Can you believe...

As I watched one of my server's snack on the green olives while she helped me stock my garnish tray one night last week, I came to the realization that out of all my years of bartending, I've never tried a green olive. Not once. Not ever.

Green olives are the staple garnish at any bar. All bars have some sort of variation of a green olive. Somehow I've managed to avoid snacking on green olives for the past eight years. I don't think it's anything against green olives. I've just never been tempted to eat anything out of a garnish tray. Maybe it's from all of the dirty, filthy hands I've seen reach into the garnish tray throughout a shift. Or maybe its the fact that garnishes aren't always as fresh as we'd like to believe them to be. You don't know want to know what some of those garnishes look like by the end of the night, when the lights are turned on, after hours.

Have you ever wondered what olive juice really is? I'll give you a hint. It's not really juice at all: Bartending 101: What is olive juice?

Designated Drivers

Scandinavia is responsible for introducing IKEA to the United States and the idea of having designated drivers.

So what is a designated driver?

A designated driver is a person who decides to remain sober, abstaining from alcohol in order to drive their friends home safely after a night of alcoholic consumption. Designated drivers are a safe alternative to driving under the influence. Besides the obvious safety reasons, being a designated driver also helps the environment by reducing the total amount of miles driven. The less miles driven means a savings on gas the emissions released into the air. Read More...

Virgin Drinks

“Hey Bartender, what if I don’t drink alcohol?“

Occasionally, I get a customer who throws me a curveball behind the bar. They don’t drink alcohol. These customers include minors (yes, I work in a restaurant), designated drivers, pregnant ladies, people on an important business meeting, non-drinkers or whatever the case may be. A really good bartender will be quick on their feet and be able to build a delicious and creative non-alcoholic drink for their non-drinking customer, something other than boring old soda or plain juice.

Sure there are the popular staples: the Virgin Marys (a Bloody Mary minus the vodka), the Shirley Temples (grenadine and either ginger ale or Sprite) and the Rob Roys (grenadine and Coke), but it’s nice to step out of the ordinary box and make up something really special for customers who don’t and/or can’t consume alcohol. Remember, these customers tip too. Read More...

Behind!

If you have ever been behind a bar before, you might have noticed that space behind a bar is very limited. Behind the bar, there has to be a complete stock of liquor, mixers, ice, tools, glassware, bottled beer, bottled wine, bottled water, cash registers and/or POS terminals, sinks for washing dishes and hands and garbage cans. On a busy night there could be two or three bartenders working behind the bar with a barback. That’s a lot of people working fast and efficiently in a small, confined space....Saying “behind” is the same idea as if a person were working in a restaurant and yelling “corner” whenever they entered/exited the kitchen. Read More

Agave Nectar

When I was a nightclub bartender, I always used Sweet & Sour Mix to make my Margaritas. Why wouldn’t I? I didn’t have to deal with squeezing any fresh lemon or lime juice. It made building the drink in that type of bar environment, faster. Most of the time, people who are at nightclubs aren’t looking for a drink to knock their taste bud socks off. They are just looking for a drink to get them drunk or buzzed in a relatively short amount of time.

It wasn’t until I started working in fine dining that I began working with a number of fresh ingredients to build the cocktails that I was serving. I started noticing that my cocktails tasted even better and were now being made on a whole new level. It was at this same time that I realized when it came to the difference between making a Margarita and a really good Margarita, I had to keep two tings in mind: choosing a premium blanco tequila made of 100% agave and selecting a quality sweetening agent. This is how I was first introduced to agave nectar. Read More...

What is Proof?

Proof is the measurement of how much alcohol is contained in a spirit. In the United States, proof is measured in terms of alcohol by volume (ABV) and is determined by doubling the percentage of the alcohol contained in the bottle. For example, if a spirit is 40% alcohol, than it is 80-proof.

So what is the purpose of proof and how did it come to be? Read More...

Bartending 101: What is cachaça?

Cachaça (ka-shah-sa) is considered to be the national spirit of Brazil, sharing a similar popularity as vodka does here in the United States. According to Leblon which is a Brazilian distillery that makes cachaça and is popular here in the United States, the national spirit of Brazil happens to be the third most consumed spirit in the world, following right behind vodka and soju/shochu (an Asian distillate made mainly from rice). Read More...

Bar Lingo: Bar Back

The “bar back” is a bartender’s right-hand man or woman whose goal is to make sure that the bartender always has everything they need so that they can make as many drinks as possible and never have to leave their well. Some general duties of a bar back include: cutting back up garnishes, refill ice in the wells, restock empty liquor bottles, wash glassware, grab inventory from the liquor room as needed, change beer kegs, CO2 tanks and syrups, and pull off dirty glasses from the bar. Every now and then a bar back will have to unclog a sink if one becomes backed up. Bar backs make it habit to always be wiping down the bar and add cash tips left on the bar to the tip jar if a bartender has kept them on the bar top for too long. Both bartenders and bar backs are equally responsible for cleaning up and restocking the bar at the end of each shift. Read More...

Rent Shirts

This is about the time of the month where girls working in the bar industry start busting out their rent shirts. If you are a female who works in the bar industry where most of your money comes from tips, you own a rent shirt. You might even have three or four. You could be even wearing one of them tonight if you are working.

What is a rent shirt? Everyone knows that rent is due at the beginning of the month. Sometimes the end of the month can be the slowest time of the month for a bartender because everyone is getting ready to pay their rent on the first. This is where the rent shirts come in. A rent shirt is a shirt that females wear to help increase the cash flow behind the bar. A rent shirt helps generate more donations to one's tip jar. In an essence, a rent shirt is generally a low cut, somewhat revealing top that females wear behind the bar in order to help entice men (and sometimes women) to tip them more.

Now don't go crying sexist and feminism on me. I happen to be a proud feminist in that I feel like men and women should be equal. So when it comes to earning money behind the bar, it's fair game. Hey, if a guy bartender can flirt with all the lady customers, I can most definitely wear my rent shirt at the end of the month.

What The Hell Is Triple Sec?

Every professional bar and even some home bars have a bottle of triple sec behind it, but what the hell is it? Triple sec is made from dried peel of oranges that are found on Curacao, an island in the Caribbean. It's strong (usually contains 30% alcohol/60 proof). It's a sweetening/flavored agent used in a variety of mixed drinks.

"Sec" in French means dry. Dry then indicates a lack of sweetness. This doesn't apply though when you are talking about triple sec. In the case of triple sec, it just means triple distilled.

Most of the time it's also colorless unless if it's blue curacao which is basically blue-colored triple sec. Anytime you hear the term "blue" used in the name of a drink or see that the actual color of a drink is blue, it has blue curacao in it.

Triple sec can come in fancier forms such as Cointreau and/or Grand Marnier. These are considered "top shelf" triple secs (aka: more expensive). Grand Marnier has a slightly yellow/light brown tint to it because it is a cognac-based triple sec. How is that for fancy?

Here is a list of some popular drinks that have triple sec in the recipe:

Long Islands
Adios Motherfuckers (AMF)
Kamikazes
Cosmopolitans
Margaritas (Cadillac and Top Shelf)
Mai Tais