So in all fairness I feel I should say I've not graduated from the course and I'm not sure that I will. All I have to do is pour 12 drinks in 6 minutes. My limit is 8. But it's like when I see the name called for I think of the real recipe and then have to take the time to remember the recipes as they teach it. My problem is I don't want to commit those recipes to memory (also they basically said themselves that the recipes we were committing to memory are not likely to be the one we use and we would need to learn new versions at every bar we work). One redditor put it best when they said they teach you "to make bad, drinks fast". One of my classmates is into that pour as fast as possible thing, to which I always reply along the lines of "slow is smooth, smooth is fast". Meaning that I rarely have to pour a drink twice. Last test I watched, a girl passed but she had to pour out several drinks and start over on them when she messed up which in a real bar is serious money down the drain.
And to be fair the instructor is a club focused bartender and I believe her when she says that these are the recipes she uses cause a lot of people care more for abv of their drinks than the taste. I've not yet had the pleasure of sampling any of the drinks using their recipes, but the Jagermeister, peach schnapps, and cranberry of the Red Headed Slut sounds horrible. But on the other hand I think she thinks that a lemon twist was a visual only garnish. For lemon twists the method was to skin the lemon and the roll the skin up like a cigar and slice twists off that. I'll be honest I tried it at home and it works you get a nice strip of lemon. But to use them she said that you take one of the curls unroll it and drop it in the drink. Skipping the whole twist part.
I also found some of her other knowledge seriously questionable, the phrase knows enough to be wrong comes to mind. For example she claimed that there are two ways to get alcohol, fermentation and distillation. Not quite wrong but then she explains that it just happens. To hear her explain it, you run water through distillation and you get alcohol. I guess that it's not really knowledge she needs, and she is a bartender through and through, but where she is focused is on making as much money as possible while promoting a nice atmosphere and keeping the stuff behind the bar to code. But to have such basic info wrong is discouraging and to see it handed out as gospel is disheartening. The useful things she has to say are things along the lines of "Always ask if they want their drink made with the top shelf stuff or the well." and "If they order a vodka and red bull sell them a whole can of red bull so they need to buy three more shots and you won't end up with a bunch of half used red bulls behind the bar."
The first class we did 30 minutes of free pour practice (main hand, off hand, both hands 10 min each) after that the classes were pretty much the same. We'd have an hour to an hour and a half to practice previously taught drinks. Then we would have a lesson we would be told which drinks from the book to learn a brief explanation of any liqueurs we had not used yet and some basic "facts" about what ever type of drink the lesson focused on. For example if had not had a recipe that called for Kahlua, she'd take it down and tell us that it is a coffee based liquor and then name a few other brands. Or that all two liquor drinks (think Black Russian) contain a liquor and liqueur. Then the instructor would make all the drinks listed. Following that we would clean up and go home unless there was enough time for more practice. Then for one of the last classes and one that was actually informative was the alcohol server training where we cover state laws and how to spot people that are too drunk and what have you via a VHS that looked to be from late 80's.
What we did not learn was actually serving the drinks, anything to do with serving beer or wine (with the exception of some wine cocktails), the proper way to use a bar spoon for stirring. For stirred drink our instructor would put the hawthorn strainer on the mixing glass and lift the glass and sort of swirl the contents. We also din't cover when and why of stirring versus shaking. There's just so much that I am aware of from my own independent studies that was not touched on that I felt would be of more use than a lot of what they did teach.
Also if you signed up for the deluxe package you get a "barware kit" which ended up to be a Cobbler Shaker and six red speed pours. The person whom I saw received the kit did ask why that's the sort of shaker they were given seeing as it was never used in class. They were told that you never want to take a boston shaker to a bartending gig cause someone would steal or break it. You also got the opportunity to be booked for private bartending through the school which turns out to be an email blast of a first come first server sort of opportunity.
In the end I don't think I learned enough about making drinks and tending bar to justify the $400 price tag.
Mai-Tai Recipe comparison
IBA Recipe School's Recipe
4 cl White Rum 3 cl light rum
2 cl Dark Rum 1.5 cl Amaretto
1.5 cl Orange Curaćao 1.5 cl triple sec
1.5 cl Orgeat syrup 1/2 fill Sweet and sour mix
1 cl Fresh lime juice 1/2 fill Pineapple juice
float 1.5 cl Myres
jacobvanloon
gummygunk
stormborns
