The Bar Tour

            The bar, pub, or watering hole, whatever you may call it, is a sacred weekend place for a lot of us for relaxation and catching up with friends. It is a place that most young adults or adults, legal of age to drink, look forward to after busy week of work. It is a place where we relieve our stress and inhibitions with a drink or two. I for one religiously go to my watering hole at the end of the week to have a few laughs and unforgettable memories with my friends.

            I am assuming that most of us know what a bar is but those who do not; a bar is a business establishment that serves alcoholic beverages for consumption inside the premises. Other than beverages some bars also serve food especially here in the Philippines wherein drinking is usually associated with “pulutan” or food that compliments your drink. Bars provide stools or chairs that are placed at tables or counters for their patrons. Some bars have entertainment on a stage, such as a live band, comedians, go-go dancers, or strippers. Bars which offer entertainment or live music are often referred to as music bars or nightclubs. Bars are always present in every culture dating even to the time of Jesus albeit in olden times they call bars as taverns.

            Now that you know what a bar is I will give you a more detailed experience and knowledge of the activities, tools, and drinks that I have learned from our bar tour of Chilli’s, Greenbelt Makati.

            First off, a bar generally carries a wide variety of alcoholic beverages spawning from your locally produced beers to the most expensive imported kinds of alcohol available. You can order most of these drinks from your bartender as it is or you can opt to have a mix of drinks, called cocktails, that your bartender would personally concoct for you.

            When concocting mixes a bartender uses a variety of tools to produce only the best tasting cocktails for their patrons. Most of us think that bartenders just estimate which drinks he’ll mix to make a cocktail but as our presenter, Bryan, taught us, “mixing drinks is like baking wherein each ingredient has a specific measurement to ensure that the alcohol content of the cocktails stays within a patron’s tolerable level.”

Bartending is more than pouring a drink into a glass. How good a bartender is will depend on a lot of things, like their social skills, the actual bar they work from, their looks, but mainly it is their skills. And there is no such thing like skill without tools...

Here are the top ten tools that a bartender must have in his arsenal:

1.)    WINE OPENER

There are a zillion different types of wine openers in even more colors. It doesn't really matter what model you use as long as you are skilled with it. Probably the most common one is the "waiter's corkscrew"(left).

2.)    BOTTLE OPENER

A bottle opener is crucial for bartending. The one you use depends on personal preferences, but make sure you use it well. The simplest model (left) is made of metal and is actually quite easy to use.

3.)    COCKTAIL SHAKER

Obviously only needed when serving cocktails

There are 3 types of cocktail shakers.
The most commonly used amongst bartenders is called a Boston Shaker and consists of 2 pieces. A metal bottom and a glass (or plastic) mixing bowl. The two pieces can be sealed together when shaking.

4.)    COASTER

To keep the bar clean and not sticky, bartenders use coasters when serving the drinks. There are 2 types of coasters. One is made out of carton and can only be used so many times. The carton will become wet and eventually crack or tear. However, they are cheap, you can print advertising on them and you wouldn't mind when people take them home. As Bryan told us, “Coasters are considered to be one of the most effective advertising tools in a bar; it’s cheap and easily noticed by patrons.”

5.)    ICE SCOOP AND BUCKET

Because scooping ice with your glass is a bad idea. The ice scoop serves only 1 purpose. Get ice from an ice bucket into the glass.

6.)    STRAINERS

Strainers are used to remove unwanted ice from a drink when pouring the drink into a glass after it has been shaken or stirred. The most common model is called a Hawthorn strainer. The Hawthorn model (right) is a strange looking, circular metal tool with a handle and a metal spring on top of it. It's specifically designed to block big chunks of ice, but lets the pulp and small ice shards go through.

7.)    SWIZZLE STICKS

Swizzle sticks have 2 purposes. Foremost, they are used to stir the drink. Secondly they are used to pick up pieces of fruit or olives from the drinks without using your fingers. They literally come in all sizes or shapes and often carry a logo or advertisement at the top. They are usually made from plastic, but the more fancy places can use steel, glass or even wooden swizzle sticks.

8.)    MUDDLERS

Muddlers are used to make a mash of fruit, herbs or spices when they have been added to a cocktail. Muddling them releases their flavor.

