Last updated: 29 July 2026
Your keg lineup is your wet GP. The beers on your taps decide what pours, what sells, and what each pint actually earns — and most operators pick their range on rep pressure and gut feel rather than numbers. I’ve done it both ways in my own cellar, and the numbers version wins every time.
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This guide covers the top UK draught beers for 2026, what a keg actually costs you in the real world (including the bit the price-comparison sites never mention), how many pints you genuinely sell from one, and how to work out what each line earns per week rather than per keg.
Key takeaways
- Birra Moretti is now the UK’s best-selling draught lager, having overtaken Carling. Guinness remains the top seller by volume.
- A 50-litre keg is 88 pints gross. You will sell about 83–85 of them. The gap is line cleaning, fobbing, drip trays and the dregs.
- Free-trade 50L keg prices in 2026 run roughly £120–£200+ ex VAT. If you’re tied, that range does not apply to you — price your GP off your own invoice, not off a website.
- Strip VAT before you calculate GP. A £6.00 pint costing £1.50 looks like 75% GP. It’s actually 70%.
- The brand doesn’t set your GP — your buy price against your pour price does. The matrix below shows exactly how fast GP moves.
- GP% on its own is a vanity number. A 68% line that sells a quarter-keg a week earns you less than a 60% line that shifts one. Judge lines on cash GP per week, not percentage.
Top UK draught beers 2026
ABVs are typical draught values and vary by format — always check the current spec sheet. “Why it sells” is the operator angle, not a tasting note.
| Brand | Style | Approx ABV | Taste profile | Why it sells |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Birra Moretti | Lager | 4.6% | Smooth, malty, balanced | #1 draught lager; premium pull without alienating mainstream |
| Guinness | Stout | 4.1% | Creamy, roasted, dry finish | #1 by volume; ritual product, draws its own crowd |
| Carling | Lager | 3.7% | Light, crisp, clean | Volume staple; price-sensitive regulars |
| Madrí Excepcional | Lager | 4.6% | Smooth, fuller-bodied | Fastest-growing world lager; strong premium trade-up |
| Stella Artois | Lager | 4.6% | Crisp, dry, bitter edge | Established premium; wide recognition |
| San Miguel | Lager | 5.0% | Full, slightly sweet | Premium Spanish; holiday association |
| Peroni Nastro Azzurro | Lager | 5.1% | Crisp, dry, delicate | Top-end premium; carries the highest pour price |
| Asahi Super Dry | Lager | 5.0% | Dry, clean, sharp finish | One of the fastest-growing premium lagers in the on-trade |
| Camden Hells | Craft lager | 4.6% | Clean, gently hoppy | Craft credibility on a lager palate |
| Cruzcampo | Lager | 4.4% | Light, easy, faintly sweet | Surging world lager; younger drinkers |
| Amstel | Lager | 4.1% | Light, sessionable | Easy mid-tier volume pour |
| Foster’s | Lager | 3.7% | Light, mild | Budget volume; broad appeal |
| Coors | Lager | 4.0% | Cold, light, crisp | Mainstream cold-served pour |
| Carlsberg Danish Pilsner | Lager | 3.8% | Light, clean | Reformulated core lager |
| Heineken | Lager | 5.0% | Balanced, mild bitterness | Globally recognised premium |
| Estrella Damm | Lager | 4.6% | Malty, smooth | Premium Spanish; food-led venues |
| Pravha | Lager | 4.0% | Light, crisp, Czech-style | Premium look at sessionable strength |
| Beavertown Neck Oil | Session IPA | 4.3% | Citrus, hoppy, easy | Craft draw; trades up from lager |
| Inch’s | Cider | 4.5% | Apple, medium | Modern cider volume |
| Thatchers Gold | Cider | 4.8% | Apple, medium-dry | Best-known mainstream cider |
| Aspall | Cyder | 5.5% | Dry, sharp, premium | Premium cider for food-led and upmarket venues |
What the market is actually doing
The structural shift is premiumisation, and it’s not a small one. World lagers — Madrí, Cruzcampo, Estrella, Moretti — have gone from roughly 19% of draught lager value before Covid to around 29% now, while standard lager has fallen from about 28% to 21%. Asahi Super Dry and Stella Artois have both added tens of millions in value in recent trade-press reporting.
