Keg checker vs dipstick: which tracks stock accurately
Last updated: 29 June 2026
Running this problem at your pub?
Here's the system I use at The Teal Farm to fix it — real-time labour %, cash position, and VAT liability in one dashboard. 30-minute setup. £97 once, no monthly fees.
Get Pub Command Centre — £97 →No monthly fees. 30-day money-back guarantee. Built by a working pub landlord.
Most pub licensees think they have to choose between a keg checker and a dipstick. They don’t. The real mistake is choosing neither and wondering why a 1% stock loss on wet sales quietly costs you £3,000–£5,000 a year. I’ve run both systems on my own bar, switched between them, combined them, and eventually built a repeatable count routine that catches losses within a fortnight. Here’s what actually works, and why the keg checker vs dipstick question is the wrong question to ask.
Key Takeaways
- A dipstick measures liquid depth in a keg or cask; a keg checker estimates remaining volume by weight or visual inspection and is less precise.
- A proper weekly line check using a dipstick, paired with till reconciliation, catches measurement errors and overpours that cost most pubs thousands annually.
- Keg checkers are useful for quick daily checks but should never replace a formal dipstick count for financial accuracy.
- The real number that matters is wet gross profit by line, not a single headline stock figure, and both tools must feed into a repeatable weekly routine.
What A Keg Checker And Dipstick Actually Do
A dipstick is a measuring rod that shows you exactly how much liquid is left in a container. You push it down into a keg, cask, or spirit bottle until it hits the bottom, pull it out, and read the volume directly. It gives you a precise measurement in litres or gallons. No guessing. No maths.
A keg checker is a catch-all term for anything else: a weight-based estimate (lifting the keg and comparing it to a reference weight), a visual inspection, or a specialised hand-held device that tries to estimate volume without opening the keg. The problem is that none of these methods are as reliable as a dipstick.
I spent two years trying to manage my cellar with a combination of keg checkers—mostly lifting kegs and eyeballing them—and it was a disaster. The variance was wild. A keg that I thought was three-quarters full could actually be half empty, and I’d find out only when the next delivery arrived. A dipstick removes that guesswork entirely because it measures depth, not estimation.
Accuracy: Which One Catches Real Losses
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most stock ‘theft’ is actually measurement error and forgotten wastage, not someone nicking a pint. If you’re not using a dipstick, you have no way to know if the loss is real or just bad counting.
A dipstick is accurate to within 0.5 litres on a standard keg. A keg checker based on weight or eyeballing? You could be out by 5–10 litres and never know.
Where Losses Hide (And Why A Dipstick Finds Them)
- Spirits: A free-poured 25ml measure is often 32–35ml. Weigh open spirit bottles weekly and cross-check against till records. A dipstick doesn’t help here; scales do.
- Draught losses: Temperature swings in a badly insulated cellar cause foam waste. Bad line cleaning leaves sediment and waste. A dipstick measures the actual volume gone, but only if you know what you started with and when.
- Partial kegs: This is where a keg checker fails completely. You lift a partial keg, think it’s got 20 litres left, but it’s actually got 12. By the time you find out, you’ve sold 8 litres over cost and can’t trace where it went.
When I switched to a dipstick-based system paired with a simple spreadsheet tracking, my weekly variance went from guesswork to a number I could trust within a fortnight. The first month, I found 2 litres of unaccounted draught stock per week—that’s about £150 a month in lost margin on a typical pub.
A keg checker would never have caught that because it can’t measure partial kegs precisely enough.
Time, Cost, And Practicality
This is where people usually favour a keg checker: it’s faster. You can walk the cellar in 10 minutes with a keg checker, note down rough volumes in your head, and move on. A dipstick takes longer because you have to actually measure and record each one.
But speed is only valuable if you’re measuring something real. A fast guess that loses you £4,000 a year is worse than a slower routine that finds the money.
Actual Time Breakdown
- Keg checker method: 10–15 minutes per week. Result: unreliable variance, untraced losses.
- Dipstick method: 20–30 minutes per week. Result: traceable figures, losses caught within days.
