How Many Shots in a Fifth? Plus Pints, Liters and Handles
A guy at my bar once bet his buddy a round that a bottle of Crown had 25 shots in it. He lost. I counted it out for them on the rail with a jigger. Seventeen, and a splash left over for the house.
So here’s the answer. A fifth is a 750 ml bottle. At a standard 1.5 oz US shot, that’s about 17 shots. Pour 2 oz and you get 12 or 13. Pour 1 oz and you get 25, which is where his number came from.
The table
Every common bottle size, worked out at three pours. The math is just ounces divided by pour, rounded the way a real person counts. Nobody pours the last 0.4 of a shot.
| Bottle | Milliliters | Fluid ounces | 1 oz pours | 1.5 oz shots | 2 oz pours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mini (nip) | 50 ml | 1.7 oz | 1.7 | about 1 | under 1 |
| Half pint | 200 ml | 6.8 oz | 6.8 | about 4.5 | 3.4 |
| Pint | 375 ml | 12.7 oz | 12.7 | about 8.5 | 6.3 |
| Fifth | 750 ml | 25.4 oz | 25.4 | about 17 | 12.7 |
| Liter | 1,000 ml | 33.8 oz | 33.8 | about 22.5 | 16.9 |
| Handle | 1.75 L | 59.2 oz | 59.2 | about 39 | 29.6 |
Two of those names lie to you. A liquor “pint” is 375 ml, which is 12.7 oz and not the 16 you’d expect. And people say “half gallon” when they mean a handle. A real half gallon is 64 oz, while a handle is 1.75 liters and a bit less. Same jug with the same grip on the side, but a different number.
Where “fifth” comes from
It’s an old American measure. A fifth was one fifth of a US gallon. That’s 128 oz divided by 5, or 25.6 oz, which works out to about 757 ml. When the US moved liquor bottles to metric sizes around 1980, the fifth became 750 ml. Seven milliliters lighter and nobody noticed. The name stuck anyway.
What counts as a shot
There’s no federal law on shot size in the US. But 1.5 oz is the working standard everywhere I’ve poured. It’s what the big side of a standard jigger holds. It’s also what the government counts as one standard drink of 80-proof liquor. So that’s the number I use in the table.
Bars vary more than you’d think. Plenty pour 1.25 oz to protect the margin. Some heavy-handed spots pour 2 oz and still call it a shot. At home, honestly, nobody measures at all. A home “shot” in a tall shot glass is usually closer to 2 oz. So count on 12 or 13 shots per fifth at a house party, not 17.
The UK is a different world. Pubs have to serve spirits in a legal measure, either 25 ml or 35 ml, and each pub picks one. A 750 ml bottle gives you 30 shots at 25 ml and about 21 at 35 ml. A British single is a lot smaller than an American one. I learned that serving a group from Manchester who kept asking why their drinks were so big.
Bottle math for a party
This is where the table earns its keep. I’ve stocked a lot of private events, and here’s the rule I always used.
Plan one drink per guest per hour. Then add a little extra for the first hour, when everyone walks in thirsty.
- Multiply guests by hours. Twenty guests for four hours is 80 drinks.
- Decide how many of those are liquor. Beer and wine drinkers take a chunk, so say half, or 40.
- Divide by shots per bottle. At home pours, use 13 per fifth. Forty divided by 13 is just over 3.
- Round up. Buy four fifths, or two handles.
Mixed drinks count the same way. Most cocktails use 1.5 to 2 oz of base spirit, so a fifth makes 12 to 17 of them. Handles are almost always cheaper per ounce, so for a party buy the handle. Fifths are for the good stuff you want people to see on the counter.
If it’s a punch party, stop counting shots. A big batch of jungle juice eats a handle or two by itself, and people drink it slower than they think.
Crown Royal, specifically
The search I see most is about a bottle of Crown. Standard Crown Royal comes in a 750 ml bottle at 40% ABV. That’s about 17 shots at 1.5 oz, and the 1.75 L handle gives you about 39.
Crown doesn’t have to go down straight, either. The Washington Apple is Crown, sour apple pucker and cranberry juice in a highball over ice. One fifth of Crown makes a lot of those. I sold more of them than straight Crown on football Sundays. For more ideas there’s a whole list of Crown Royal shots.
Tequila goes faster than anything else on the table. A tequila shot is gold tequila with salt and lime: one lick, one shot, one bite. At a birthday a fifth of tequila lasts about twenty minutes, so plan for it. Vodka is the other big one, and the vodka shots roundup has better options than a straight pour.
Got a half-empty fifth and a mixer or two? Plug them into CocktailBuilder’s what-can-I-make tool and see what it turns up.
Buy one more bottle than the math says. Unopened liquor keeps forever, so the spare costs you nothing. Running out at 11 p.m. costs you the party.
Last modified on October 4, 2026
