When you first decide you want to be a bartender, you usually pick up a book or two about cocktails and then maybe sign up for a bartending course. All of this effort will get you started, but bar schools usually don't impress employers, they want experience. Knowing all of your cocktails is great too, but just because you know them doesn't mean you can make them on a night when you are so behind it's yesterday again. A seasoned bartender thinks clearly under pressure, rookies, not so much. So how do you get behind the wood if you don’t have experience? That is one of life's great paradoxes. At one point every bartender had no experience, so it’s possible to become one. Aside from slogging it out and being persistent, a good resume can help your case. Here's my bartending resume that got me employed behind the wood.

Well it is official, the 5th edition of Tales of the Cocktail will be taking place in New Orleans from July 18 to 22. For those that don’t know, Tales of the Cocktail is an annual event that brings together the top bartenders, mixologists, chefs, spirit producers and authors to learn, exchange information and share a few drinks. This years event will be taking place at the, six hundred room, Hotel Monteleone and there will be a good number of events, many free, that everyone can participate in. One of the events is Cocktails and the Blogosphere which will feature myself, Paul of Cocktail Chronicles, Rick of Kaiser Penguin and Chuck of The Gumbo Pages. If you love cocktails and bartending, you owe it to yourself to attend.

One area where this site has a glaring weakness is the photography. Most of the pictures on this site come from stock photographs, provided by the company making the product, or are taken quickly and without much thought. I shake up a cocktail, run outside, snap a photo and run back inside. Pretty boring stuff. Now Rick over at Kaiser Penguin knows how to take pictures and that has inspired me to do better for this site. So with a little effort I have built a light box to help with the photographs. If I was a carpenter I would have starved to death a long time ago, but I’m not taking pictures of the light box, just what’s inside. OK maybe I’ll take one picture for this post. So why is this post titled Blue Lagoon? Well, because I wanted to take a picture of something that was quick and had some colour. So I took a picture and included the recipe.

It is the weekend so lets review a video and see if we can identify some cocktail and bartender related issues. I came across this video on the Webtender forums and it just made me chuckle. The video comes from a Florida bartender competition, kind of. Basically, it's a bunch of video's where you get to vote for your favourite bartenders based on the drinks they make, or more likely their cleavage and muscle build. This particular video is of a Woodford Reserve Mint Julep, made by Andrea who was voted "Best Bartender" in South Florida. Let us see how she does.

One of the key ingredients to a great cocktail is knowledge. This is a principal that applies to almost everything but it is often overlooked. The reason most drinks are mediocre is because most people don’t think about what they are doing, or they think on a single plane. For example many bartenders are one trick pony’s that make super sweet fruit drinks and that’s it. One drink, many variations Many people who try to make a martini at home fail miserably because they don’t understand that ice and water are important. One way to fix this is to read, but many books are dreadful when it comes to true knowledge. Mr. Boston’s bar guide is one of the reasons cocktails are in such a dreadful state. Don’t buy it, please. I once owned a copy in college and after I “converted” I left it at the first bar I worked at, never to be seen again, and hopefully not to be used. Try one of these instead.

Well it seems that the number of drink related weblogs continues to grow, so it is time for another  “Browsing the Cocktail Blogsphere”. As usual there is an assortment of enthusiast, bartender and other interesting blogs in this update. One trend I have notices is that the number of cocktail specific blogs is decreasing and the number of spirit review and bartender related blogs are increasing. All are important because I see it as a chain and if one link is missing, then the chain fails. We need good spirits and bartenders to make good cocktails. As usual, if you have a blog, or know of a drink related blog, that I’m missing just email me (dsoneil@gmail.com) and I’ll include you in the next round up.

When it comes to making the world of cocktails a better place there are a few things that halt the growth. Many people would say it is the bartender because they focus too much on speed or the money, instead of customer service. This is partly true and there are a lot of bad bartenders out there. I almost never order a cocktail, on a night out, because I know the quality won't be there, unless I'm in a known place where the bartenders are skilled. But most bartenders don't have any formal training nor is there any encouragement at their establishment to work on quality. Also, the culture of "bartending schools"; focuses so much on speed that quality isn't even mentioned. A typical bar school teaches about 150 drinks, of suspect quality, and then there is the speed test where you have to make as many drinks as fast as you possibly can. Good drinks are crafted, not slapped together at 100 kilometers per hour. This isn't the fault of the bartender, it is managements fault, because that’s what they want, efficiency.

