Is a pint of beer one drink?
No. A US standard drink is 12 oz of 5% beer. A 16 oz pint of 5% beer is 1.3 standard drinks, and a 16 oz pint of 7% IPA is almost 2.
A beer is a beer, so people count each one as one. That works for a 12 oz can of regular beer and almost nothing else on a bar’s tap list. The glass is a third bigger than a can, and craft beers often run well above 5%.
What we’d do
Count a craft pint as two. For anything else, check the % on the menu and use the quick rule: ounces times %, divided by 60. A 16 oz pour at 7% is 16 x 7 / 60 = 1.9 drinks.
Pint by pint
Calling a pint one drink is like calling a large coffee one cup. The name stays the same while the size goes up.
| Beer | US drinks |
|---|---|
| 12 oz light beer, 4.2% | 0.84 |
| 12 oz regular beer, 5% | 1 |
| 16 oz pint, 5% | 1.3 |
| 16 oz IPA, 7% | 1.9 |
| 12 oz craft beer, 10% | 2 |
| 16 oz pour, 10% | 2.7 |
NIAAA’s Rethinking Drinking gives the same counts: 16 oz of regular beer is 1 and a third standard drinks, and 16 oz of a 7% malt drink is 2. NIAAA uses the 12 oz craft beer at 10% as its own example of a beer that counts as two.
What a night of pints adds up to
Four pints of IPA is 7.5 US drinks. NIAAA counts 5 or more drinks on any day as heavy drinking for a man and 4 or more for a woman, so a four-pint night is well past both. The weekly lines are 15 for men and 8 for women, and two of those nights take a man to 15.
It shows on the clock too. On our engine, four 16 oz IPAs at one an hour from 8pm, food not known, are mostly cleared about 9:05am for a 190 lb man. A 150 lb woman would still be clearing them in the middle of the next afternoon.
Why it’s easy to miss
Beer strength is printed small and changes a lot from one beer to the next. NIAAA lists regular beer at 5%, many light beers at 4.2% and some craft beers at 10%, so the same pint glass can hold anywhere from about 1 to 2.7 drinks. The What’s in your glass tool works it out for any pour, and Your week adds up the pints.
1.9 US drinks
IPA, 16 oz, 7%: 26.1 g of alcohol and about 183 calories from the alcohol alone.
When will tonight's drinks clear?
Bed at 11:00pm
Mostly cleared by 2:50am
That's about 3.8 hours of your sleep with alcohol in your blood (3.1 to 4.9 if your liver runs faster or slower).
Restaurant pour6 oz, 13.5%, 1.35 US drinks- Restaurant pour6 oz, 13.5%, 1.35 US drinks
REM: More REM lost. Your evening is 0.56 g of alcohol per kg of body weight.
The full clock, with the band, the same drinks two hours earlier and what your heart does.
3 sources
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, What Is A Standard Drink? Updated December 2025niaaa.nih.gov
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Rethinking Drinking, How Many Drinks are in Common Containers?rethinkingdrinking.niaaa.nih.gov
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Drinking Levels and Patterns, updated January 2026niaaa.nih.gov
