Hey Bartender

It takes a lot of hard work to learn the secrets of a really good buttery nipple.

by Patrick Rapa

Did Sam Malone ever have to do this?

That’s something that popped into my head while studying for the bartending exam, reducing a four-inch stack of index cards into two smaller piles: ones I know and ones I don’t. The process takes hours and must be repeated. The "don’t know" stack is always much bigger.

The unlikely names of unappetizing drinks bounce like rubber bands off my head. Melon Ball, Wet Nut, Buttery Nipple. Internal rhymes and rhythms start to develop. Seabreeze, Baybreeze, Blue-Woo, Comfortable Screw.

Did Mayday Malone ever make flash cards? Did he stay awake at night trying to remember what kind of whiskey to put in a Duck Fart? No, he was a TV character. Not real. Besides, all Norm ever ordered was beer, and beer is easy.

Chip, the main instructor at the Center City School of Bartending (712 S. Fourth St., 267-514-2800), doesn’t spend much time on beer. What’s to teach? Pull the handle. If it’s Guinness, tilt the glass.

This $375 course is in mixology. It’s about knowing how much of what goes into what kind of glass and whether it gets a lemon twist or angostura bitters. But before you can ponder recipes, you have to know how to pour.

Chip, who coaches girls’ basketball at a local school when he’s not training Philly’s aspiring drinkslingers, likes to teach by example. He takes a pint glass filled halfway with ice cubes and tilts a vodka bottle over it, his index finger extended alongside the plastic pour top. Then he strains the vodka into a shot glass, every drop. It’s perfect, just under the rim. There are plenty of shortcuts to pouring a perfectly measured shot: the shot-sized jigger, the magically calibrated pour top (which only lets 1 ounce through per tilt) and, of course, you could just decant right into the shot glass. But Chip will not have his students versed in the methods of cowards. "We will learn to pour just by looking," he says.

And so we do. My classmates and I get behind the bar, attempting half, three-quarter and full shots. There is plenty of spillage, but, as you might imagine, we’re not using real liquor. Chip’s bar is fully stocked with all the right bottles, but there’s only colored water inside. When one is emptied, we journey into the back to fill it in the filthy sink and, if the type of liquor demands it, we mix in some dye. The cream, soda and juice are fake, too. The ice is plastic. A faux mixed drink should look something like its real-life counterpart. This way you have some notion of whether you mixed right.

My classmates are a couple of college buddies, let’s call them Roy and Biff, looking to pick up some extra cash until they graduate. Roy’s a quiet, studious type. Biff is a large, sandal-wearing joker. Their pal Graham took the course a couple weeks ago and, because he hasn’t passed the pouring test after a few attempts, keeps coming back to hang out, make jokes and play solitaire on Chip’s computer.

The three guys have a good time people watching out the storefront window. Unfortunate souls often look in at us on their way to and from South Street. There’s always a moment of confusion on their faces: What is this extremely well-lit, completely ambiance-free bar? They don’t immediately notice the lighted "School Of Bartending" sign in the window. Roy, Graham and Biff usually have something smartass, if not exactly smart, to say to each other about the passersby. Men are assessed based on suppositions of their physical strength and sexuality. Women are objets d’flesh.

But things never really cross from ignorance to actual hate. The loose tone of things can be attributed to Chip’s mix of silly one-liners and Carla-style jabs.

Only once a week does Chip open up the fridge and break out some real alcohol. The special occasion is the demonstration of the Cement Mixer, a nasty and somewhat tactile drinking experience. First you pop a shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream in your mouth and hold it there. The sweet, milky liquor starts to harden around your tongue. Then the bartender pours a little bit of lime juice directly into your mouth. The citrus cuts the cream into clumps as you swish it around. (At least that’s what I hear. I would have tried it, but I didn’t want to have to pop a Lactaid in front of the guys.)

The school offers a one-week course every so often, but most students opt for the two-week version. Classes run Monday through Thursday evenings, with a new class starting every week. Here’s your typical timeline:

Week one. Let’s see. Early on, somebody makes a Cocktail joke. You laugh. Binders are handed out which spartanly list drinks and their ingredients. You sidle up to the fake bar and Chip (or the part-time instructor, Mike) goes through the book page by page. The book subdivides the recipes into groups -- cream drinks, soda drinks, layered drinks, shots -- in an attempt to put order to the apparent chaos of mixology. There’s a brief sing-along when Chip teaches the Salty Dog, a.k.a. gin and juice. Every couple of pages you get behind the bar and give the new beverages a test pour. You also perform some basic bar-backing: emptying the buckets, wiping down the bar and restocking the fake liquor (remember, schnapps is always clear!).

Week two. Sit around studying and practicing your pouring (it really isn’t easy) while the first-weekers get most of Chip’s attention. You can listen in on their lessons as a refresher, of course. Somebody in the new class makes a Cocktail joke. You don’t laugh.

All the while, ex-students come in under the auspices of looking for job placement assistance -- Chip makes some calls and tries to help -- but mostly they’re just here to loiter. With all the multicultural young people hanging around, the school has a 21 Jump Street vibe to it, but with a lot more flash cards.

