Mixology 101: Behind the scenes at The Bartending College

February is "Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com, and we'll serve up more than a six pack a week of bar articles all month long. Look for bartender profiles, drink recipes, revamped bar guides and more!

I've been spending an inordinate amount of time lately sitting at a bar not far from my house. Afternoons. Evenings. Weekends. The amazing thing is that neither my wife nor my boss is upset. In fact, the boss even picked up my tab.

Sound too good to be true? That's what my neighbor thought when I explained my situation.

"What have you been up to?" he asked.

"Not much," I said. "Just studying like crazy for the bar exam."

"I didn't even know you went to law school," he said.

"I didn't," I replied. "I've been going to Bartending School and I'm studying for the final. Do you want me to make you a martini or a Manhattan?"

Talk about your conversation starters ...

In preparation for "Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com, I enrolled at The Bartending College (739 S. 108th St., West Allis). If you've listened to Milwaukee rock radio at all over the past decade, you've probably heard the jingle about Slippery Nipples, White Russians, Neutron Bombs, Manhattans, Dry Martinis, Pina Coladas, Purple Hooters, Bahama Mamas, etc.

I'd heard the jingle. I'd seen the ads. But, I never really thought about attending because, to be honest, I never really thought much about the cocktails I ordered beyond the basics like price, temperature, taste and time needed to order another.

That changed quickly.

On a sunny weekday afternoon, I strolled into The Bartending College storefront -- located across Highway 100 from Home Owner's Bargain Outlet where I sometimes purchase cheap duct tape. I sat in the reception area, asked a few questions and paid the $449 tuition (which included a 95-page textbook and responsible beverage certification course) and started attending classes so that I could share my experiences here at our magazine.

"If the place is a scam, I'll blow the lid off the story," I thought. "If its legit, maybe I'll have something to fall back on if I break a few fingers and can't type stories for a few months."

Let's get this out of the way right now: it's not a scam.

Over the course of several weeks, I sat in front of the long bar -- sometimes alone and sometimes flanked by one to five classmates -- and listened to lectures and watched demonstrations on subjects like two-liquor drinks, highballs and juice drinks, shooters, exotic drinks, and hot drinks, wine and beer.

When class ended, I'd jump behind the bar, set up my station (by pouring ice into the bin) and practice mixing "drinks," from real booze bottles filled with water and food coloring to simulate the real thing.

The Bartending College stresses this "hands-on" approach. Students are encouraged to come in and practice pouring drinks, even while other classes are in progress.

"I see students come in an hour early for class and practice off to the side. Those are the kids that are going to do well," said Larry Van Den Eng, the lead instructor and operations manager of the school.

In order to remain "undercover," I didn't reveal my identity or intentions to anyone at the school until I had finished the 30-hour course, along with the three-hour Responsible Beverage certification and final exam. When I finally "outed" myself, Van Den Eng was surprised.

"Man, it's like you're the CIA or something," he said, smiling. After recovering from the initial shock, he asked: "So, what did you think?"

Because I had just racked my brain to remember things like the ingredients of a Smith & Kerns (1 oz. Kahlua, 2 oz cream, fill with soda), Van Den Eng probably got a pretty generic answer.

When people ask me about the experience now, I can tell them three things with nearly absolute certainty:

1. Bartending is not brain surgery, but there is a lot more to it than most laymen think.
2. The actual mixing of drinks -- glass selection, ingredients and assembly -- constitutes only about one-third of a bartender's job, if that. The rest consists of set up, clean up and -- most important -- customer relations, sales and setting a tone for the establishment or occasion.
3. James Bond was, relatively speaking, a wimp when it came to martinis.

We'll start with the last point first, so you can save the angry Talkbacks and e-mails. I'm a fan of 007, or at least I was when Sean Connery and Roger Moore were playing the part, but one of the first things we talked about during two-liquor drink class was that the most famous drink order in all of bartending -- "Shaken, not stirred," -- was a sign of weakness.

"One of the things that happens when you shake a martini is that the ice in the shaker chips, which adds water and lowers the strength of the drink," Van Den Eng explained to me and Tom, a UW-Milwaukee student in a Gaelic football jersey who is attending The Bartending College in hopes of picking up extra money for school.

"A stirred martini is slightly stronger, but they are both made completely of alcohol," Van Den Eng said. "So it's always a good idea to offer the customer a glass of water when you serve one."

Inside tips like that abound in the bar/classroom, where students from their late teens to their 50s learn recipes, the origin of cocktails and the way that different liquors are produced.

"From our feedback, students really get into learning the history behind the drinks and the technique," Van Den Eng said. "Why is it called a Cuba Libre? What's the difference between Irish whisky and Scotch? Students are very interested in that."

Van Den Eng said that the privately-owned college, which has been in operation since 1974 and was formerly located Downtown on Wisconsin Avenue, currently has 35 to 40 students enrolled but class sizes can range from one to about 10.

"There is no mandatory attendance, so it's a little hard to gauge at times," said Van Den Eng, who has been in the bar business for more than 10 years and has been at the school for six.

