Message 8419 of 22774 in Behind the Bar

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> What's the expression?  Never trust a skinny chef?  

Yeah, that's where my mind was when I was posting this.  How can I have any 
credibility if I don't even know what my drinks taste like.  On the other 
hand, I'm sure most bartenders don't know what all of their drinks taste like. 
 There are just too many out there to really get to know all of them without 
being a total lush, I'd guess lol.

> I don't think it's a dealbreaker, I have encountered non-drinking 
> bartenders, but if I was hiring I wouldn't be enthusiastic about 
> adding you to the barstaff.  A lot of it depends upon the sort of 
> place you work.  If you're going to be a cocktail drone, just follow 
> recipes and bang out drinks all night, it probably doesn't matter.  
> But if you have any oppotunity to discuss cocktails/beer/wine with 
> guests and to make suggestions and recommendations, then it's a 
> handicap.  I also think it limits how good you can develop your 
> drinks if you don't have a thorough understanding of base spirits, 
> liqueurs and mixers.  So much of my development as a bartender has 
> been by developing my palate, applying it towards making a better 
> Margarita or Gimlet or Manhattan.  I've played and tinkered with 
> these drinks to get them just so, and I can do that because I'm 
> familiar with the ingredients.  

I'd like to be able to tweak drinks like that eventually.  However, I'm a 
realist and I know that it will be awhile before I get that ambitious.  I 
think it's great that you are able to do so and it says a lot about your level 
of understanding of what you do.  As far as it being a handicap, I do agree to 
a point.  Since I'm a vegetarian, when I was a server I'd often get asked 
about recommendations involving meat.  Since I'd never actually tried any of 
the dishes with meat in them (most of the menu), I'd have to recommend based 
on what others have told me and popularity of the dishes.  I couldn't 
recommend based on my personal tastes, but I'd rather recommend something 
that's popular with lots of people over what one person thought (myself).  I'm 
hoping to use this type of evaluation as a bartender as well.  Find out what's 
popular and why and use that to support my opinion of drinks.  I'll slowly 
learn how more drinks taste and be able to use personal experience as well.  
But that's a slow process, I'm sure.

> I put more sweet vermouth into a Jim Beam Manhattan than a Maker's 
> Mark one.  Why?  Because the Maker's bourbon is smoother and doesn't 
> need as much vermouth to mellow it out.  That's not the sort of fine 
> tuning one can do if it's all academic.  Of course that's probably 
> more calibrating than most bartenders would bother with, so I don't 
> think it would keep you from getting a job.  But I would find it to 
> be a pity to be served a cocktail by a bartender who had little to no 
> experience with what they're serving first hand.  Chances are you can 
> make as good of a 7&7 as I can, but you'll always fall behind on the 
> more advanced stuff.  

I can appreciate that.  Thank you for your honesty.  I don't expect to be half 
as good as an experienced bartender when I start out.  But I hold myself to 
high standards and hope that I will be able to get better fast enough to make 
myself an asset to the establishment I work for and build up regulars.

> Still, there are paradoxes such as yourself out there working so 
> don't let me discourage you from taking a shot at getting behind the 
> bar.  Sipping could help, but I still think it's a lot of material to 
> learn - the flavors and combinations out there - if you don't have 
> several years of drinking under your belt already.  Perhaps I'm 
> biased because I feel that my college drinking taught me a lot about 
> mixed drinks before I ever got behind the bar.  It's hard to know how 
> good something is when you don't know what it's supposed to taste 
> like.  

I agree entirely.  My college drinking experiences were limited.  Beer, home 
mixed rum and coke - nothing fancy or made by a bartender.  We were broke and 
were not ashamed to get drunk on whatever we could mix ourselves, hehe.

I can definitely see how it will be intimidating to work in an establishment 
where customers expect me to know the nuances of different drinks (including 
wine), because you really can't learn that in school.  That would only come 
from experience.  But I think that's like any other job out there....you're 
not an expert when you start.  You just have to have the resources to "fake it 
'til you make it".

Thank you for your honesty.  I respect and appreciate that.