“Mixology is a term used to describe the art of mixing cocktail drink recipes. According to the “Free Dictionary,” the definition of mixology is the study or skill of preparing mixed drinks. A mixologist is a person who mixes and invents cocktail drinks. All mixologist are bartenders, but not all bartenders are mixologists.
At American Bartending School you’ll learn to be an mixologist. You’ll learn much more than how to mix popular drinks. As a mixologist, you learn why certain liquors and mixes go together, proper garnish techniques and how to craft original signature cocktails and much more that will be the hit of your bar.
Untrained bartenders may know how to mix drinks, but most don’t know why things should or should not be done a certain way .
A professionally trained mixologist knows how to consistently make a drink that tastes good and is profitable for the establishment.”
~ http://www.barschool.com/whats-a-mixologist/
When I was little the most consistent time I got to spend with my dad revolved around helping to clean the bar early in the morning. I remember it being still dark out usually with a few times the sun being up and my mom would either help or she would be doing it for my dad. It was mostly with my dad though.
Now one thing that my dad did give me growing up was a good, “hey, you can’t be in here.” As he escorted me out of the bar during business hours. Where I grew up was a blue collar town and beer drinking was, and still is, a fabric of life, just as much as the fabric of life as the blue collar jobs that acted like the stitches in your favorite pair of Levi’s, tightly pinching everything together.
I was always kind of jealous of my friends in elementary school, yep, I said elementary school, because they would come to school on a Monday telling exciting stories from being at the bar with their dads playing shuffleboard, throwing darts and the thing everyone I knew growing up wanted to be good at… hustling a game of pool.
And they would mention seeing my dad.
Once in elementary school, yep I said it again, my sixth grade teacher said, “I’ll talk to your dad when I see him.” I forget what I was doing wrong for her to talk to my dad but I remember thinking, “When are you going to see him, he works all the time?”
It wasn’t until years later when I started seeing all kinds of teachers hanging out at the bar what she meant. I thought it was funny because when I was in sixth grade she was old! So old… that her drink of choice was a Brandy, straight up.
I didn’t spend a lot of time with my dad doing father son kind of things so the times I was with him were very special to me.
I got a smile out of him once when I went with to help him clean the bar. It was a few hours after bar close and the owner was still there, finishing up. We walked up to him, as he was sitting at the end of the bar, and said hello, as he was preparing to leave.
After I said hello, I bent down to tie my shoe. I took my time tying it. Very slowly tying it.
The owner finished up, said good bye, and made his way to the front door.
All that while I was still fussing with tying my shoe.
When I heard the door shut behind him I looked up at my dad and he said, “What are you doing down there?”
I looked up and smiled at him, picked up my foot and showed him what I was doing.
The thing I liked best about helping to clean the bar was… I could keep all the money I found on the floor as I swept. Drunk people drop a lot of money.
When we walked up to the owner to say hello, I noticed a bill on the floor, so I casually said, “Hello.” And… casually bent down to ‘tie’ my shoe.
The smile and look on my dads face when I picked my foot up and he saw that there was a twenty dollar bill under it… was priceless.
He just smiled, that big smile of his, and I knew I did good.
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