Calories in whisky

What nutrients does whisky have?

Whisky consists almost exclusively of water and alcohol. The proteins, fats or carbohydrates that you know from food are missing in pure whisky. Substances such as tannins, lignins and vanillin derived from maturation in wooden barrels are responsible for the taste of the whisky but they are irrelevant for the calculation of the nutrient and calorie content.

How to calculate the calories of whisky

If you want to know how many calories are in whisky, you first have to find out how many grams of pure alcohol are actually in the respective amount of whisky. A look at the bottle reveals the alcohol percentage, which is usually 40% for a standard bottling. So does 100ml of whisky contain 40 grams of alcohol? No, because the density of alcohol is only 0.8 grams per milliliter.

• In connection with the density of alcohol (40ml alcohol x density 0.8) this results in 32 grams of alcohol from 100ml of whisky. In pure form, 1 gram of alcohol has 7.1 calories.
• If you drink 100ml of whisky (with 40% alcohol content) you take in 227.20 kcal.

That’s about 9% (assuming 2,500 kcal) of the daily calorie requirement for an average man. For a woman (assuming 2,000 kcal) it is even 11% of the daily requirement.

Conversely, a man would have to drink about 1.1 liters (a woman about 881ml) of whisky with an alcohol content of 40% to cover the daily calorie requirement. Even before we consider the health risks of consuming that much liquid daily, every nutrition expert would probably throw up their hands over their heads.

How many calories does a 35ml glass of whisky have?

At home or in a bar, you don’t normally drink 100ml of whisky at once, so here we repeat the calculation for a traditional Scottish standard 35ml dram:

• 35ml of whisky contains 14ml of alcohol
• 14ml of alcohol is 11.2 grams of alcohol
• 11.2 grams of alcohol corresponds to 79.52 kcal

How many calories does a 25ml glass of whisky have?

Sadly while the 35ml may have once been the dominant measure in Scotland much of the country is now aligned with the lower 25ml measure so we’ll run those numbers again

• 25ml of whisky contains 10ml of alcohol
• 10ml of alcohol is 8 grams of alcohol
• 8 grams of alcohol correspond to 56.8 kcal

For comparison if you drink half a liter of wheat beer, you’re happily consuming 260 kcal. So keep calm and drink a wee dram!

What about single cask whiskies?

Obviously these calculations all apply to whiskies bottled at 40% (typically with caramel colour and chill filtration as well). The math runs thus:

• Take the volume of your dram
• Multiply this by the ABV to calculate
• Multiply the result by 0.8 to account for the density of alcohol
• multiply the result by 7.1 (1 gram of alcohol has 7.1 calories)
• Enjoy your whisky and stop worrying about the calories