Free Restaurant and Bar Tool

Keg Cost Calculator

Enter the keg cost, the size, your pour, and the menu price. You get cost per pint, pours per keg, your pour cost, and the profit a full keg makes.

Draft pour cost —
Cost per pour —
Pours per keg —
Profit per keg —

This is the full keg, every ounce sold clean. You never get all of it. The foam is where it goes, and it comes straight out of these pints.

What Good Looks Like

What a keg should pour.

The full number is simple math. The real number is what you actually sell after foam and waste take their cut, and that is where the money hides. These are the counts good operators run their kegs against every week.

KegFull pints, 16 ozAfter foam and waste
Half barrel, 15.5 gal12495 to 115
Quarter barrel, 7.75 gal6248 to 57
Sixtel, 5.16 gal4131 to 38
The gap is real money124 should pour95 on a bad system

Twenty-nine pints off one half barrel, at six dollars a pint, is 174 dollars of beer you paid for and poured down the drain, on one keg. Bar Cop counts what the keg should have poured against what your sales say it did, and prices that gap in dollars, so you know the line needs attention before the month does.

The Math

How cost per pint is calculated.

Step One

Pours per keg

Divide the keg size in ounces by your pour. A half barrel is 15.5 gallons, which is 1,984 ounces, so at a 16 ounce pint you get 124 pints on paper. Drop to a 14 ounce pour and the same keg gives you 142, and your cost per pint falls right along with it.

Step Two

Cost per pour

Divide the keg cost by pours per keg. A 180 dollar half barrel over 124 pints is about a dollar 45 a pint. Against a 6 dollar menu price that is a 24 percent pour cost, right where draft should sit. A pricier keg or a cheaper pour moves it from there.

The Catch

You never get 124

This math assumes every ounce pours into a glass and gets sold. It does not. Foam, dumped pints, a warm line, a slow night that ends in a blown keg. The real yield comes from counting the keg against what you sold. The difference is what you lost.

Straight Answers

The keg and draft questions.

What operators ask when they are working out what a pint really costs.

How many pints are in a keg?
A half barrel holds 15.5 gallons, which is 124 pints at 16 ounces. A quarter barrel is 62 pints, and a sixtel is about 41. That is the full number on paper. In real life foam and waste take a cut, and a system that is not dialed in can drop a half barrel to around 95 pints.
How do you calculate cost per pint?
Divide the keg cost by the pours in the keg. Pours per keg is the keg size in ounces divided by your pour size. A 180 dollar half barrel poured at 16 ounces gives 124 pints, which is about a dollar 45 per pint.
What is a good pour cost for draft beer?
Draft beer runs a healthy 20 to 25 percent pour cost, a little higher than liquor and lower than bottled beer. If your draft pour cost is running well above that, the usual culprit is not price, it is yield: foam, over-pour, and a line that is not clean or cold.
Why do I get fewer pints than the math?
Foam. Every inch of head you pour off, every glass dumped, and every ounce lost to a warm or dirty line comes out of the count. A half barrel that should give 124 pints can drop to 95 on a system fighting you. The gap between the two is beer you paid for and never sold.
What is a keg deposit?
A refundable charge on the empty keg itself, not part of what the beer cost you. Leave it out of your cost per pint or every pint reads high. You get it back when the empty goes back, which is why the empties are worth tracking.
Is draft cheaper to pour than bottles?
On paper yes, draft usually runs a lower pour cost than bottled beer. In practice it depends entirely on your yield. A half barrel that should give 124 pints and gives 95 has just erased the advantage and then some.
How much does foam actually cost me?
More than the glass you dumped. Losing ten percent of a half barrel to foam and over-pour is roughly twelve pints, and at a normal price that is real money off one keg. Multiply it across a week of kegs and the line cleaning suddenly looks cheap.
Does a sixtel cost more per pint than a half barrel?
Usually, yes. The smaller format almost always carries a higher price per gallon, so work in cost per ounce before deciding. The sixtel can still win on a slow-moving beer, because beer that goes flat before it sells costs you all of it.
How long does a keg stay good once it is tapped?
On a clean, cold system a tapped keg holds up for a few weeks, and pasteurised beer longer than unpasteurised. The practical limit is usually how fast it sells, which is the real argument for a sixtel on a slow line: beer that goes flat before it sells costs you the whole keg, not a percentage of it.
What pour size should I use for a pint?
Use what actually goes in the glass, not what is printed on it. A sixteen ounce glass poured with a normal head delivers around fourteen or fifteen ounces of beer. Costing at sixteen when you serve fourteen quietly understates every pint you sell.
Run Your Real Numbers

Do it on real kegs.

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