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Whisky

A 40 ml serving of whisky carries about 12.6 g of pure ethanol — 1.6 UK units, 0.9 US standard drinks, 1.1 Estonian/Finnish units — and roughly 89 kcal.

Never use this page to decide whether to drive. Clearance is an estimate from a simplified model and varies with your liver, your genetics, your medicines, food, sleep and illness — real elimination rates differ between people by a factor of two, and the model does not know which end you are at. The only safe level of alcohol for driving is none, and a legal limit is not a safety threshold. If you have been drinking, do not drive.

Spirits40.0% (40.0-60.0%)USDA basis: Whiskey

Whisky must be at least 40% ABV to be sold as whisky in the EU and in most other markets, and that is where the majority of bottles sit. The interesting cases are the ones above it: single casks and cask-strength bottlings routinely reach 55 to 60%, which is half again the ethanol of a standard bottling in the same measure. Reading the label is not optional arithmetic here.

Like vodka, whisky carries essentially no carbohydrate, so its energy is ethanol energy. What differs is how it is drunk: measured in a bar, poured by eye at home, and frequently topped up rather than counted. A home pour into a tumbler is commonly half again a bar measure, and adding water or ice changes the volume in the glass without changing the ethanol at all.

It is also the drink most often consumed slowly over a long evening, which is the pattern the Widmark model handles worst. The model assumes a dose and then subtracts elimination at a constant rate. Real slow drinking is a series of overlapping doses, each still being absorbed while the next arrives, and the resulting curve can stay near its peak for hours rather than falling cleanly. Anything this page tells you about clearance is an underestimate of how long you will actually be affected in that pattern.

By serving size

What the strength range does

Where the calories come from

The carbohydrate figure below is the USDA FoodData Central row for Whiskey — 0.1 g of carbohydrate (of which 0.1 g sugars) per 100 g — applied to 40 ml of this serving. USDA values are per 100 grams and this page applies them per 100 millilitres. Beer, wine and cider are close enough to the density of water for that to cost a per cent or two; spirits are lighter, so for them the approximation is worth about five per cent.

As a cross-check, the same USDA row reports 250 kcal per 100 g, which scales to about 100 kcal for this serving against the 89 kcal computed above — a gap of about 11%. Two independent routes to the same figure will not land on the same digit: the reference row was measured on one specific product at one specific strength, this page uses the strength you would find on a typical label, and the per-100-g to per-100-ml conversion costs a little more. Where the gap is large, the strength assumption is almost always the reason.

Source: USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy (public domain) — row: Whiskey · checked 2026-09-02

What it costs in walking

This is an energy comparison and nothing more. Walking does not undo a drink: the ethanol still has to be metabolised, it is still prioritised over other fuels while it is in the system, and the effect it has on sleep that night is not cancelled by exercise the following morning. The number is here because it makes an abstract quantity concrete, not because it is a plan.

See brisk walking for where the MET value comes from, or the whole exercise library for other movements.

Source: 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities (Ainsworth et al.) — MET value for brisk walking · checked 2026-09-02

How many reach a weekly guideline

The 112 g line is the UK Chief Medical Officers' 14 units a week, quoted here because it is the guideline most often referenced in English. It is not the only one and it is not necessarily the one that applies to you: national low-risk guidance differs between countries, is written in different unit sizes, and has been revised downward in several places in recent years. Look up the guideline where you live and convert it with the table above.

Source: UK Chief Medical Officers' low risk drinking guidelines — named example only · checked 2026-09-02

Clearance estimate

Read those hours as the earliest plausible figure under a set of assumptions that will not all hold for you. Absorption is treated as instantaneous, so the model starts the clock too early. Elimination is treated as a fixed 0.15 ‰ an hour, when published individual rates run from roughly 0.10 to 0.20 — at the slow end, the last column takes a third longer than it says. And the whole calculation is for one dose taken at one moment, not for three drinks spread across an evening, which is the situation that actually produces a morning-after problem.

Never use this page to decide whether to drive. Clearance is an estimate from a simplified model and varies with your liver, your genetics, your medicines, food, sleep and illness — real elimination rates differ between people by a factor of two, and the model does not know which end you are at. The only safe level of alcohol for driving is none, and a legal limit is not a safety threshold. If you have been drinking, do not drive.

The thing people get wrong

Cask strength. A 60% bottling in the same glass is one and a half drinks, not one.

Frequently asked questions

Other drinks

All drinks and the calculator · Exercise library · Daily calorie needs · Sleep calculator