What that means on your bar: people are drinking less and paying more per pint. The operators getting hurt are the ones who took the premium keg in but kept pouring it at a mainstream price because they were nervous about the ticket. That’s the single most common margin mistake I see, and the GP matrix further down shows exactly what it costs.
Keg prices UK 2026: what a keg actually costs
Here’s the free-trade picture — what a 50L keg costs if you can genuinely shop around. These are ex-VAT beer prices before deposit and delivery.
| Brand (50L) | Style | Typical free-trade price (ex VAT) | Cost per pint at 84 saleable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carling / Foster’s | Lager | £120 – £140 | £1.43 – £1.67 |
| Carlsberg Danish Pilsner | Lager | £125 – £145 | £1.49 – £1.73 |
| Heineken | Lager | £135 – £160 | £1.61 – £1.90 |
| Stella Artois | Lager | £140 – £165 | £1.67 – £1.96 |
| Birra Moretti | Lager | £145 – £170 | £1.73 – £2.02 |
| Peroni Nastro Azzurro | Lager | £150 – £175 | £1.79 – £2.08 |
| Guinness | Stout | £155 – £180 | £1.85 – £2.14 |
| Camden Hells | Craft lager | £155 – £180 | £1.85 – £2.14 |
| Craft IPA / speciality | Various | £170 – £200+ | £2.02 – £2.38+ |
Indicative 2026 free-trade ranges, ex VAT, beer price only. Regional variation is significant and volume rebates move these numbers.
The costs that aren’t in the price
- Keg deposit — typically £30–£65 per 50L keg, refundable. It doesn’t hit your P&L, but it absolutely hits your cash. Ten kegs on the stillage is up to £650 of your money sitting in someone else’s steel. Chase your empties.
- Delivery / drop charges — £10–£40 depending on supplier and how far you are from the depot. Some waive it above a minimum order, which is a real argument for consolidating deliveries rather than topping up twice a week.
- Late-return fees. Some suppliers charge per keg per day beyond the return window. Rare, but it happens on event kegs.
- Gas. CO2 and mixed gas are a genuine cost per pint that almost nobody allocates to the line. It’s small, but it’s not nil.
If you’re tied, none of the above is your price
This is the section every other keg-cost guide online is missing, and it’s the one that matters most to UK licensees — because the majority of us can’t shop around at all.
I run a tied Marston’s pub. My keg prices come off a pubco price list, less whatever discount my agreement carries, and that list sits meaningfully above the free-trade numbers in the table above. That isn’t a complaint — the tie comes bundled with rent and support arrangements that a free-of-tie operator pays for separately — but it does mean one thing very clearly:
Never calculate your GP off a price you read on the internet. Calculate it off your own invoice.
Practical version, and it takes about twenty minutes:
- Pull your last three keg invoices.
- For every line, write down the ex-VAT price you actually paid per keg — after discount, before deposit.
- Divide by your saleable pints (see below) to get a true cost per pint.
- Compare that against your current pour price, ex VAT.
Two things fall out of this almost every time. First, at least one line is priced wrong on your tariff — usually a premium keg being poured at a mainstream price. Second, your discount schedule is probably volume-banded, which means a line you’re barely selling may be dragging you below a threshold on a line you sell plenty of. Worth a conversation with your BDM armed with the numbers rather than a feeling.
How many pints in a keg — and how many you actually sell
A UK pint is 568ml, so the gross arithmetic is simple: divide the keg volume in millilitres by 568.
| Format | Volume | Gross pints | Typical loss | Realistic saleable pints |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50L keg | 50 litres | 88.0 | 3–5% | ~83–85 |
| 30L keg | 30 litres | 52.8 | 3–5% | ~50–51 |
| 20L keg | 20 litres | 35.2 | 3–5% | ~33–34 |
| 100L keg | 100 litres | 176.0 | 3–5% | ~167–171 |
| Firkin (9 gal cask) | ~41 litres | 72.0 | 8–10% | ~65–66 |
| Pin (4.5 gal cask) | ~20.5 litres | 36.0 | 8–10% | ~32–33 |
Why cask loses more than keg: ullage, sediment you can’t sell, and a much shorter window once the cask is vented. Keg loss is mostly line cleaning, fobbing and drip trays, and a tight cellar can get keg lines down towards 2–3%. If you’re running above 5% on keg, the problem is usually long line runs, a temperature issue, or fobbing on a line that needs attention — not the beer.
