The Basics of Cocktail Making

Spirit Lab can really give you an edge behind the bar. Professional bartending starts with basics such as understanding full compliance of the sale of alcohol laws along with general health & safety. It may not be as exciting & fun as the cocktail making and testing part of our course but it is essential to help you along your journey of bartending perfection. Our courses not only give you a range of classic and contemporary cocktails that you can make to amaze people, we help you to serve them to perfection and give the added wow-factor into everything that you do. Being able to flow with your natural personality will give you an advantage behind the bar and you’ll be able to enjoy the experience all the more as well as providing the best service.

Fundamental Understanding of the Cocktail Making Process

Your repertoire of cocktail creations will never go well unless you understand why it is that you are doing mixes in certain orders. Why one mixer will form well with a certain spirit and the difference between brands of spirits. For example, all whiskey is not equal and in cocktail making there can be a vast difference between a drink mixed by someone who understands what they are doing and someone who does not. At Spirit Lab London we expect someone who’ll be professional bartending after one of our courses to leave our school as best prepared for that experience as possible. The bars our students go to will be different from ours. The ingredients won’t be the same and probably the customers will be different too. The key understanding of mixology that you will get from one of our courses and how best to mix for certain audiences will give you the confidence to tackle the most demanding of professional bartending positions.

Practice in our Real Cocktail Bar

It is essential that you get to practice your new skills in a live environment with the support of our qualified bartenders. Some of the mixology we teach is of course pretty complex to master – if it wasn’t it would not wow people in the same way – so it’s essential that you can build your confidence up in a live environment but with appropriate support. Mixing a drink slowly in class and mixing a drink amongst the hustle and bustle of a busy city bar are vastly different. In amongst what can be a chaos of noise with people trying to get your attention can present a different pressure and requires a level of skill to apply the mixology you learn in class into a real live environment. Having the pizazz to wow customers but do it in an efficient way that keeps the bar running and ticking over requires precise attention to detail as much as it relies upon your natural personality to shine through in how you deal with people.

UK & Worldwide Recognised Certification

At our school you will gain a certification that is recognised throughout the UK and worldwide. We’re proud to offer a WSET Diploma which is well known as a professional bartending qualification.

Find Out More

To find out more hints & tips on how to pick out the best professional bartending available please see our longer blog post on schools for bartending.