I can hear you saying, “But you still haven’t told me anything. You‘ve just told me to try things and figure it out”

Basically, yes; but remember the old saw: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for life.

Tasting is something that is a very individual experience. Understanding needs to be on a physical level, knowing how you react to flavors and how they feel. You cannot simply read some descriptions of flavors and lists of what items mix well and expect to be anything other than just another run of the mill mixologist. Thousands of books are available that simply give you this sort of direction—they are a dime a dozen and the skill you gain from them is equally lessened. You must first experience the recipes for yourself and even then, without understanding why the flavors of a recipe work together you‘re just duplicating someone else’s genius.

Treat your efforts to learn about flavors and the combination of those flavors the same as you would treat learning a sport. When a person decides to learn to shoot a bow and arrow they do not just read a book and become a master archer. They spend countless hours drawing the bow and loosing the arrow at a target. The feel of the action becomes ingrained in the muscle—what is known as muscle memory. Taste is the same. If you taste enough things consciously and mindfully, your body and brain learn at an instinctive level what reactions the liquid delivers and you will be able to call upon this stored knowledge when needed.

Just because you’ve tasted something and notated it, you shouldn’t put it behind you, never to be seen again. Revisit things you’ve tasted in the past. Pay attention to them as if new. Reminders like this will keep the flavor memory fresh. Repetition ingrains the memory to allow faster, more accurate recall when presented with the liquid in the future. I can look at a bottle of pineapple juice for example and evoke the flavor in my mind with the same clarity that was there when I first examined the taste because I have consciously tasted it over and over again.

Have you ever read the directions on shampoo? ‘Lather, rinse, repeat.” The same applies to tasting, repeat, repeat, repeat until it becomes so ingrained in your psyche that you can almost taste something just by thinking about it. I’m not saying to mindlessly try things over and over, that is the way to remain thoughtless about your flavors. Focus on how things taste. Really pay attention. Don’t do it all the time because that way leads to madness and could lead you to cease enjoying flavor just for the experience. Every once in a while, stop mindlessly eating or drinking and CHOOSE to focus on the experience. Reload the data into your mind every once in a while to ensure that you will always know what a specific flavor is like.

Anyway, until next time, may all your drinks be tasty. Cheers.