How strong is that drink, really? Enter any recipe and see its true strength after the dilution from stirring or shaking — plus the pure alcohol per glass.
A well-made cocktail hides its strength on purpose: sugar, citrus and cold flatten the burn. But the alcohol is still there. A Negroni drinks like a soft aperitivo and is still roughly twice the strength of wine; an Old Fashioned is basically a slightly tamed glass of whiskey. Knowing the real number is how you pace a party — yours or a guest's.
Ice isn't just cold, it's an ingredient. Stirring a drink over ice melts about 15% extra water into it, shaking about 22%, and building in the glass around 10% — the same assumptions Dram's batch calculator uses. That water is why the same three ingredients make a noticeably softer drink shaken than built, and why a cocktail's true ABV is always lower than the ingredient math alone suggests.
| Cocktail | Method | Final ABV |
|---|---|---|
| Old Fashioned | Built | ~34% |
| Manhattan | Stirred | ~29% |
| Margarita | Shaken | ~25% |
| Negroni | Stirred | ~23% |
| Daiquiri | Shaken | ~21% |
The pattern: the fewer non-alcoholic ingredients and the less dilution, the stronger the glass. Spirit-forward stirred and built drinks sit in the high twenties and thirties; shaken citrus drinks land near twenty.
ABV alone can mislead, because glasses differ. The calculator also shows millilitres of pure alcohol, the honest measure: a Negroni carries about 23 ml, roughly the same as a large glass of wine and a half. National "standard drink" definitions vary (8 g of alcohol in the UK, 14 g in the US), so the wine-glass comparison travels better than counting units.
Among the common classics, built and stirred spirit-forward drinks top the list: an Old Fashioned lands around 34% and a Manhattan around 29% after dilution. Shaken citrus drinks like the Daiquiri sit closer to 20%.
Yes, slightly. Shaking melts about 22% of extra water into the drink versus about 15% for stirring, so the same recipe shaken pours a touch weaker and a touch bigger.
A Negroni holds about 18 g of pure alcohol — about 1.3 US standard drinks or over 2 UK units. Spirit-forward drinks like a Manhattan hold more, which is why two cocktails often equal three or four glasses of wine.
Mostly dilution assumptions. Some calculators ignore ice melt entirely and overstate the strength; this one adds the stir, shake or build water first, which is how the drink actually reaches your glass.
Dram spots cocktail recipes on any page, shows live ABV as you scale them, batches with dilution, and tracks the bottles you own.
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