How many ounces are in a shot of rum?!

How many ounces are in a shot of rum?

Depends on who's doing the shooting. And it doesn't matter whether it's rum or some other liquor.

Bars always figured on 21 shots to a fifth of liquor. With 128 ounces to the gallon, that means a shot would be 128/(21*5) = 1.2 ounces.

But you'll find people serving anywhere from 1 ounce to 2 ounces and calling it a shot.

The Google Calculator says 1.5 ounces in a shot. Maybe we should go drinking there, next time.

There are an awful lot of 2-ounce glasses sold with lines at the 1.5 shot line. Some people call a jigger 2 ounces, and some call it 1.5 ounces.

A "pony" shot is 1 ounce some places, 1 1/8 ounces other places.

The folks who make PrecisionPourers offer eleven portion sizes: 1/4 oz, 1/2 oz, 5/8 oz, 3/4 oz, 7/8 oz, 1 oz, 11/8 oz, 11/4 oz, 11/2 oz, 2oz and 3oz. The 2 ounce and 3 ounce sizes are for martinis. In Metric, they offer 0ml, 15ml, 20ml, 25ml, 30ml, 35ml, 40ml, 50ml, and for folks in Canada, they offer a pourer in 1 Imperial Ounce.

But most professional bartenders don't measure. They count. One mississippi, two mississippi does a pretty good job of getting the proportions right, and it's a lot faster.

If you assume that a shot of liquor, a can of beer, and a glass of wine all contain the same amount of alcohol, well, 12 ounces at 6% is about 0.72 ounces of alcohol.

For there to be 0.72 ounces in a typical 5-ounce wine glass, it'd have to be 14.4% alcohol. That's about as stiff as wine ever gets; most wine is closer to 12%.

And the only liquor to hit .72 ounces in a 1-ounce pony would be something like Ron Rico 151. That stuff is undrinkable. With a stiff drinkable liquor like 80-proof Bushmills Irish Whiskey, you'd have to have a whopping big 1.8 ounce shot.

So I think the standard 21-shots-per-fifth rule is the one I'd have to stand by: 1.2 ounces per shot.