The only thing better than learning how to mix your own expertly crafted cocktails is having them personally delivered to your house by Anvil bartenders. Now that Bobby Heugel and company are re-introducing their cocktail classes and premiering their catering business, you can choose between drawing up a custom drink menu or learning some new skills.

Heugel and the occasional guest lecturer, like Julep's Alba Huerta, will host the educational series. The first class focused on bourbon, with Heugel guiding rookie bourbonites and experts alike on the history and proper tasting methods of the classic American spirit. Pours and class materials included a 23-year Pappy Van Winkle and samples from the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection.

Anvil staff will be your dealers for the next class on Jan. 14, which will be an off-site, poker-themed affair complete with Scotch and cigar pairings. All-inclusive tickets for this lecture will run you $75 and are available at Anvil now.

Heugel is excited to share his expertise, admitting that it can be tricky to talk spirits history when you’re at a bar with friends, even if it provides context for what’s in your glass.

“It’s a unique opportunity to talk to people in depth about spirits and cocktails, and sometimes that takes a different setting that’s hard to do in a bar,” Heugel says. “You can get into details and all the dorky things that we enjoy about cocktails and spirits.”

If you were never a good student but always a great bar patron, call up the Anvil profs to have a full catering service set up on-site.

After hydrating, or at least reviving, thousands of concert-goers at Free Press Summer Fest with Julep carts providing mint juleps, the mixing mavens are setting up shop all over town. They’re willing to serve drinks anywhere from concerts to company parties to barbecues; they’re even snatching up unoccupied buildings and turning them into makeshift venues for clients who can’t spare the space.

A recent catering event was held at a vacant downtown building for a Houston Cinema Arts Festival party, where the Main Street spot became a pop-up bar with Huerta, Lainey Collum and other extended Anvil staff and United States Bartenders Guild (USBG) members pouring cocktails.

This innovative catering concept showcases rentable spaces, lending them exposure they might not have had if not for the new project. Anvil Catering will provide the cocktail-making provisions, but the food is mostly up to the client.

With the holidays quickly approaching you’d be wise to sign up soon. And let’s face it, most holiday parties end and begin with stiff drinks, whether it’s you or a USBG member mixing them.

Anvil’s next cocktail class is Jan. 14, 2013 at 6 p.m. Anvil is accepting catering requests at catering@anvilhouston.com.