Although Graham hasn’t earned his decorative bartender’s certificate yet, he’s often on Chip’s phone -- or stopping in after casing South Street -- trying to get a job behind the bar somewhere. Of course, you don’t need a license to tend bar in Pennsylvania. The theory is that graduates of a course like this one are better equipped to work at high-end watering holes because they had to memorize all these drinks.

The secret to learning the recipes to the nearly 200 drinks in our books is some clever mnemonic devices. (For some reason, Chip likes to call them "acronyms." On the intro page in our binders, they’re called pneumonics.)

It’s time for an aside on mnemonics. Here’s one we all learned in grade school: "Many vigorous earth men jump straight up near Pluto." See how the first letters of each word correspond with planets in our solar system, in order? Yes, two of the words are the actual names of the planets they represent. This feels like cheating, but actually it’s a good thing. It roots our nonsensical phrase in reality, somewhat.

And yes, two of the words begin with the same letter. This cannot be helped. You just have to remember Mercury comes before Mars. And yes, yes, yes, the mnemonic makes no actual sense. No earth man can jump anywhere near Pluto. And supposing he was blessed with the sort of super-pygmy calf muscles required to achieve escape velocity -- and he was similarly unconcerned with the breathing issues involved in nonvehicular space travel -- would he still consider Pluto "straight up" above him once he was free of the physical and psychological bounds of gravity? And the very notion that there are "many" of these people leaping into the cosmos all the time? Please.

But this mnemonic is satisfying because -- and this cannot be stressed enough -- it’s a story about space. Its hidden meaning (the names of the planets in order) is tied in to its subject matter (the story about a fleet of impossibly endowed astronauts and their whimsical jumping habits). Not all mnemonics are so pleasing to the senses. Whether or not you believe "every good boy deserves fudge" -- a dubious and ambiguous merit system, if you ask me -- there’s no real corresponding concept to the notes in the treble clef. You’re just supposed to remember. Bartending is full of such nonsensical phrases.

But some of them work just fine. The first one we learn is the Kamikaze: very tragic landings. The appropriate, if simplified, mnemonic means you’ll need vodka, triple sec and lime juice to whip one up. A Rusty Nail (scotch and Drambuie) is "Shit! Damn!" Can’t argue with that.

But things start getting hazy. One could argue, I suppose, that a Godfather (scotch, amaretto) "shoots assholes," but there’s less to reason to think Kool-Aid (melon, amaretto, vodka and cranberry) "makes a vicious child." Hyperactive, perhaps?

The Grape Soda -- a sickly sweet little elixir made of vodka, blueberry schnapps, chambord, cranberry juice and 7UP served in a tall glass -- comes with an enormous and baffling mnemonic: Very blue chicks cum 7 times. The phrase has no trouble bringing to mind some unpleasant Smurfette imagery, but it doesn’t make me think of Grape Soda.

I rather like the Philly-oriented but ultimately irrelevant mnemonic for the Zombie: Rocky runs around the Spectrum 151 times. Let’s see, that’s light rum, dark rum, apricot brandy, triple sec, sour mix/pineapple juice (using the "Sp" from Spectrum) and topped with Bacardi 151 in a tall glass. Wonder what Boston-based phrase Sam Malone would have used.

It’s best to come up with a mnemonic that works for you. Mr. Chips offers "being assholes" to help remember the brandy and amaretto in the French Connection. I substituted "bonjour, assholes" because it has something to do with France.

You pick up on some basic rules along the way: Never use more than a one count of triple sec, lime juice or grenadine. (A plague of heartburn on those who ignore it.) Always top -- that is, to pour the last bit of stuff into the drink after you’ve shaken it -- in a circular motion.

We’re taught four ways to make a chocolate martini, the last being to simply drop a Hershey’s Kiss point down in the martini glass and fill the rest of the glass with vodka. "Is that gonna make the drink taste like chocolate? No, but it’s one of the asinine ways people make a chocolate martini," says instructor Mike. He doesn’t like it any more than we do, but it’s in the book so we learn it and make a flash card for it.

The point of all the studying is, of course, the big tests -- the written and the pouring. After you’ve done your two weeks, you can come in and take them whenever you’re ready.

The written is pretty easy. That’s because Mike sits us down and tells us what will be on it. Everything. Each question. In order.

You have to know what Southern Comfort tastes like (peaches and honey), what it means to serve a drink "neat" (room temperature), how to convert the alcohol content to proof (just double it). Stuff like that.

The pouring test is a whole other zombie. Chip tells you 10 drinks to make right there on the spot. It can be anything from the binder. Mai Tai, Jolly Rancher, Rob Roy. Third Reich, Screaming Nazi, Screaming Orgasm. Nutty Irishman, Liquid Heroin, Liquid Cocaine. John, Tom or Mike Collins.

For all Chip’s joking, everything is very formal at test time. He takes off points for using the wrong glass. If he remembers what you got wrong before, he’ll ask it again.

This is where the flash cards must do their work.

After three or four failures over several weeks, Graham finally passes the pouring test late one Wednesday night. And he goes nuts. He runs out onto the sidewalk, among the earth men he’s so often made fun of, and yells "I passed! I passed!" Then he runs around the block 151 times.