Liquor bottle weight chart for stock control

Last updated: 26 June 2026

Most pub licensees never weigh a single bottle—and that’s exactly where they’re losing money. Weighing open spirit bottles is the fastest way to spot over-pouring, forgotten measures, and stock shrinkage that your spreadsheet will never catch. A 1% loss on wet sales quietly costs a typical pub £3,000–£5,000 a year, but a proper bottle weight check (done once a week, takes 10 minutes) catches it before it becomes a problem. This guide shows you exactly how to build and use a liquor bottle weight chart for your pub, and why the weight of a bottle matters far more than the brand on the label.

Why bottle weight matters in a pub

Your EPOS tells you what sold. It doesn’t tell you if you actually made money on it. The most effective way to catch stock loss in a pub is to weigh open bottles weekly and reconcile the weight loss against till sales the same day. This works because weight never lies—a bottle either lost liquid or it didn’t. Your spreadsheet can’t tell the difference between a forgotten measure and a poured drink, but weight can.

I spent years running stock on a tangle of spreadsheets at my own pub, still losing track of partial kegs and spirit measures. The turning point came when I bought a simple set of digital scales (£20) and built a count routine around weighing bottles and dipping casks. Within a fortnight, my weekly variance went from guesswork to a number I could actually trust. That single change alone revealed I was losing more than I thought to over-pouring—not theft, just loose measures and forgotten shots.

Here’s the truth most breweries won’t tell you: the number that actually matters is wet gross profit by line, not a single headline stock figure. Spirits hide losses in over-pouring. Draught hides it in poor cellar temperature and bad line cleaning waste. And most stock “theft” is actually measurement error and forgotten wastage. Weight is your early warning system.

Standard bottle weights by type

A 70cl spirit bottle weighs 875g when full (including the bottle itself); a 1-litre bottle weighs 1,250g when full. These are your reference points. Write them down. Laminate them. Use them every time you weigh a bottle.

Here’s a working liquor bottle weight reference for common pub stock:

Spirits (70cl bottle)

• Full bottle weight: 875g (includes glass)
• Half-empty (35cl remaining): approximately 612g
• Quarter-full (17.5cl remaining): approximately 438g
• Weight per 10ml of spirit: 7.9g (use this to calculate expected weight at any level)

Standard wine bottles (75cl)

• Full bottle weight: 1,200g (Bordeaux-style glass)
• Half-empty (37.5cl remaining): approximately 700g
• Empty bottle alone: approximately 430g
• Weight per 10ml of wine: 10.2g

1-litre bottles (spirits, fortified wine)

• Full bottle weight: 1,250g
• Half-empty (50cl remaining): approximately 875g
• Empty bottle alone: approximately 300g (varies by brand)
• Weight per 10ml: 7.9g (spirits), 10.2g (fortified wine)

Beer bottles (330ml, 500ml)

• 330ml bottle full: 380–400g
• 500ml bottle full: 570–600g
• These vary widely by bottle design—weigh your own stock bottles empty first

The key insight: bottle glass weight varies by brand and design. A Diageo bottle is heavier than a smaller indie distillery bottle. You can’t use a generic chart—you need to weigh your own bottles empty first, then build from there.

How to build your own weight chart

This takes an hour and saves you weeks of guesswork.

Step 1: Get a digital scale

You need a kitchen scale that reads to at least 5g accuracy, preferably 1g. £15–£30 will buy you a reliable one. Don’t overthink it. Place it on a flat, level surface behind the bar or in the office. Calibrate it weekly (most scales have a calibration mode—check the manual).

Step 3: Weigh every empty bottle you stock

Pull every spirit, wine, and fortified bottle from your shelves. Weigh each one empty and dry. Write the weight on a sticky label and press it on the bottom of the bottle. Do the same for any open bottle you’re currently using. This takes 30 minutes and is the foundation of everything that follows.

Step 3: Create your reference card

Build a simple spreadsheet or printed card with three columns:

• Bottle name and size (e.g. “Gordons 70cl”, “Stella Artois 500ml”)
• Empty bottle weight (from your labels)
• Full bottle weight (empty + the liquid weight at capacity)

For a 70cl spirit: if the empty bottle weighs 310g, the full bottle weighs 310g + 560g (70cl of spirit) = 870g. For wine: if the empty bottle weighs 430g, the full bottle weighs 430g + 750g (75cl of wine) = 1,180g. Tape this card to your scales. Done.

