Here's How Many Standard Drinks Are Really In Your Mixed Drink

Some cocktails taste much boozier than others. A whiskey aficionado might genuinely enjoy sipping on an Old Fashioned, while those who order a Dirty Shirley may want to totally mask any flavors of alcohol. However, regardless of whether you can taste the liquor, one mixed drink might contain much more than a single standard drink. 

Determining how many standard drinks are in your mixed drink comes down to the percentage of alcohol in the ingredients. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), one standard drink contains 14 grams (or 0.6 fluid ounces) of pure alcohol. This looks very different across different drink types depending on the alcohol by volume (ABV). One 12-ounce beer and one shot of a distilled spirit are classified as one standard drink, but the beer has eight times the amount of liquid.

As the concentration of pure alcohol is so high in spirits like gin, rum, tequila, brandy, vodka, and whiskey, mixed drinks that include them as ingredients can get closer to three or even four standard drinks. The person who makes the drink will determine just how many shots of liquor go into your beverage, but it's important to know the ABV of the ingredients to understand just how alcoholic any one drink really is.

A standard drink is defined by the concentration of alcohol within a drink. Per the CDC, this could look like a 12-ounce beer with a 5% ABV, a 5-ounce pour of wine with a 12% ABV, or a 1.5-ounce shot of a spirit with a 40% ABV. When you start mixing shots of several different alcohols that are 40% ABV or more, any kind of mixed drink that comes out will be very alcoholic.

Different types of spirits tend to have a standard ABV (typically 40%) – but this isn't always the case. In the United States, tequila and vodka tend to have an ABV of 40%. On the other hand, gin can range from 35% to 55%, brandy stretches from 35% to 60%, and rum can be as low as 40% or as high as 75%.

You can use online cocktail content calculators to assess exactly how many standard drinks a beverage contains. However, there's always a chance there is a little more or less alcohol in a mixed drink than you might expect depending on the whims of your bartender. If you are mixing drinks at home, you have a little more control over how much alcohol you pour in. It's best to check the liquor bottle's labels and measure carefully to understand just how many standard drinks you are having.

Don't order a Long Island iced tea if you are aiming to stick to one standard drink. Other strong cocktails like the Zombie, Irish Trash Can, or Death in the Afternoon reflect how you might feel after drinking these blends of three or more types of alcohol. If you are aiming to keep your alcohol consumption around the standard drink range, consider drinking a wine spritzer, Champagne cocktail, Campari and soda, mimosa, or amaretto sour. 

The Mayo Clinic defines heavy drinking as having more than three standard drinks in one day for women and four drinks for men. Given that a Long Island iced tea contains approximately four standard drinks and even a margarita contains more than just one standard drink, you could cross the threshold into heavy drinking with just two beverages. If you want to alternate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks to give your body some time to process what you put into it, there are more non-alcoholic drinks than ever before to try.