Just a quite trivial question really.
 

When I read posts from you North American folks I often hear you talk about a "fifth" of, say, whiskey. Or maybe a "quart" of vodka. What unit of measurement does this relate to? e.g. Fifth of a pint or fifth of a litre or fifth of a gallon perhaps?
Sorry, no funnies here, I genuinely don't know.
If anyone would take this a step further and help me out a little more, how many of those fluid oz's are there in say, one whole pint?

fifth is 750 ml

the really funny part is they don't even sell 5ths anymore they do 750, 1 ltrs etc.

just a hold on to old days :)

Just like Ananda says. The terms pint & fifth are old school. The liqour is bottled in metrics now. A pint is 375 ml, 1/2 pint is 200 ml. Fifth is 750 ml and the same size as a bottle of wine.

So, i'm figuring that in the old days a fifth would be refering to 1/5th of a gallon by a rough judgement?

Yup!

Hold on a minute. If I ordered a pint of something I would get 375 ml of fluid. But if I ordered two seperate half pints then I would get 400ml of fluid (i.e 2 x 200ml).
Honestly, I really am not trying to make an issue of this, I've been a bit confused about it for a while.

Anybody got insight into fluid oz's yet?

When sober, you realize how imperfect this system really is.

1/2 pint, 200 ml = 6.763 oz
pint, 375 ml = 12.68 oz
fifth, 750 ml = 25.36 oz

wow...I thought the liter bottle was a fifth...guess i was drinking more than I thought :lmao

Whoa!..... So, what we are saying is that a fifth is 750ml, right? Ok, so if I were to order five in number of these that would equal one gallon, yes? In metric terms that would be 5 x 750 which equals 3.75 litres or, 3750ml.

Right, so if I convert my "gallon" of 3750ml back to a rate in pints (i.e divide by 8 as there are 8 pints in a gallon) this comes to approx 469ml per pint.

If anyone is still awake and following this the only conclusion is that you get less by ordering one pint than you do with two half pints but the best deal is an 1/8th of a gallon, which is actually, one pint.

Taken me ages to fathom that out only to realise it doesn't matter a toss because we can't drink anyway.

Thanks Pelican, that's giving me a better understanding of the oz thing. Sorry to go on about it but what is the official number of oz's to an actual pint?

Don't get hung up on the old terminology for bottles as they were only approximations in the old days.

5 fifths never was exactly 1 gallon just the closest thing to it.

All this 'liquid math' is really hilarious now that I'm sober!!:lmao

Ok, I think I get the idea. I've just struggled a little when reading threads that involve comparisons of drinking habits we all may have had in the pasted.

I think I've got a better idea now and further posts will make a lot more sense to me in the future. Thanks you guys.

Just one little anecdote to finish of with is I wonder if the same approach to ambiguous measuring standards would be tollerated at the gas filling stations?

You are quite right, especially for someone who has reache dsuch an impressive timescale of sobriety such as yourself.

I remember reading some kind of liquid analysis chart which provided a kind of like for like comparison between charges for certain liquids.

Please forgive me for not going into too much detail as it has been a while since I read it, however one comparison that sticks in my mind and I will never forget was the price of computer printer ink being, on avarage, SEVEN times more expensive (per millilitre) than Dom Perignon champagne.

There were a load more striking comparisons like this but I can't quite recall. Mind you, it's nearly 5.30 in the morning now and this insomnia things is beginning to mess with my head.

5.30 am, monday morning and I'm discussing the price of computer printer ink on a worldwide discussion forum? What the hell happened to me?


Humph... grumps are back.

Didn't understand either timzup.

Kept reading about folk drinking a fifth a day and was thinking, thats less than quarter of a bottle, get off the forum kiddo thats not a proper problem !!!!!!!!

A fifth then is really the same as a bottle yea ??????????

Yes, a fifth is the same size bottle as a regular size bottle of wine. So anyone drinking a fifth of liqour is putting away a serious volume of alcohol.

FYI, liqour stores charge more for the small bottles. I had customers that tried to control their daily intake by buying only a 1/2 pint a day. Say they paid $4 for that convenient size. They could have bought the pint for $6.

Same theory of trying to moderate drinking, some would buy the fifth for $8 when the litre was $10 and the half gallon was a value at $18 (approx). You pay for the convenience of the smaller size. Also, the smaller sizes were easier to hide.

so...not to get into war stories...but i really have always wanted to know...I drank the 1 liter bottles of rum....between 1 and a thrid and 2 a day....my dr. said he knew people who drank more without any health problems...I had massive health problems....is my dr. a little bit wrong on that one? I got the impression from him my drinking wasn't so much...although he absolutely thought I needed to not drink at all for health reasons...he may have just been trying to get through to me....

I don't know what your doc was comparing to? I wonder sometimes if the medical profession is drinking more than us and trying to justify. (okay that is a fantasy)

I am curious about your rum consumption. If it is not too personal, was diabetes one of your complications? I'm asking because rum is from the sugar cane. I never was much of a rum drinker. I noticed in my late stage drinking that my reaction to rums felt like sugar highs?!?

thats so funny pelican.....I developed pancreatitis and diabetis during my last drunk (8 years long). the weird thing is the rum really helped to keep the sugar levels even....as long as i drank it all day as i usually would. but when I didn't get my alchohol in my system for a number of hours I would have a sugar low ... really bad ones like 50 or 60. Those were scary and I appeared drunker when that happened. The last day before I was hospitalized again and went to treatment I was in real physical trouble at work after about 3 hours of not drinking.

I did wanna say that my dr. is actually very good in most ways...but he really didn't know much about alchoholism utill he went through the wringer for those 8 years with me and I fesssed up about a year and a half before i got sober...that is when he was actually able to find my problems and start helping me. He talked to me alot about the treatment center I went to cause he said he has a lot of patients who could benifit...Yet he knew so little???? He isn't a drinker himself. I think it may take a dr actually going through some ones alchoholism in denial in order to be able to recognise the symptoms???? dont know just a guess.

So tell me more about why you guessed diabedes? I understood it was a complication of the pancreatitis..but could be a chicken and the egg kinda question :)