Standard Drink

Notes

Hopefully, it’s reasonably intuitive, but here are a few notes on using the drinks calculator.

Types of drinks you can enter

There are presets for common portions of beer/cider, wine, single spirits (e.g. gin, vodka, bourbon, etc), as well as a small catalog of mixed drinks. I treat “mixed drinks” as anything with two or more types of alcohol, so you if you want to add a Gin & Tonic, just add a row of 40% from the Spirits menu.

Editing drinks

By default, drinks are added with a preset alcohol percentage (beer at 5%, wine at 12%), but the volume and percentage of any drink (or cocktail ingredient) can be modified after you’ve added it.

Mixed Drinks: Recipe Source

The book I used for the alcohol portions in the cocktails is Classic Cocktails. I can’t speak to its authority on cocktail recipes, but it’s written by Salvatore Calabrese, which is a pretty great name for the author of a cocktails book. I’d trust that name to make me a drink.

Terms of Use

The calculator is purely for educational purposes, to give an idea of what one or more drinks add up to in terms of different definitions of “standard drink” (or “unit of alcohol” in the UK). Do not use the calculator for health or medical advice, or to determine whether you’ve consumed too much alcohol. The definition of a “standard drink” might change according to different countries, and I make no assurances that the calculator on this site has been updated to use a country’s more recent definition of “standard drink”. Furthermore, while every effort is made to ensure the calculations rendered by the calculator are accurate, this site does not guarantee the calculator to be free of errors resulting in inaccurate results.