Shot Ski or Shotski: Sizes, Buying Guide & DIY Build

Four people, one ski, four glasses and a countdown someone is shouting out. The shot ski is one of the few drinking devices you cannot use on your own. Which is exactly why it ends up in every photo.

Last updated: 28 August 2026

💡 If you already know what a shot ski is and only want to know how long yours has to be: our SwigSki3000® is modular, so the size of your group decides the length. The maths for that is further down.

The Shotski: what sets it apart from every other glass

A shot glass you drink on your own. A Shotski only works with four of you. Before anybody drinks anything, it sorts the group out first: shoulder to shoulder, arms behind each other's backs, everyone doing the same movement. Somebody has to count down, otherwise it goes wrong. Four people getting themselves into line and one of them counting down: within five metres of that, a phone goes up. Guaranteed.

Who invented the principle cannot be settled, and there are roughly as many versions as there are people telling the story. Half a dozen North American ski resorts claim it for themselves, Munich does too, and the ski team of the University of British Columbia anyway. Most often, though, the trail leads into the Alps: in Austria the Schnappski has been a mountain-hut tradition for a long time, although there the glasses are simply stood on the ski rather than fixed to it. It was the Americans who screwed them down, marketed the thing and turned it into a proper product.

One point that matters for everything below: apres ski means after skiing. The Shotski belongs on the table, at the bar, in the garden or in the clubhouse, not in the gondola. Anyone still skiing takes apple juice. The countdown works exactly the same, and you cannot tell the difference in the photo anyway.

Shot ski, shotski, schnapsski: who calls it what

Four words, and one of them means something else entirely. Which one you use says quite a lot about where you are from — and with one of them you should ask a follow-up question.

• Shot ski or shotski is the international term and the one people search for. It comes from shot and ski, and both spellings run side by side: shops mostly sell it as one word, while British listings tend to split it into two. The plural is shot skis.
• Schnapsski is the Germanised version and at least as common in Germany, sometimes written as two words, Schnaps Ski. You will also hear Ski mit Schnapsgläsern, ski with shot glasses, usually from people who cannot remember the name right now.
• Meterski is a German nickname you hear here and there, named after the length: four of our modules come to exactly one metre. That term carries two meanings, though, and that is the next paragraph.

There is one term to watch out for: if somebody offers you a shot board, a shot paddle or a „meter of shots“ — in German a Meterschnaps or a half metre — what you get is as a rule not a ski, but a wooden plank with shot bottles or glasses set into it. That is a product in its own right and it is widespread in Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland. The same goes for anything sold as a ski shot board: often a board cut into a ski shape instead of a real ski. If the ski itself matters to you, ask what the thing is made of.

The spacing question: how long does yours need to be?

Reckon on 25 cm per person: four spots are exactly one metre, six are 1.50 m, eight are 2 m. Most other suppliers only tell you „for 4 to 6 people“ and leave it at that.

One module of our SwigSki3000® measures 30 × 8 × 1.5 cm as a single part. Once the modules are plugged together the connectors overlap, so each spot does not add the full length of the part but 25 cm — which is why four modules come to exactly one metre. Hence the German nickname Meterski. And because the thing plugs together, you do not decide the length once at the checkout, you decide it for the evening.

At what point does it get too long? You can extend the ski as far as you like. We still recommend stopping at eight modules, for two reasons. With every plug connection, the load on the individual joint goes up. And two metres with eight full glasses is something no group gets lifted in time. The person at the tip lifts while the first one is still talking, and then the whole lot runs down everybody's boots. From ten people upwards, two shorter skis in parallel are the better concept. Two rows of four next to each other look better in the picture than a human chain anyway.

One more thing about the spacing, and it doubles as a photo argument: 25 cm per person means you stand close, arms behind each other's backs, heads almost at the same height. At 50 cm spacing you stand next to each other instead of together. You can see that in the picture, and it is the reason we built ours this tight.

