By the Book

• The first thing that any aspiring barkeep needs to know is that you should never be too cool for school -- a wealth of information is at your fingertips in many different bartending and cocktail books. These informative texts will not only teach you the recipes for the most popular and ordered cocktails, they will also inform you of tricks of the trade like shot-layering and few bits of bartending flair. The newest and most novice mixologists should pick up a copy of basic bar recipes, then work outward and onward from there.

Learn Your Liquors

• One of the best parts of learning how to properly mix drinks is taste-testing, and that doesn't mean just the finished product. A knowledgeable barman, or woman, should become familiar with the specific flavors of the major spirits as well as the most common mixers. Familiarizing yourself with vodka's faint scent and taste, rum's sugary burn and tequila's peppery bite will help when pouring booze. In a sense, you will gain respect for your ingredients, and therefore pour and mix them more cautiously and wisely. Also, tasting the finished product ensures you won't drink or serve something akin to swill.

Practice, Practice, Practice

• Learning cocktails isn't just about measurements, ingredients and the occasional cocktail shaker flip -- it actually has something to do with routine practice and muscle memory. The more you make drinks, the more you will become accustomed to the amount of time it takes a certain amount of a certain liquor or liqueur to pour. And the more you make drinks, the better the drinks will become. Just like a veteran cook in the kitchen, your mixing skills will increase over time with the more experience you accumulate.

Cut, Snip and Peel

• Garnishes not only add color and looks to a cocktail, they also complete them. The garnish choice is based on if the flavors of the garnish will complement the flavors of the cocktail, like a slice of lime in a margarita, a lemon twist for a cosmopolitan, a cherry in a Manhattan or a few olives in a martini. When you first start working with garnishes, start simple and master the basic ones before branching out. Citrus wedges, wheels and peels as well as maraschino cherries and cocktail onions and olives will cover plenty of drinks.