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The Alcohol
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Fortified
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Beer |
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Wine |
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Spirit |
Educate Yourself on Alcohol Strengths
You've found the right place if you are looking for information about the alcohol content of wine, beer, and liquor. Please familiarize yourself with the alcohol percentages of your favorite drinks, both for your safety and your highway companions. You'll also find data on calories and carbs for those of you striving for a healthy diet. Look around to find general percentages on popular alcoholic beverages or the specific alcohol content in beer, liquor, or your favorite wine.
Where does your drink of choice fall?
Below are the alcohol percentages by volume (ABV) of some common types of drinks. See the following section for more on how the strength of different alcoholic beverages can be measured:
| Fruit Juice | < 0.1% |
| Pilsner | 3–6% |
| ESB (Bitter) | 3-6% |
| Lager | 4-5% |
| Porter | 4-5% |
| Alcopops/Breezers/Coolers | 4–7% |
| IPA (India Pale Ale) | 6-7% |
| Cider | 4–8% |
| Sparks | 6-7% |
| Stout | 5-10% |
| Sparkling Wine | 8 – 12% |
| Table Wine | 8 – 14% |
| Retsina | 10–11% |
| Barley Wine | 10–15% |
| Wine (general) | 10–15% |
| Port Wine | 20% |
| Fortified Wine | 17 – 22% |
| Liqueur | 15–55% |
| Light Liquors | 20% |
| Liquor/Spirits (general) | 40% |
| Cask Strength Whisky/Rum | 60% |
| Absinthe | 55–89.5% |
| Neutral Grain Spirit | 95% |
| Rectified Spirit | 96% |
| Absolute Alcohol | 99-100% |
Measurement of Alcohol Strength
There are several methods of measuring the alcohol contents of various beverages. Find details on each below:
ABV - Alcohol by Volume - This is the standard measure and used throughout the AlcoholContents.com website. It simply represents the amount of volume consumed by ethanol compared to the entire volume of the drink. It is expressed as a percentage.
Proof - This term is used among the strongest spirits. To compute a liquor's proof you simply multiply the ABV by 2. The theoretic highest possible strength of any drink is therefore 200-proof. In reality though the maximum for distilled spirits is 191-proof because not all of the water can be distilled from ethanol.
ABW - Alcohol by Weight - This is similar to ABV but instead of the volume consumed by the ethanol its mass is used instead. Beer brewers often used this measurement in states that require limits on strength of beer sold in food markets (i.e 3.2 beer). This is preferred over ABV in these cases because the ABW is roughly 80% of the ABV. Beer that is 4% ABV can be sold and still meet the 3.2 ABW limit.