Batch Cocktail & Dilution Calculator

Scale a cocktail to a jug and keep the strength right

A cocktail stirred or shaken over ice does not stay as strong as the ingredients: it picks up water from melting ice, and that water is part of the drink. Pour the ingredients into a bottle without it and every serving comes out too strong. A batch cocktail calculator does the two jobs together: it multiplies the recipe by the number of servings and tells you how much water to add so a drink poured from the bottle tastes like the one made to order.

Enter each ingredient with its amount per drink and its alcohol by volume, choose stirred, shaken or your own dilution, and the page shows the whole-batch quantities, the added water, the volume in bottles and the final strength of one drink. It is recipe arithmetic for hosts, bar staff and home bartenders. It does not suggest how much to drink.

How to use the Batch Cocktail Calculator

1. Set the number of servings and the unit: mL, cL or US fluid ounces.
2. List up to five ingredients with the amount per drink and the ABV printed on the label (use 0 for juice or syrup).
3. Choose stirred (about 20%), shaken (about 25%), none, or type your own dilution percentage.
4. Mix the batch quantities in the table, add the water, chill thoroughly, and pour over fresh ice.

Batch Cocktail Calculator features

The maths

For one drink, add the ingredient volumes to get T. The volume of pure alcohol is A, the sum of each volume multiplied by its ABV. Dilution adds water equal to T × dilution%, so the drink served is T plus that water, and the final strength is ABV = A ÷ (T + water) × 100. The batch is simply the per-drink figures multiplied by the number of servings.

Take a Negroni of 30 mL gin at 40%, 30 mL Campari at 25% and 30 mL sweet vermouth at 16%. T is 90 mL and A is 12 + 7.5 + 4.8 = 24.3 mL. Stirred at 20% dilution adds 18 mL, giving 108 mL and 22.5% ABV. For eight servings the batch is 864 mL, of which 144 mL is water.

How much dilution?

Bartending references that have measured cocktails report roughly 20–25% added water for stirred drinks and 25–30% for shaken ones; the page defaults to 20% and 25%. Dilution depends on ice size, stirring or shaking time and the starting temperature, so treat the number as a starting point, make a small test batch and adjust it. Drinks served over ice in the glass need less in the bottle, because the ice will still melt, so use a low figure or none.

Practical notes

• Fresh citrus. Juice loses brightness within hours and drinks that contain it are best made the same day or the day before and kept cold.
• Chill before serving. A batch kept at about freezer temperature pours cold without extra ice dilution.
• Mixing shrinks volume slightly. Alcohol and water together take up a few percent less volume than the sum, which the calculator ignores.
• Label bottles. Write the date, the contents and the strength.

Related tools

To estimate how much drink a party needs, use the drink calculator. To convert a strength to units, see the alcohol unit calculator, and to estimate the strength of something you fermented, the ABV calculator.