Muddlers exist in all kind of shapes and material. Most common are wooden muddlers, but platic and stainless steel are taking over the market. Two examples of drinks where a muddler is a required tool are caipirinhas and mojitos.

9.)    JIGGERS

Jiggers allows bartender to measure how much they pour. This can be useful if they have to work with tight inventory control or in some states in the USA it's even obligated by law to measure how much they pour to control the alcohol content. There are many different jiggers, some have a small and big side like on the first picture, and some have indications on the side.

10.)            POURERS

There are different types of caps that bartenders can place on their bottles to control how they pour drinks.
Some just help reducing spills; some have a measuring tool to also control how much they pour. Whatever style the pourers are, they are a great help when bar tending.

Now that you know what the tools are it’s time to know what you drink. What use is a gun without bullets?  As I have stated earlier there are a wide variety of alcoholic beverages available in the world that is why it’s crucial to know the differences of what you ingest. Let us start with the most consumed type of alcohol, the Spirits or Liquor.

A spirit or liquor is an alcoholic beverage containing ethanol that is produced by distilling (i.e., concentrating by distillation) ethanol produced by means of fermenting grain, fruit, or vegetables.  The most common types of spirit are:

1.)    Brandy

The name Brandy originates from the word Brandywine, derived from Dutch brandewijn which means "burnt wine", is a spirit produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35–60% alcohol by volume and is typically taken as an after-dinner drink. Some brandies are aged in wooden casks, while some are simply colored with caramel coloring to imitate the effect of such aging (and some brandies are produced using a combination of both aging and coloring).

2.)    Cognac

Cognac is named after the town of Cognac in France, is a variety of brandy. It is produced in the wine-growing region surrounding the town from which it takes its name.

For a distilled brandy to bear the name Cognac its production methods must meet certain legal requirements. In particular, it must be made from specified grapes, of which Ugni Blanc, known locally as Saint-Emilion, is the one most widely used at the present time. The brandy must be twice distilled in copper pot stills and aged at least two years in French oak barrels from Limousin or Tronçais. Cognac matures in the same way as whiskies and wine when aged in barrels, and most cognacs are aged considerably longer than the minimum legal requirement.

3.)    Gin

Gin is a spirit which derives its predominant flavor from Juniper berries. From its earliest beginnings in the Middle Ages, gin has evolved over the course of a millennium from a herbal medicine to an object of commerce in the spirits industry. Today, the gin category is one of the most popular and widely distributed range of spirits, and is represented by products of various origins, styles, and flavor profiles that all revolve around juniper as a common ingredient.

4.)    Rum

Rum is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from sugarcane byproducts such as molasses, or directly from sugarcane juice, by a process of fermentation and distillation. The distillate, a clear liquid, is then usually aged in oak barrels. Rum can be referred to in Spanish by descriptors such as ron viejo ("old rum") and ron añejo ("aged rum").

Light rums are commonly used in cocktails, whereas "golden" and "dark" rums were typically consumed individually (i.e., "straight" or "neat") or used for cooking, but are now commonly consumed with mixers. Premium rums are also available, made to be consumed either straight or iced.

5.)    Vodka

Vodka (Russian: водка, Belarusian: Гарэлка, Ukrainian: Горілка, Polish: wódka) is a distilled beverage composed primarily of water and ethanol with traces of impurities and flavorings. Vodka is made by the distillation of fermented substances such as grains, potatoes, or sometimes fruits and/or sugar.

Vodka is a spirit that was virtually unknown in the United States prior to the 1940s. Traditionally prepared vodkas had an alcoholic content of 40% by volume. Today, the standard Belarusian, Polish, Russian and Lithuanian vodkas are 40% alcohol by volume (ABV) or 80 proofs. The European Union has established a minimum of 37.5% ABV for any "European vodka" to be named as such.^[2][3] Products sold as vodka in the United States must have an alcoholic content of 30% or more.^[4] For homemade vodkas and distilled beverages referred to as "moonshine".

Vodka is traditionally drunk neat in the vodka belt countries of Eastern Europe and around the Baltic Sea. It is also commonly used in cocktails and mixed drinks, such as the Bloody Mary, Screwdriver, Sex on the Beach, Moscow Mule, White Russian, Black Russian, vodka tonic, and in a vodka martini.

