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Pour Cut #2: Flair Lesson 92

This week’s lesson is the inverse of last week’s lesson, so make sure you’ve already learned – or at least watched – the Pour Cut #1.

For starters, let’s talk about the grip on the bottle. Begin by grabbing the bottle around the neck and fan your fingers across the shoulders of the bottle as much as possible. This should give you a very solid grip on the bottle. Make sure you have dry hands! The last thing you want is the bottle to come flying out of your hand like a rocket ship.

Start the pour as close to the glass – or in it – as possible. This will help make sure you aren’t spilling. In case I haven’t mentioned this enough before: spilling at home is fun (go ahead and soak yourself like a dog on a beach), spilling at work is not allowed. Being a good ambassador of flair means performing moves at work that you are comfortable with, always giving great service, and avoiding spills at all costs, so that your boss, co-workers, and guests say things like “That was awesome – do that again!” rather than “Hey, maybe just make the drink and try not to spill everywhere this time.”

The “Cut” really comes from two motions: 1) the pivot of your wrist bringing the bottle from pointing down to pointing up, and 2) swiftly moving your arm down and across your body. Finding the sweet spot between these two movements – like shifting to 1st gear in a manual transmission – is really the trick to getting this move down. It may take a bit of practice before you can do it consistently so fill up a bottle of water at home, grab a pour spout and a tin, and practice this a lot. Actually, you can make a nice little drill/routine of practicing Pour Cut #1 and Pour Cut #2 back and forth.

Cuts are a flashy little way to finish making a drink. It’s perfect for very busy nights when you don’t have time to really flip bottle bottles but want to add just a little flash to pouring a drink – AND it’s the perfect ending to a good long routine, too.

You can probably do this with any pour spout, maybe, but I definitely prefer the Spill Stop 285-50s that we reviewed in a previous video.

 

Flair Lesson #32: Figure 8 Pour

I like this move because you’re not actually throwing anything so there’s less concern about dropping. It’s really more of a hand maneuver. It’s also functional – you’re pouring the drink while flairing. There’s also some really nice finishes that we can add to the Figure 8 Pour that we’ll go into later.

1) Start with the bottle in your right hand, gripping it as though you’ve just pulled it out of the rail. Hold the tin in your left hand at the top of the tin with your middle finger and thumb opposite each other. The tin should be loose and able to hinge or swing back and forth.

2) Focusing on just the bottle, give it a slight toss – just enough to change your grip up to the neck of the bottle, palm down.

3) In your left hand, give a little momentum to swing the tin over with your palm face up. The mouth of the tin should be face up.

4) Practice steps #2 and #3 independently. Once you feel comfortable, try doing them at the same time. You should Continue Reading » Flair Lesson #32: Figure 8 Pour