Keg margin & pour cost calculator
Work out what a keg actually makes you — pours, cost per pour, margin, profit and breakeven — and see what a fifty-cent price change is worth before you make it. Free, no signup, and the link carries your numbers so you can send a result to your partner.
What this keg actually makes you
117.8
Pours you can sell
124.0 before 5% loss
$1.53
Cost per pour
Keg cost ÷ sellable pours
$6.47
Margin per pour
80.9% of net revenue
$762.40
Profit per keg
On $942.40 of sales
You need to sell 22.5 pours — about 19.1% of the keg — before it has paid for itself. Everything after that is the $762.40.
What a price change is worth
The same keg, at prices either side of the one you charge today.
| Menu price | Margin / pour | Margin % | Profit / keg |
|---|---|---|---|
| $7.00−$1.00 | $5.47 | 78.2% | $644.60 |
| $7.50−$0.50 | $5.97 | 79.6% | $703.50 |
| $8.00You | $6.47 | 80.9% | $762.40 |
| $8.50+$0.50 | $6.97 | 82.0% | $821.30 |
| $9.00+$1.00 | $7.47 | 83.0% | $880.20 |
A 50¢ increase is worth $58.90 more per keg — before a single extra pint is sold.
How it works
The math behind the numbers
Every figure above comes from two constants. A US beer barrel is 31 gallons, and a US gallon is 128 fluid ounces. A half barrel is therefore 15.5 gallons, or 1,984 ounces — which at a sixteen-ounce pour is exactly 124 pints. A quarter barrel gives you 62, a sixth barrel about 41, and a 50-litre import keg about 106. The calculator derives all of these from the barrel rather than from a rounded “165 pints” figure, because the rounding error compounds the moment you divide by a pour size.
Then loss comes off the top. Foam, line cleaning, the first murky pour off a fresh tap, tasters, staff drinks — none of it rings in. The calculator subtracts your loss percentage from the pour count, not from revenue, and that distinction matters. You paid for the whole keg either way, so the pours you do sell have to carry the ones you didn't. At 5% loss, a $180 half barrel goes from $1.45 a pint to $1.53. At 12% — which is what a long, warm draught line will do to you — it is $1.65.
Margin is revenue minus that cost. If the price on your menu already includes sales tax, the calculator strips the tax out first, because that money was never yours to keep. Tip-out, if it comes off the house's side rather than the server's, comes off next. What's left is the margin on a pour, and the percentage underneath it is that margin as a share of what you actually banked.
Breakeven is the honest one. At $180 a keg and $8 a pint, you need 22.5 pints before the keg has paid for itself — under a fifth of a half barrel. That is the real argument for keg velocity. The first fifth of the keg pays the invoice; the other four fifths are yours. A keg that takes three weeks to blow earns exactly the same dollars as one that sells out on a long weekend, while tying up a tap line and reaching the last customer a good deal less fresh than it reached the first.
What a good number looks like
The figure quoted across hospitality is a 20–25% pour cost — the liquid in the glass costing you a fifth to a quarter of what you charge. It is a rule of thumb, not a rule, and it travels badly between business models. A taproom pouring its own beer usually lands well under it, because there is no wholesale markup between the fermenter and the tap. A guest handle from a sought-after out-of-state brewery can run well over it and still be the right beer to pour, because it brings people through the door who then buy three more rounds of something you made.
So the number to watch isn't a percentage you hit. It is whether each handle earns its place: what it costs, what it returns, and how fast it moves. A 30% pour cost on a keg that blows in four days beats an 18% pour cost on one that sits for a month.
Four ways this calculation usually goes wrong
Using glass size instead of pour size
A 16 oz shaker poured with a head holds about 14 oz of beer, and a tulip holds less again. Enter the glass and you inflate your pour count by ten percent or more — which quietly flatters every number downstream. Pour one the way your busiest bartender pours it on a Friday, and weigh it.
Assuming zero loss
A calculator that starts at 0% tells you what the keg holds, not what you can sell. Foam, line cleaning, tasters and staff pours are real beer you have already paid for. Five percent is a fair default on a balanced system; if you have long lines or a warm walk-in, the honest number is higher.
Forgetting tax-inclusive pricing
If your $8 pint is $8 out the door, some of that is the state's. Margin calculated on the menu price rather than on what you bank will overstate itself by roughly your tax rate — usually a point or two of margin that never existed.
Pricing off the brewery down the road
Their keg cost isn't yours, their pour size probably isn't either, and their rent certainly isn't. Copying a menu price copies someone else's math. Run your own and you'll know whether your $8 is generous or quietly unprofitable.
Margin is one half of the equation
This calculator answers what a pour is worth. The other half of the question is which beers get reordered — because a keg that moves twice as fast doubles the same margin without changing a single price on the menu, and the people who come back are the ones who decide that.
If you want to go further down that road, customer insights covers what your POS can already tell you about who returns and what they drink, and the mug club guide covers the program most taprooms reach for when they want that second visit. No pitch required — the calculator above works whether or not you ever talk to us.
Keg margin FAQ
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If a membership program is the next thing you're weighing, the mug club ROI calculator uses the same honest arithmetic — it will tell you if the club is losing money. Or see all free tools.