Bartending 101 - A Deecoded Life

My friend Betchie found a groupon for a cocktail making workshop and asked us if we wanted to go. We couldn’t say yes fast enough. Is it obvious we’re that bored?

They had options for different classes: (a) basic bartending masterclass, (b) the secret to Singapore sling, (c) cocktails from the movies, (d) halloween cocktail, (e) alcohol abuse, or (f) interactive Christmas cocktail.

We chose option a, because none of us had any bartending skills to speak of and as Mary from The Sound of Music would say, we need to “start from the very beginning, a very good place to start.” (Yes I tend to think like my life is a musical. Just ask my friends.)

We scheduled it for the first Saturday we were available. The class was held in the merchant’s headquarters, in a cramped little room at the back.

The three of us were late because it was raining and we woke up late and then had a hard time finding cabs, so as a result none of us could be in the same team. It worked out well, though. It was fun to meet new people.

Each team was composed of three members, and in my team we were all girls. My teammates were composed of one Chinese girl who was working in Singapore for over a year now, and one Singaporean who was based in Vancouver but was in Singapore for a holiday with her family who is still based here. Right, I remembered those details except for their names. Oops. So for the rest of this blog I shall call them China and Canada, respectively.

By the time I walked into class, some 30 minutes late, our instructor was halfway through explaining about the different bar equipment used in making cocktails:

Those are pages from our handouts. Very nice, huh? We had the same instruments on our tables.

Our instructor looked very cool, by the way, oh so Neal Caffrey with the hat. Just for that, I’ll call him Neal for the purposes of this blog, because I wasn’t able to catch his name.

After Neal was done with the theory part, we were supposed to move on to the practice part, but then our ice man had encountered an accident on the rain-slicked roads and was running late, too. So while waiting for him, we went downstairs for a quick snack and drink and went back up when the ice arrived, just some five minutes or so later.

So we made three kinds of cocktails. The first one was the martini. Stirred, not shaken.

Neal explained that the martini had to be stirred in order to produce 2/3 of the liquid from the ice. James Bond’s “shaken, not stirred” order was tricky because it’s a lot harder to get liquid from ice if it’s shaken – how long would it take to shake to get that much liquid, right? Or maybe a shaken martini tastes different, somehow.

Anyway. We made one. My role was collecting the ice, pouring in the spoonful of vermouth and straining out the liquid.

Neal said we could use the typical vodka or the gin if we wanted something stronger, so we decided to try gin, just to make things interesting.

Then we teammates took turns in stirring the drink. When it looked like we had melted enough of the ice to produce 2/3 of the liquid needed to complete the cocktail, we strained the drink into a martini glass and garnished it with a wedge of lime. I know it’s typically olive, but apparently this does the trick too. Asian version, perhaps?

We tasted our creation and all commented that it was a very strong drink, not one we would usually order in a bar. Canada shared that she usually likes tequila sunrise, China confessed to a preference for Baileys, and I admitted that I was usually partial to Cosmos.

Nevertheless, I drained the glass, having been raised not to put anything to waste. Especially when you paid for it.

Our very own martini!

Next up was my favorite – the Cosmo.

Neal explained that the Cosmo is actually a kind of martini, or an evolution of it. Now see, I didn’t know that! That was interesting.

It had more ingredients than the original martini, though – cranberry juice, syrup, vodka, triple sec. Neal actually explained that the triple sec was a kind of orange liqueur, fermented from oranges.

In fact he liked to throw us questions on where drinks were fermented from and liked to ask us to taste the pure drinks and give a guess. Most of the time we were not able to get the correct answer.

Neal also shared a gem – you don’t need to buy expensive syrup from the supermarket; you can make your own using one part water and one part sugar. Sweet, huh?

After mixing all the ingredients, I would have wanted to do the shaking but China did the honors. Our drink ended up looking paler than the typical Cosmo I am used to, but it tasted good nonetheless. In fact I liked it because its taste wasn’t overpowering. It was just like drinking juice, how I usually prefer my alcohol.

Our very own Cosmo!

Our last project was another bar fave – the mojito.

This was when things took a turn for the interesting, when Neal turned it into a competition. He said the first five people to upload pictures of themselves with a fully-formed mojito on their Facebook page would get a prize.

You could literally feel the atmosphere change after he announced that. You know how competitive people can be, especially in Singapore, where people are kiasu. In fact there was a funny moment when, halfway through Neal explaining the theory, the silence was shattered by the sound of someone busy muddling (pounding) ice. Already, to get ahead. That’s how competitive she was. Haha.

And we all rushed through the procedures, brazenly collecting ingredients and pounding ice and slapping mint leaves and pouring liquids into our glass and after capping off our drinks with the final ingredient – a splash of soda water straight from the can, so as not to release any of the fizz, we took pictures with our phones and posted on Drinkding’s Facebook wall – or tried to, at least. The internet was incredibly crappy in there, for some reason.

I was one of the winners, by the way, and I got a small rainforest puzzle as a prize for my competitiveness. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with it, but ultimately, though, that wasn’t the prize that counted, but the payoff from taking a sip of our mojito.

It tasted quite well, certainly not perfect, with Neal labeling it as “too minty” (I had dropped in more than 12 mint leaves, oops), but it was fine, nonetheless. At least it wasn’t too bitter unlike some mojitos I’ve had in other bars in the past. Our limes, methinks, were not overmuddled.

Our very own mojito!

There was one more prize, in the end, too. A certificate! Yey, I have another one to tack on to my wall.

But the learning experience itself, really. That’s a prize in itself.

With our instructor Neal (not his real name), and Betchie and Yves (their real names)

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