Ryu Komorita
Representing: Brazil
"Step Into the Next Level" is a project designed to prepare newly graduated Learning for Life students for what the big bars around the world are doing with high level mixology by enabling the easy access to information and experience.
"Step Into the Next Level"
The main idea of this project is to prepare newly graduated Learning for Life students for what the big bars around the world are doing with high level mixology.
In Brazil, it is very difficult to find good references and informations about modern cocktails and techniques, since almost all of them are in a foreign language and most of the population knows no more than Portuguese. We need good professionals, with a lot of knowledge and technique to develop not only their own hospitality capabilities, but also to improve the cocktail culture in our market.
We start by enabling the easy access to information. Currently, those informations are basically concentrated in a few bars in Brazil doing high level mixology. Therefore, bartenders need to work in those bars to be in contact with knowledge. With this project, we give the knowledge and experience for those who have neither of them, so they can have more chances to be part of a good bar team or even apply what they learn in any other place.
The way I figured out how to do all of this is through a cocktail recipe and the Learning for Life program. First, I teach the L4L student every step of the production of the cocktail. In this process we use different advanced techniques such as infusions, using the Sous Vide method; we clarify the cocktail with two different clarifying agents (dairy and pectinase). Then we batch the cocktail and learn how to finish and serve it. The student, along with the recipe of the cocktail, goes through a few days of internship in a professional bar, where they can make the cocktail and serve it to actual customers. They get to live a full bartending experience around a single cocktail.
Thinking about the scalability, "Step into the Next Level" can happen continuously. The recipe can have a few chances, as long as the techniques are still applied, or it can be a new recipe, created by the new World Class Brasil champion, every year.
That's one good way to make Brazil an even better place to bartend.