Buying a shot ski: what actually matters

The market is a small one: a lot of what is out there are printed boards in ski shape with four glasses glued on. There are four criteria that make the difference, and one of them counts for more than the rest put together.

1. Glued-in or removable glasses. This is the point. The market standard is glued: the glass sits in a ring or straight in the resin. You never get it properly clean, because you cannot reach the rim, and if one glass breaks the whole ski is done. With us, the glass clicks into a real binding. It comes out for washing, it is allowed in the dishwasher, and if one breaks you replace that one. As the manufacturer we can promise that, because we have the glasses made ourselves. They are calibrated, by the way, so they carry a fill line and may be used for serving in bars and restaurants.

2. Wood or plastic. Honestly: plastic copes better with wet and frost. Wood looks and feels better, and it is what you want in the photo — a wooden shot ski simply photographs differently. Our modules are made of pine wood: warm tone, grain you can feel, and at around 510 kg/m³ considerably denser than the usual spruce board. It takes more than it looks like it would. Not a material for eternity, but a replaceable one: a single module gets swapped out.

3. Packed size. Consistently underestimated, and it annoys you exactly once, then never again. A home-made shot ski built on a 190 cm ski fits sideways into no car, no festival tent and no boot that already has ski boots in it. Ours falls apart into 30 cm modules and disappears into the velvet bag that comes with it. That even gets it into hand luggage, which for a ski trip by plane is the real trump card.

4. Spare parts. Before you buy, ask whether glasses, bindings and modules can be bought individually afterwards. With most suppliers the answer is no, and that makes the first breakage the end of the story. The question costs nothing and decides whether the thing lasts two winters or ten.

One thing we cannot do: engraving. For a wedding present or a club anniversary an engraved name is an obvious idea, and several competitors offer it. With us there is no engraving as a shop product. If you are doing this commercially and thinking about branding, our piece on the Shotski for the hotel bar has the relevant thinking.

Modular is not a brochure word here. In flunkyball, one team throws a ball at a bottle in the middle; if it hits, the other team is up. In our version every hit costs a module instead: your ski gets shorter until there is nothing left to lift. That only works because the modules really do come off one at a time.

DIY shot ski: ski boot shot glasses, bindings, step by step

Building your own is not a fallback here, it is a route of its own. You can buy just the bindings and the glasses from us and bring the ski yourself. The product page of the set of 4 explicitly lists mounting „on the wall, on a serving board, on an old ski“ as intended use. And a shot ski made from the ski you rode your first winter on beats any series product. That part we cannot manufacture.

What you need, for four spots:

• A set of 4 ski boot shot glasses with bindings: four bindings, four glasses, all the mounting screws, lanyards. €44.50.
• An old ski you have retired. Genuinely retired, please, not one that still gets ridden. Loft €0, classifieds €10 to €30, or ask at the ski club, where there is guaranteed to be one standing in the corner.
• Cordless screwdriver, a wood drill bit of 3.5 to 4.1 mm for pre-drilling, a Phillips bit, tape measure, pencil, masking tape and a little wood glue.

The procedure, one to two hours including drying time:

1. Prepare the ski. Wax off, dirt off, degrease. The steel edges are sharp: deburr them or tape them over before anybody runs a hand along the ski.
2. Mark it out. From the middle outwards, 30 to 35 cm between the glasses. The outermost 25 to 30 cm of the ski stay empty: tip and tail flex when the ski is lifted, and that is where every shot tips over.
3. Pre-drill. Always, otherwise the topsheet splinters. Stick a piece of tape on the bit at 10 mm as a depth marker — the bit stays in the wooden core and never goes through the base. The Spax wood screws supplied need roughly 1 cm of thread depth.
4. Seal the holes. A drop of wood glue in every drill hole before the screw goes in. Otherwise moisture creeps into the open wooden core, the wood swells, and the screw works loose after the second winter.
5. Screw the bindings on, click the glasses in, do one test lift. Tighten by hand rather than at full cordless-screwdriver torque: in a wooden core the thread strips faster than you would think. If a binding wobbles, tighten it before there is any liquid involved.

