this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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American shot sizes are absurd ... but yeah, if you don't have a reason to keep at 0.0 blood alcohol (e.g. drunk driving laws in some countries/states), using a bit of liqueur for flavoring is not a big deal at all.
Like absurdly large? I was curious, so I looked it up; it looks like shot sizes in US are typically larger than in Western Europe, but comparable with Eastern and Northern European countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_glass
That's fair, I guess it's not just american shot sizes that are absurdly large. Northern and eastern european countries are known to have big issues with alcoholism (Nordics less so nowadays, but that's because they put a lot of effort into fighting it).
I suspect it’s just one of those weird cultural foibles. The US isn’t too exceptional among Western countries regarding moderate or binge drinking. It consumes meaningfully less alcohol per capita than Germany, France, Ireland, and the UK among others, on par with Sweden, Finland, and Denmark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita. US alcoholism rates are about on par with Sweden, France, and Germany, some 25% lower than Ireland or the UK: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/alcoholism-by-country
I didn’t thoroughly research those numbers, but they square with my anecdotal experience. Soda is where the serving size really fucks us up.
There is a trend in high end spirit sales in the US to sell 1 or 1.25oz pours, 30 and 38ml respectively. It’s more a cost saving measure, but I do like it. 30ml is enough to try something.
Standard is 45ml at 14g of alcohol. I assume you’re saying that’s higher than average as most appear to be 10g +-2.
40% more is a lot, and e.g. German shots are even smaller (20ml, a shot of 40% spirit contains 6.3g of alcohol).
That’s interesting to consider.
Tangentially I just did the math the other day on me preferring barrel proof bourbon to the amount of alcohol per drink in grams and was shocked. Ended up drinking one more drink than I thought I was each time which adds up over time! I foolishly thought 40% to 50-60% was not that big of a difference. One American drink is close to 1.5 at higher proof. Should have mathed before I drank.
I thought barrel-proof was something like 60% ABV, so wouldn't that mean that a shot of barrel-proof spirit is only 50% more than the more common 40% ABV spirits, rather than 100% more like you're implying?
I’m not sure if bourbon has an exact definition of that percentage. It’s whatever comes out of the barrel. I’d have to check my bottles but it’s definitely on the 60% and up ones but I think I’ve seen it on the 50% and up ones as well.
Yeah pretty much:
The math I’m doing is I thought having a standard drink of 40% was close enough to 50-60% that I wouldn’t count is as more than one drink.
But my math shows that 45ml of 40% is 18 ml of alcohol or 14g is standard in the US. Then I recently did the math that 50 and 60 respectively is 22.5 and 27. Therefore having two drinks (which is the recommended maximum) of 60% is actually three drinks by US standards.
I guess my point is I thought I was drinking two drinks and some change, I didn’t realize an extra 10-20% was adding 25-50% more alcohol per drink. As someone who knows the dangers of drinking too much I don’t want to do that.
Honestly I don’t get how it rises so quickly with adding 10-20%, but my field isn’t math lol
Ah that makes sense.
I mean that's pretty simple, 60% is 1.5 times 40%, and 76% is 2 times 38% (IDK the laws for this in the US for bourbon, but e.g. gin is often sold at 37.5% ABV here).
Thanks for explaining! Do you have naval strength gin?
You can buy higher strength gin in online shops, and most supermarkets will at least have the 43% Tanqueray. It's mostly the cheaper ones like Gordon's or Bombay Dry Gin that get sold at legal minimum strength.