"Our students can take one class a week or one class a day. They can finish the course in two days, two weeks or two months. It's all up to their schedule at work, home or school. We rotate the classes every day so that if you can only make it at a certain time, you can get all the classes you need. You can finish the course in three Saturdays, if that's when you're free."

Although graduates from the school are unlikely to make "rookie" mistakes like leaving the plastic scoop in the ice machine (where it will quickly get buried) or using a glass to scoop ice from the bin (it can chip and contaminate the ice with glass shards), some "self-taught" bartenders in the field scoff at the notion of paying for an education that some establishments will provide for nothing.

"Bartenders who have that bad opinion of the school are the bartenders who work the beer and shot joints," said Van Den Eng. "They don't make the foofy drinks. They don't make the blended drinks. So, they don't see the need for it. Our job at the school is to train you to work at resorts, hotels, martini lounges and places that you need to have a good repertoire of drink recipes."

At one class, I ran into a 20-something UWM student named "Mitch" (Editor's note: We're not using his real name to protect his identity). Mitch tends bar on Water Street. Even though he nearly two years of experience, Mitch took the class in order to solidify his knowledge and perhaps move to a job a little more complicated than pouring pitchers and Jaeger Bombs.

"I think it's been worth it," Mitch said. "There are some places in town that probably wouldn't hire me because of where I work. They just assume that all I can do is serve beers and make a few shooters. I already knew some of the stuff we covered in class, but I learned a lot, too. I learned a few more drink recipes, which was good. If you go a couple weeks without making a drink, it can be hard to remember how to do it."

Another student was Mark, a 40-ish Racine resident who bought his tuition in a charity auction. "I thought it sounded cool and I got it really cheap because I was the only person to bid on it," Mark said. "I just built a bar in my house and I wanted to know how to make some different drinks for when we have people over.

"After taking a few classes, I realize that there are a lot of bartenders working out there who don't really know what they're doing. They make drinks the wrong way, with the wrong stuff in them and some of them seem pretty cocky about it. I don't think that's right."

Unlike a majority of students, Mark has no interest in finding work as a bartender. "I'm just doing this for fun," he said. "I don't even know if I'm going to take the final exam, because I don't know if I can memorize all the recipes."

While drink recipes make up a considerable portion of the final at The Bartending College, Van Den Eng stresses that there is more to mixology than memorizing recipes and mixing drinks.

"Anyone can make a drink. That's the easy part," said Van Den Eng, who does consulting work and training for bars and works private parties in his spare time. "It's all about your people skills, your personality and how you convey yourself. Seventy percent of it is personality."

Van Den Eng also spends time talking about how to deal with loud, obnoxious customers, how to cut off patrons who have been over served and how to "up-sell" customers who might not know what they want.

"One of the things we talk about is how to turn that $200 night into a $400 night," he said. "Bartenders are the No. 1 person in charge of marketing for the establishment. Let's say you go to a restaurant and it's crowded and you can't get a table for an hour. Where do people go? To the bar.

"When that happens, it becomes the bartender's job to keep them happy and interested and entertained and not worried about the wait. That's when good bartenders come through and earn their money. That's what we want our students to be able to do."

Once I completed the course (with a credible 94 on the final), a lot of people asked if I was ready to actually work at a crowded bar on a busy night. The honest answer is that I'm not totally sure.

It has been three weeks since I worked on "speed drills" at school and some of the drink recipes that were tattooed on my brain during the final have begun to fade from memory.

"That happens," Van Den Eng said. "If you're not working or studying a guide, you can lose them in about two weeks.

"Drink recipes are being invented every day. You constantly have to stay on the ball learning the new recipes and keeping up with the trends. Now, trends are going away from martinis and back into the juice drinks. The big thing now is these infused vodkas, so you have to know how to make drinks with those."

Recipes are only part of the equation, though. I wonder if I would "freeze up" under pressure and forget how much Rose's Lime Juice to put in a Vodka Gimlet? Can I remember how to cut limes and lemons the way Larry demonstrated in class (and avoid the dreaded "bar rot" caused by citric acid?

Would I be ready if someone ordered a "Tall Sloe Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall with a little English?" (If you're wondering, I think that contains 1/2 oz. each of Sloe Gin, Southern Comfort, Galliano and regular gin with orange juice and a cherry garnish.)

Would I be able to work the cash register, keep the ashtrays empty, the glasses clean and the customers happy? Could I calm a boisterous drunk who doesn't want to be cut off? Could I clear the bar at last call?

"A lot of bar managers want two types of employees," said Van Den Eng, who gets up to five calls a week from bars looking to hire his graduates. "They either want someone with a lot of experience so they don't have to train them so much or they want someone really green with no bad habits.

"We try to prepare our students for every possible scenario that we can come up and I think the head start they get here gives them a little more job security. The people who go into a job completely green spend the first two months learning how to do things. When things get tight, those are the people who get laid off or don't get the good shifts.

"Every bar does things a little bit differently, but I think our students will be able to adapt because of the training they got here."

Like many other jobs, there is a point where training must give way to hands-on experience.  Back to the question: Are you ready to step behind the bar and serve the thirsty masses?  

That depends. Who is hiring and what are the hours?