Step 4: Laminate it and keep it live

Print your chart. Laminate it (or slip it into a clear plastic pocket). Keep it next to your scales. Every time you open a new bottle, weigh it full and add the date to your record. Every time you order a new spirit or wine, weigh the empty bottle and update your chart. This becomes your single source of truth.

Weighing bottles as a weekly routine

The real power isn’t in the chart—it’s in what you do with it every single week.

Reconciling weight against till data the same day turns guesswork into a number you can trust within a fortnight. Here’s the routine I use at my pub, and it takes about 10 minutes on a quiet shift.

Pick a day (mine is Monday morning)

Before the pub gets busy, pull every open spirit bottle from the shelves. Weigh each one. Write the weight next to the bottle name in your log, along with the date. Do the same for any wine or fortified bottles you’re currently selling from.

Calculate expected consumption

Check your till data for the past week. How many measures of each spirit were rung? (This assumes your bartenders are ringing sales accurately—more on that in a moment.) Multiply the number of measures by their weight. For a 25ml spirit, that’s 25 × 7.9 = 197.5g per measure. If you sold 30 measures of Gordons last week, you should have lost roughly 30 × 197.5 = 5,925g from that bottle.

Compare actual weight loss to expected loss

Take the weight from last week’s log, subtract today’s weight. That’s your actual loss. Compare it to the expected loss from till data. If you expected to lose 5,925g and actually lost 6,200g, you’re out by 275g—roughly 1.5 extra measures. That’s over-pouring, a forgotten pour, or (rarely) a leak. If you expected to lose 5,925g and only lost 4,500g, someone didn’t ring the till correctly.

Talk to your team the same day

If the numbers don’t match, it’s not an accusation—it’s a conversation. “Our weight says we lost more than the till shows. Either someone forgot to ring a few, or we’re pouring a bit loose. Let’s tighten it up this week.” Most of the time, it’s forgotten measures or loose pours, not malice.

Use StockTap pub stock app to log your weights, till data, and variance in one place. It removes the spreadsheet headache and gives you a clear weekly variance number—the real metric that matters.

Common problems weight reveals

Once you start weighing bottles, you’ll spot patterns. Here’s what you’ll likely find.

Over-pouring on busy nights

A free-poured 25ml is often 32–35ml. That’s invisible on till data but obvious in weight loss. If a bottle’s weight loss is consistently 20% higher than expected, your bar staff are pouring loose. It’s not deliberate—it’s just how free-pouring works under pressure. This is where tightening your pour routine catches real money.

Forgotten measures (the biggest culprit)

A customer orders a drink, pays, doesn’t get the spirit portion (the glass gets knocked, the order changes). The spirit never gets rung but the bottle weight shows the loss. Weight will catch this instantly. Till data alone never will.

Evaporation and temperature loss

If your cellar is too warm, or your spirit bottles are stored in direct sunlight, you lose liquid to evaporation. A 1% loss on a full bottle of whisky over two weeks isn’t theft—it’s heat. Move your stock to a cooler area and monitor weight again.

Bad line cleaning and draught waste

This doesn’t show up in bottle weight, but weighing helps you isolate problems. If your weight numbers are spot-on but your till variance is poor, the loss is likely in draught—bad line cleaning, temperature waste, or poor dispense calibration. That’s a separate problem, but weight helps you identify it.

Leaks you didn’t know about

A slow leak in a spirit bottle, a split in a bag-in-box wine, a loose pump on a keg—weight catches them all before you lose a full bottle. Once you spot a leak, you can claim it back from the supplier.

Recording and acting on weight data

The chart itself is useless if you don’t keep records. You need a simple log that shows:

• Bottle name and size
• Date of weight
• Actual weight (in grams)
• Expected weight loss (based on till data)
• Actual weight loss
• Variance (the difference)

A spreadsheet works fine. Better still, use a pub stock tracking tool that does the maths for you. The point is: record it the same day every week. Over time, you’ll see which bottles are reliable and which ones consistently show variance. That’s your action list.

The number that actually matters is wet GP by line, not a single headline stock figure. Once you know your weight variance by bottle, you can calculate the actual GP on each spirit, each wine, each beer. That’s where the real money is—not in a “stock is down 2%” message, but in “we’re losing 3% on single malts because we’re pouring loose, and that’s costing us £800 a month.”

SmartPubTools helps you track this across your whole pub—not just bottle weights, but cellar temps, keg life, pour counts, and actual GP by line. The weekly variance stops being a mystery and becomes a number you can improve.