Here's How Many Drinks Bartenders Really Need To Memorize

I was a bartender for seven or eight years. To learn the tricks of the trade, I signed up for the New York Bartending School. I soon found myself with a thick, spiralbound book filled with rafts of information, all of which I had to learn before becoming a bona fide barkeep. Things like shaken vs. stirred. Blended scotch or single-malt (or single-grain). Neat vs. up. Tinctures and shrubs and bitters and vermouths and garnishes. And oh-so-many drink recipes. I was tasked with hours of studying, written tests, and practical exams (we had to demonstrate making each cocktail). But by the time I graduated to my first bartending gig, I'd gone from majorly mixed-up to mixing it up like a pro.

I'm not sure that I could put an exact number on how many drinks I could make from memory during my bartending heyday, but 100 seems like a good, round number that probably isn't far off-base. Of course, how many you really need to know by heart to stay employed — and well-tipped — as a bartender depends on a variety of factors, such as where you work, what your clientele is drinking, and if you're allowed to keep a bartending guide behind the bar as a cheat sheet.

Not only do you need to know the basics (as in, what goes in a standard martini?), but you should also know all the variations someone might request (as in, a Grey Goose vodka martini, shaken not stirred, extra dry, slightly dirty, straight up with a twist). Where there's a Bloody Mary, there's also a Bloody Maria, Bloody Caesar, Bloody Bull, Bloody Scotsman, and a Red Snapper, depending on the precise ingredients. And a Russian can be White or Black. The good news is, once you know the original recipe, the modifications are easy.

As a general rule of thumb, if you want to look like an expert behind the bar, figure that you at least should know how to whip up the classics: Negroni. Old-fashioned. Manhattan. Cosmo. If you work in a martini bar that offers an encyclopedia of elaborate martini options — all the lemon drops and pomegranate martinis and chocolate espresso cookie martinis — you've got some major memorizing to do. If, on the other hand, you spend your nights slinging Smirnoff in a dive bar, you can probably get away with knowing far fewer, as long as you get that a "Cape Cod" is really just an old-school name for a vodka cranberry, and you know how to pour a mean gin and tonic.

There are certain drink recipes you should have in your repertoire, just in case. That doesn't mean you'll be making 27 Sidecars per shift, but it only takes one customer ordering a Sidecar to have you looking like a dufus if you give them a confused or panicked stare in return. And don't try to fake it: The only thing worse than saying "I don't know how to make that" is making it and getting it unthinkably, undrinkably wrong.