As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Cindy and I have been taking classes at the Professional Bartending School up in Nashville in preparation for our sailing adventures in the Caribbean. Mixology is a very portable and cross-cultural profession as well as being a very fun, sociable pastime and a very handy skill to have in almost any social situation. We’ve been learning to mix highballs, martinis, tall drinks, cream drinks, sours, two ounce drinks and shooters and pour beer and wine. We’ve also gone up on a couple of weekends just to practice our mixing skills. The course culminated with an intensive written test and a speed test in which you needed to correctly mix up 12 randomly selected drinks in 8 minutes while being monitored by an instructor.
I’m happy to report that Cindy and I both passed our tests on the first try and are now certified professional mixologists!! Both of us aced our written test and made 13 drinks within the allotted 8 minutes. But let me tell you, it was intense! The timing does not leave you any freedom to pause and think…you’re just banging out the drinks as your instructor calls them out. If you don’t know your recipes by heart, you will not be able to pass the test. If you have to take the time to stop and think, there’s no way you’ll get all 12 drinks completed in time.
From here, we’ll have to see where our bartending path takes us. We are still working at our “regular” jobs full time so we’re not interested in anything that requires ongoing or weekday work. We took and passed our Tennessee state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board test and will work with the placement office at the Professional Bartending School to work private parties and events in the Tennessee area on the weekends. We both think it would be a blast to bartend for concerts and major arts, sports and music events. We’ll also host and bartend parties for our friends just for the fun of it and look for private events locally.
So…what’ll you have?
