The Milliliter to Ounce Conundrum

I was heading towards the checkout counter at Total Wine the other day when I saw a couple standing midway between the checkout line and the spirits section. They had a wide look of anticipation and bewilderment. Naturally I thought back to the first time I stepped into a Total Wine and peered through aisles upon aisles of wine, beer, spirits, cigars, and other treasures that are housed in this Mecca for the alcoholically inclined. But then the young man spoke, “do you know how many ounces are in a milliliter?” I was taken aback by such a question. I know that both the wines I was carrying were the standard 750 ml. I know from a lifetime of urinal reading that 3.78 liters are in a gallon. I even remembered, from my medical days, that a 15cc syringe is almost the same as one tablespoon. What I failed to remember was how many ounces are in a gallon or tablespoon! As a result of this lapse in memory I apologized to the couple, purchased my wine, and set out to my truck. Upon loading the recently purchased bottles, I remembered that a bottle of wine usually holds about 3 glasses of wine at 8 ounces per serving (I’m a little heavy handed on the pour). Triumphantly I walked back into the store proclaiming my abilities at linguistic mathematics. As I did the math in front of them, I asked what this mass of mangled math was for. Apparently, they were trying to figure out how many shots they could get out of a small bottle of Grey Goose Vodka. With this information I scanned the shelves of airline sized bottles to see if they would confirm or debunk my skills as a mathematician (there’s a reason I became a designer instead of an aerospace engineer), and behold, there was a 50 ml bottle of Grey Goose! Now a new question arose. Is an airline size bottle of our spirit one shot, or two? Oh, sweet conflagration! Here we go again with guessing numbers. With phone calculators unsheathed, by this time we had gathered a group on intrigued helpers, we worked the math. 15 servings if we are comparing to a 1 oz bottle, but only 7.5 at 2 oz. With this figured out I decided to make my leave. I handed my business card over to them with a plea to fill this void in my knowledge of the milliliter and how it relates to the good old US fluid oz. Driving home from this chance encounter, my head spinning with other ways to figure out this simple dilemma, I received a text message: “29.583 ml in an ounce.” So, if anyone asks this question, you don’t have to remember what the pre-flush liquid content of a toilet is, or how many ounces are in a tablespoon, just remember that your bottle is 25.4 ounces and there’s just a few more milliliters per ounce than that. And by the way, those airline size bottles are about one 1.5 oz shot.