- Combined method: 25–40 minutes per week. Daily keg checker eyeball for stock rotation; formal dipstick count once weekly; till reconciliation same day.
The combined method is the one I recommend, and it’s what most pubs that actually plug their losses end up doing.
Cost-wise, a basic dipstick costs £8–£15. A decent keg checker (if you buy one specifically) costs £20–£50. A set of scales for spirit bottles is £15–£30. Total investment: under £100 to save thousands in margin. That’s not a question; it’s a no-brainer.
Why Most Pubs Should Use Both
A keg checker is useful for daily rotation and quick visual checks. You can walk the cellar each morning, lift the kegs, and make sure nothing’s sitting unused or out of date. It’s a good housekeeping tool.
A dipstick is essential for financial accuracy and loss detection. Once a week, usually Friday afternoon before the busy weekend, you dip every cask and partial keg, write down the exact figures, and reconcile against till records the same day. This is where you catch the real leaks.
The reason this combination works is that the number that actually matters is wet gross profit by line, not a single headline stock figure. You need precise measurements (dipstick) feeding into a repeatable process (weekly count + till reconciliation). A keg checker doesn’t give you precision; it gives you a sense of whether stock is running low.
At my own pub, I was running stock on a tangle of spreadsheets and still losing track of partial kegs and spirit measures. I built a simple count routine around a dipstick and a set of scales, and the weekly variance stabilised within two weeks. Most pubs that move from a messy count to a disciplined one claw back 1–2 gross profit points within a couple of months. That’s not a small thing on a wet sales figure of £20,000–£30,000 per week.
Common Objections (And Why They’re Wrong)
‘I don’t have time to dipstick every week.’
You have less time if you don’t, because you’ll spend it chasing untraced variance, arguing with the brewery, and making excuses for missing margin. A 30-minute count beats 10 hours of mystery solving.
‘My spreadsheet works fine, I don’t need a keg checker or dipstick.’
Your spreadsheet is only as good as the data going into it. If that data comes from eyeballing or lifting kegs, it’s garbage in, garbage out. A spreadsheet paired with precise dipstick measurements is powerful. A spreadsheet on its own is a filing cabinet for guesses.
‘Do I really need special equipment?’
No, but yes. A dipstick costs a tenner and saves you thousands. A keg checker could be your hand and your eye, but you’ll miss losses. The equipment is cheap. The losses are not.
‘Won’t the brewery stocktaker just do it?’
The brewery stocktaker comes once a month, sometimes less. By then you’ve lost 4 weeks of data and 4 weeks of potential losses. You need a weekly count that you control. The brewery stocktake is a compliance check; your weekly dipstick is a management tool.
‘Is an app safer than a spreadsheet for my records?’
An app built for pub operations is safer because it centralises data, time-stamps entries, and prevents accidental overwrites. A generic spreadsheet on a shared drive is a security and accuracy nightmare. If you’re going to invest time in proper counting, use StockTap pub stock app to capture and store those dipstick readings. It locks in your count data, cross-references till records, and gives you a weekly variance report that tells you exactly where the leaks are.
How To Implement This Week
You don’t need to overhaul your entire system. Start here:
- Buy a dipstick. Order one today. Cost: £10. Delivery: 2 days.
- Pick a time. Friday 14:00 works for most pubs. Consistent timing matters because you’re measuring the same stock position each week.
- Count your kegs and partials. Write down the exact dipstick reading for every cask, keg, and partial. Don’t estimate. Don’t round. Measure.
- Weigh your spirits. Open bottles only. Sealed stock is inventory, not work-in-progress. A set of digital scales costs £20.
- Reconcile against till same day. What did your EPOS say you sold? What does your physical count say is gone? If there’s a gap, investigate it immediately while memory is fresh.
- Record the results. Not in a random notebook. Use SmartPubTools or a simple, locked spreadsheet. You need a history so you can spot trends.
If you do this once, you’ll catch something. If you do this weekly for a month, you’ll have a system. If you do this monthly for a year, you’ll have a baseline. After that, you’ll know your real variance and can spot real problems instead of trying to guess.