You cannot tell from the outside: not every ski has a wooden core. In foam-core and cap constructions the screw holds noticeably worse. If you have the choice between two old skis, take the older, heavier one. A snowboard works too, but with four full glasses it is heavy to lift. And if you get to pick: a ski between 140 and 170 cm beats the 190. Do the sums: four glasses at 30 cm spacing make a 90 cm row of glasses — four spots are three gaps, not four. Add 25 cm of free ski at each end and you are at 140 cm of ski minimum. On a DIY build you deliberately take a bit more spacing than our 25 cm, because marking out and drilling by hand never lands perfectly. Everything beyond that is leverage that four people have to carry.

One set covers four spots, and a normal ski does not take more anyway — for eight spots you would need almost three metres of ski, and that does not exist. From six people upwards you therefore build two skis side by side: two sets for €89.00 plus two old skis. That is still clearly cheaper than the €188.50 for the finished eight-spot version, but it looks different. At exactly four spots, €44.50 plus an old ski and €89.50 for the Full Set are close together; what decides it there is not the price but what you want. We say that openly, because both routes run over the same binding and the same glass. We are happy to sell you either.

Five mistakes that happen on almost every DIY build

1. Gluing instead of screwing. Hot glue and silicone do not hold on a lacquered topsheet, least of all in the cold and under sideways load. The first ski survives until the second lift. It gets screwed, not glued.

2. Gluing the glasses down for good. The most common mistake, because it is the quickest. After that you never get the ski properly clean again, and a single broken glass ends the project. A binding that the glass clicks into costs two minutes more and lasts years longer.

3. Spreading the glasses over the full length of the ski. Looks generous, is not. The outer sections flex most when the ski is lifted, and that is where every shot slops over. And the group ends up strung out instead of standing together.

4. Working without pre-drilling, or using screws that are too long. Without pre-drilling the topsheet splinters, and screws that are too long come back out through the base underneath. A ski with screw tips in the base is finished as a ski, and it cuts, too.

5. Not preparing the ski. Wax, dirt and sharp steel edges. The wax stops anything from holding, and the edge reliably cuts whoever is holding the ski for the photo.

Build it or buy it? The honest comparison

Building your own is cheaper and more personal, buying is faster and travels better. The details:

Put briefly: building your own wins if there is a ski with a history down in the cellar and the thing stays at home. Buying wins if it has to travel, has to grow with the group, or has to be ready by Saturday. Both routes run over the same binding with us: once finished as the SwigSki3000®, once as a binding and glass set for the DIY route.

One note on our variants, so you do not reach for the wrong one: the cheapest variant in the shop is the plain module extension without bindings and glasses. That one is meant for existing customers who already have both. If there are six of you, you need the extension set with bindings and glasses at €49.50, otherwise person five and person six stand there without a glass. And the „ski only“ variant at €54.50 is only worth it if bindings and glasses are already in the house: anyone starting from zero pays €99.00 that way and ends up above the Full Set.

The first round: how the group shot actually works

Plug the modules together, click the glasses in, pour, find three people who are in. Then comes the order of operations that makes the difference:

1. Everybody grips under the ski, not over it. Thumbs on top, fingers underneath, that way nothing tips as it comes up.
2. Arms behind your neighbours' backs. Sounds daft, is the entire trick. It makes the row stable and pulls everyone in close.
3. One person counts down, and loudly. Three, two, one.
4. Everybody tips at the same time and at the same angle. If one person tips early, the shot lands in her neighbour's sleeve.

Whoever is holding the ski last goes and finds three new people. That is how the thing travels around the room without anybody having to compere it. And whoever does not want to drink holds the ski or takes the photo. Both roles matter more than the shot itself.

