   As its name suggests, the story method involves linking words to be learned in a story. While this is most obviously useful for learning actual lists, it can also be used for remembering the main points of a passage. In such a case, you need to reduce each point to a single word, which hopefully has the power to recall the whole point.
   
   Let’s look at an example. First, an easy one — a list:
   
   Vegetable Instrument College Carrot Nail Fence Basin Merchant Scale Goat
   This can be transformed into:
   A VEGETABLE can be a useful INSTRUMENT for a COLLEGE student. A CARROT can be a NAIL for your FENCE or BASIN. But a MERCHANT would SCALE that fence and feed the carrot to a GOAT.
   
   But let’s face it , this is not a very probable list of words for you to memorize. The example is taken (with some modification) from a laboratory experiment, and the few tests of the story mnemonic that there have been have tended to involve such lists of unrelated words. But learning lists of unrelated words is not something we need to do very often. And generally, if we do have lists of words to learn — say, the names of the elements in the periodic table — they’re going to be too technical to lend themselves readily to creating a story.
   
   Even if the words themselves are not particularly technical, the nature of them is not likely to lend itself to a narrative. Let me show you what I mean. Consider the taxonomy of living things:
   
   Kingdom
   Phylum
   Class
   Order
   Family
   Genus
   Species
   
   Here’s an attempt at a story:
   In the KINGDOM, PHYLUM is a matter of CLASS, but ORDER is a matter for FAMILY, and GENIUS lies in SPECIES.
   
   The trouble with this is not the re-coding of genus to genius; the trouble is, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s a sentence, but not a story — there’s no narrative. Humans think in stories. We find them easy to remember because they fit in with how we think. It follows then that the more effective story mnemonics will actually tell a story. To do that, we’re going to have to transform our technical words into more common words.
   
   King Phillip went to the classroom to order the family genius to specifically name the individual who had stolen the taxi.
   
   The last part of this is of course unnecessary — you could finish it after individual if you wished. But an important thing to remember is that it’s not about brevity. It’s about memorability. And memorability is not as much affected by amount to remember, as it is by the details of what is being remembered. So meaningfulness is really important. Adding that little detail about stealing the taxi adds meaningfulness (and also underlines what this mnemonic is about: taxonomy).
   
   Here’s a longer example. Remember our hard-to-remember cranial nerves? This story was mentioned in a 1973 Psychology Today article by the eminent psychologist G.H. Bower:
   
   At the oil factory the optician looked for the occupant of the truck. He was searching because three gems had been abducted by a man who was hiding his face and ears. A glossy photograph had been taken of him, but it was too vague to use. He appeared to be spineless and hypocritical.
   
   Here it is again with the nerves shown for comparison:
   
   At the oil factory (olfactory) the optician (optic) looked for the occupant (oculomotor) of the truck (trochlear). He was searching because three gems (trigeminal) had been abducted (abducens) by a man who was hiding his face (facial) and ears (auditory). A glossy photograph (glossopharyngeal) had been taken of him, but it was too vague (vagus) to use. He appeared to be spineless (spinal accessory) and hypocritical (hypoglossal).
   
   Notice how, with these technical words, they have been transformed into more familiar words — this is what I meant by saying the keyword method is a vital part of all these list-mnemonics.”
   [↩]

Footnotes 👆