Well it is that time of the month again, I mean it’s time for Mixology Monday. This month Imbibe Unfiltered is our host and it is all about Winter Warmers, those drinks that warm you up on a cold winter day. Some days a fine cognac will do the job, other days hot chocolate spiked with something works, and if all else fails, a specialty coffee will warm the coldest soul. When you need to warm up, or if you just like spiked coffee, then there are a lot of choices, but for me, I enjoy a good Canadian Coffee. But it can’t just be two scoops of instant coffee plus the Canadian whisky, maple syrup and squirt of whipped cream, that would be mediocre. A good cup of coffee needs some love to really get what you deserve.

When it comes to vodka I’m not a big fan, or should I say I’m not a blind follower of the vodka phenomenon. Vodka has its place and for some people an ice cold vodka martini, after a long day, is a pleasant way to reward oneself. I make a lot of vodka martini’s for people but I can’t remember the last time I had one myself. I do occasionally drink vodka straight from the freezer, I find the coldness of the vodka very refreshing, especially on a very hot day. As for what brand of vodka I drink, I usually drink anything between $20 - $25CDN ($17 -$21US), so I’ve never owned a premium bottle of vodka, until a package with a bottle of Reyka vodka ($35CDN / $30US) arrived on my doorstep. So this is a good opportunity to see if this premium vodka will change my mind.

Every once-in-a-while I like to reflect back upon certain bartending moments in my life, and one that always comes to mind is my first bartending shift ever. I, like many others, started bartending by doing group events, mine happened to be a Christmas party. The job seemed simple, two bartenders would serve basic drinks to a group of between 300 and 400 from 6PM to 2AM. The catering company stated to me that the experienced bartender, who was actually their employee, would bring everything for the night. Supposedly that included the stock, tools, mixers and cash float. By my use of the term “supposedly” you probably know what is about to happen.

After the last two post (Malt vs. Blend and Whisky vs Cognac) I think it would be good to tie up some loose ends and discuss some of the good comments that were posted. The one thing that these two simple research papers show is that tasting spirits, at least whisky and brandy, is more difficult than we generally think. But I think this applies to most spirits, including rum, vodka and possibly gin. One great thing about digging up this research was that it forced me to think about my tasting abilities and in the near future I will put them to a thorough test. But for now lets look at what this research really shows.

This is the second part of this write up on a persons ability to distinguish one spirit from another. In the first research paper it was concluded that an inexperienced whisky drinker could not distinguish between a single malt or blended scotch. Also, experienced whisky drinkers have a difficult time distinguishing the two types of scotch in a blind test. The experiment design led to some results being skewed because the experienced drinkers indicated “blend” significantly more than “malt”, making the results look like they could identify a blend, but after statistical analysis, it was shown that even experienced drinkers were just guessing. In a follow up experiment conducted by Dr. Campbell at McMaster University, they attempted to assess whether a person could differentiate whisky from cognac.

This is the first article, in a series, that will be intermingled with the other posts over the next few months. Basically, I've been looking at some scientific research on alcohol, beer, wine and bitterness published over the past few decades. Basically, these are studies that are conducted in a scientific fashion and have been published in peer review journals. The two research papers that I'll be discussing, in this two part writeup, both focus on a persons ability to distinguish one spirit from another based on the sense of smell and taste. The three spirits used in the two studies are single malt whisky, blended whisky and cognac. Because each one of these products tends to have a loyal following of people who may have some "snobbish" leanings, it makes for interesting research. These two papers were published in the December (Christmas) editions of the British Medical Journal in 1983 and 1994, so they are a little less rigorous then most studies, but the results are still valid.

First, Happy New Year to everyone, I hope the hangovers are mellow and the coffee is good. Even though January 1st is just another day, in the big picture, it still gives us an opportunity to reflect on the past year and the upcoming year. So it makes sense for me to take a brief look at what this site has done in 2006 and where The Art of Drink intends to go in 2007. As always suggestions are welcome and if there is anything you would like to read about in 2007, please let me know.