6.)    Whisky or Whiskey

Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Different grains are used for different varieties, including barley, malted barley, rye, malted rye, wheat, and corn. Whisky is typically aged in wooden casks, made generally of charred white oak.

Whisky is a strictly regulated spirit worldwide with many classes and types. The typical unifying characteristics of the different classes and types are the fermentation of grains, distillation, and aging in wooden barrels.

            These types of beverages all have its culture and heritage and in the words of a famous Russian distiller, “Every drink has its age… and its history” – Legend of Kremlin Vodka. But my favorite drink of all is neither a liquor nor spirit but is the world’s widely consumed alcoholic beverage and third-most popular drink overall, after water and tea, and that is beer!

Beer in the Philippines is managed by two breweries: San Miguel Corporation, which produces San Miguel Pale Pilsen, and Asia Brewery, the second-largest brewery in the country.

Beer is the most consumed alcoholic beverage in the Philippines and amounts for a 70% share of the domestic alcoholic drinks market in terms of volume during 2005. Between 2003 and 2004, the Philippines showed the fastest growth rate in the world of 15.6%. With a consumption rise from 1.22 to 1.41 million liters, it was the 22nd largest beer market in the world in 2004. A Filipino will drink an average of nearly 20 litres of beer a year. Beer is a Filipino drinker’s best friend and enemy, I blame beer for my belly, but still I can’t resist its alluring ice cold call for a good time with friends.

Beer is produced by the saccharification of starch and fermentation of the resulting sugar. The starch and saccharification enzymes are often derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat. Unmalted maize and rice are widely used adjuncts to lighten the flavour because of their lower cost. The preparation of beer is called brewing. Most beer is flavoured with hops, which add bitterness and act as a natural preservative, though other flavourings such as herbs or fruit may occasionally be included.

Now that you know the tools and drinks that is found in a bar it is time you learn the skills that bartenders employ behind the bar to serve and entertain patrons known as flairing.

Flair bartending is the practice of bartenders entertaining guests, clientele or audiences with the manipulation of bar tools and liquor bottles in tricky, dazzling ways. Used occasionally in cocktail bars, the action requires skills commonly associated with jugglers. It has become a sought-after talent among venue owners and marketers to help advertise a liquor product or the opening of a bar establishment. Competitions have been sponsored by liquor brands to attract flair bartenders, and some hospitality training companies hold courses to teach flair techniques.

Flair bartending is sometimes referred to as "extreme bartending" or contracted to "flairtending." The word flair became popular among practitioners in the mid-1990s. "Flair" is also used as a verb referring to any trickery used by a bartender in order to entertain guests while mixing a drink. Flair can include juggling, flipping (bottles, shakers), manipulating flaming liquors or even performing close-up magic tricks (also referred to as "bar-magic").

Flair is showmanship added to bartending that enhances the overall guest experience. The ideas behind mixology and drink-oriented or service-minded bartending can still be upheld with the correct application of working flair. Recently, there is a noticeable rise in bartenders combining prominent mixology knowledge and working flair skills all over the world. Working flair and Exhibition flair are very similar on the grounds that they both require precision and practice; however the use of exhibition flair has become a competition oriented style where significantly greater risks are being taken. Working flair, which is much more common, focuses more on delivering drinks to customers while still ensuring visual entertainment.

Most bartenders like the staff of Chilli’s, Greenbelt, actually study a lot of aspects related to alcoholic beverages such as  the maximum alcohol content that a person can tolerate, mixology (art of mixing drinks), and even flairing techniques  before being allowed to handle the bar. Honestly, I was surprised to learn that bartenders study the ratio of the body type of a person to the amount of alcohol they can tolerate and they reserve the right to refuse to serve alcohol to a patron who they think is at their maximum tolerance. I used to think that they would just serve alcohol to anyone who orders but now I know I was wrong. Kudos to the bartenders at Chilli’s for this entertaining and delicious learning experience! With this I end my bar tour for you, the next time you go out for a great experience for great music, friends, and a genuinely service with a smile visit Chilli’s, Greenbelt, you know you’re in good hands!