Beverage Class

Now I’m in the third class of this segment, and it is a lot different from my other classes! No more cooking and making culinary creations, but now it’s serving drinks and taste testing many different drinks such as coffee, beer, and wine. We also mix a lot of different liquors and spirits.

The first day was a coffee day. We practiced coffee service, learned how to make cappuccinos, tasted different coffees and recorded how they looked, tasted, smelled, and the feel they had in our mouths. I didn’t appreciate the coffee we tasted because I’m used to having milk or creamer in my coffee and we tasted them black. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to enjoy a cup of black coffee. It was still pretty cool to compare the taste and colors of all the coffees though.

Our second day was all about beer. We basically just lectured for a LONG time and then tasted a lot of beer. The kinds we tried were…

Amstel Light

Coors

Blue Moon

Herman Joseph

Red Hook

Bass Ale

Wild Raspberry Ale

Cut Throat

Guiness

Ichiban (Japanese beer)

We also tried two ciders:

Angry Orchard

Colorado Glider Cider

I didn’t like the beer; it tasted very bitter. When we tasted them we had to explain the color, aroma, taste, and what food it would pair well with. My favorite drink I tasted was the Angry Orchard. It was a cider, and it didn’t taste like alcohol! It was delicious.

The next 2 days we tasted wines! The first day was white wine, including Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, some other one, and a dessert wine. I personally enjoyed the dessert wine the most because it was sweet and not very bitter. I think as I taste more wines, I’ll appreciate white wine more. As for now, I’m just sipping and spitting…no consumption! Also, with our wine tastings, we were given each a plate filled with cheeses, fruit, and either bread or crackers. The food helped cut out the bitter flavors. Here is a picture of the empty wine glasses and plate of food before we began our tasting.

The next day with red wines was pretty much the same procedure. We tasted Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, Merlot, Syrah, and Cabernet Sauvignon. I personally prefer the white wines over the red wines. The red ones were stronger and tasted a lot alike. I feel the white wines had a more variety of tastes compared to the red wines. It was a good experience, and maybe in the future I’ll appreciate them more than I do now.

Another day in class we started mixology! It was a lot of fun! In the room we were in for class, there were 10 bars with all the tools necessary and enough space in each of them to maneuver.

We partnered up and worked as a team to make all the drinks we needed. We each had 3 rounds making up at least 12 different drinks per turn. The catch is, we didn’t use real alcohol in the drinks; it was all colored water. They were very real-looking though, because each drink has it’s own formula of food coloring to get a specific color.

When we first started, we had to practice our blind pour, which is pouring our ‘alcohol’ into a glass and measuring it into a 1 1/2 ounce cup to make sure we can count how many seconds 1 1/2 ounces is. The reason for that is because that’s the standard for most drinks for the main alcohol included. We then used the notecards we had in class to work on all the drinks. It was a lot of fun, using all the bottles and gun that had the juices and sodas and such in it. We also had to use different methods of preparing drinks. Stirring the drink in the glass and then straining into the serving glass, speed-shaking which is using a metal cup and shaking it with the ice and either straining or just serving with the ice, and just an ice-down  pour which is pouring the liquid over the ice and nothing else is done to the drink.

We made a lot of drinks, and here are some of them!