Where a Shotski works, from apres ski to the back garden

The obvious place is the hut after the last run down. Skiing is the sport where everybody on the piste has their own audience, and the Shotski simply carries on what started up there. But it works anywhere a group needs a shared moment: at the festival, where it doubles as a meeting point in the tent field, at a stag or hen do, at weddings as a slot between dinner and dancing, at the club night and at a birthday in the garden. Among apres ski party games it is the one that needs no rules explained — the countdown is the whole game.

Commercially it is a topic of its own. For hotels, bars and mountain huts we have two pieces that deal with revenue, workflow and staff: Shotski for the hotel bar and signature shot for the bar.

One last thing that matters to us: the bindings and mounts are made in the Lebenshilfe workshops in Piding in the Berchtesgadener Land, the plastic part itself is break-resistant POM from the Chiemgau, and the glasses come from Austria. That is not here as a selling point, it is here because we get asked about it a lot.

Common questions about the shot ski

Is it spelled shot ski or shotski?

Both are correct. Shotski as one word is how the product is sold in most shops, shot ski as two words is what most people type into a search box, and shot-ski with a hyphen turns up as well. All three mean the same object. The plural is shot skis.

How many people fit on a shot ski?

Reckon on 25 cm per person. Four spots come to exactly one metre, six to 1.50 m, eight to 2 m. We do not recommend more than eight: not because it would not work technically, but because a row that long no longer lifts in one movement. From ten people upwards, two shorter skis in parallel are the better solution.

What is the difference between a shot ski, a schnapsski and a shot board?

Shot ski and Schnapsski mean the same device: a ski with glasses fixed to it. Shot ski is the international term, Schnapsski the German-language one, and in Austria you also hear Schnappski. A shot board, shot paddle or „meter of shots“ is a different thing altogether: a wooden plank with bottles or glasses, no ski involved. Ski shot board gets used for both, which is why the follow-up question pays off.

What does a shot ski cost?

With us the complete, ready-to-use shot ski with four spots starts at €89.50 as the set of 4 with bindings and glasses. If you only need bindings and glasses for a DIY build, that is €44.50. Cheap boards with glued-on glasses start at around €15, but there the glasses and the ski are one inseparable unit.

Can you build a shot ski yourself, and how does the glass stay on?

Yes, and it is worth it if there is an old ski around. You need four bindings with glasses, a retired ski, a cordless screwdriver and one to two hours. It gets screwed rather than glued, and via a binding instead of straight onto the glass: hot glue and silicone do not hold on a lacquered topsheet, especially not in the cold. Three things matter: pre-drill, do not drill through the base, and do not glue. The full instructions are further up.

Are the glasses dishwasher-safe?

Yes. The glasses come out of the binding and are allowed in the dishwasher. That is the practical advantage over glued models, where the whole ski would have to go into the sink to reach the rim of the glass.

How do you drink from a shot ski without spilling?

Grip from underneath, arms behind your neighbours' backs, one person counting down loudly, everybody tipping at the same angle. The glasses hold 4 cl, so a double shot — fill them halfway if you prefer. It does not forgive much of a time lag. Practise in twos or threes before the whole row lines up.

Does it work without alcohol?

Completely. The countdown is the event, not the contents. With apple juice, alcohol-free sparkling wine or a ginger shot the Shotski works identically, and in the photo it looks exactly the same. Anyone still skiing belongs in this group anyway: apres ski means after skiing.

Sources and notes

• Dimensions, material, fill volume and scope of delivery: product information from Apres Allstars, as of August 2026.
• All prices are gross prices from our shop, as of August 2026.
• On the origin story: the origin of the Shotski is considered unresolved. Overviews of the versions mentioned can be found at punchdrink.com, vinepair.com and 5280.com; all three name Austria („Schnappski“) as the most likely original form.
• On mounting to an old ski: guide values for drill diameter, drilling depth, sealing and tightening torque follow the ski binding mounting instructions from bergzeit.de, prime-skiing.de and marmotamaps.com.
• On pine wood: material data according to delife.eu, massivum.de and hausjournal.net.
• Market prices of comparable shot boards: spot check at kaufland.de and ebay.de, as of August 2026.