Use 84 saleable pints from a 50L keg as your working number for GP calculations. It’s honest, and it’s the figure I use on my own lines. If you want the full breakdown by format including 100L and cask, see our pints per keg guide, and the cask ale wastage guide for why cask deserves its own allowance.
Keg weights, sizes and couplers
Worth knowing for two reasons: cellar handling, and because the weight method is how you measure a part-used keg accurately.
| Format | Approx empty weight | Approx full weight | Typical dimensions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50L keg | ~12–13 kg | ~62–63 kg | ~53cm tall × 40cm diameter |
| 30L keg | ~9–10 kg | ~39–40 kg | ~40cm tall × 40cm diameter |
| 20L keg | ~7–8 kg | ~27–28 kg | ~35cm tall × 35cm diameter |
| Firkin (9 gal) | ~12–13 kg | ~53–55 kg | ~40cm × 40cm |
| Pin (4.5 gal) | ~7–8 kg | ~28–29 kg | ~35cm × 30cm |
Do not treat these as gospel for stocktaking. Empty weights vary by manufacturer and by how battered the shell is. The number stamped on the keg chime is the one to trust — check it, write it down once per format, and use your own figure. This is the single most common source of error I see in weight-based stocktaking, and it’s the reason a “correct” spreadsheet can still be several pints out per keg.
Coupler types
Most UK keg beer runs on the S-type (European Sankey) coupler. Some imported German lagers use the A-type (German slider). Older UK Grundy-style kegs use a G-type. Cask is a different system entirely. If you’re taking on a new line — particularly an import or a small craft brewery — confirm the coupler with the supplier before the delivery arrives, not after.
Working out real keg GP — and the VAT trap
Here’s where a lot of pubs quietly lose two or three points of GP without ever noticing.
Your pour price includes VAT. Your keg cost doesn’t. You cannot compare them directly.
Divide the pour price by 1.2 first. A £6.00 pint is £5.00 of revenue to you. Skip that step and every GP number you produce is flattered by about five points — which is exactly enough to make a bad line look acceptable.
The formula, in full:
Cost per pint = keg price ex VAT ÷ saleable pints
Net pour price = menu price ÷ 1.2
GP% = (net pour price − cost per pint) ÷ net pour price × 100
Worked example
A £145 keg of Birra Moretti (ex VAT), 84 saleable pints, poured at £5.50:
- Cost per pint: £145 ÷ 84 = £1.73
- Net pour price: £5.50 ÷ 1.2 = £4.58
- GP: (£4.58 − £1.73) ÷ £4.58 = 62.3%
- Cash GP for the whole keg: (£4.58 − £1.73) × 84 = £240
The GP matrix
Find your keg buy price down the side, your pour price across the top. All GP figures are ex VAT, at 84 saleable pints from a 50L keg.
| Keg price (ex VAT) | Cost/pint | £4.50 pour | £5.00 pour | £5.50 pour | £6.00 pour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £120 | £1.43 | 61.9% | 65.7% | 68.8% | 71.4% |
| £135 | £1.61 | 57.1% | 61.4% | 64.9% | 67.9% |
| £145 | £1.73 | 54.0% | 58.6% | 62.3% | 65.5% |
| £160 | £1.90 | 49.2% | 54.3% | 58.4% | 61.9% |
| £175 | £2.08 | 44.4% | 50.0% | 54.5% | 58.3% |
Read it diagonally and the lesson jumps out. Moving from a £120 keg to a £175 keg costs you about 17 GP points if you don’t move the price. Move the pour from £4.50 to £6.00 at the same time and you’re ahead — 58.3% against 61.9%, but on a much bigger cash ticket per pint.
Where pubs lose money is the top-right-to-bottom-left move: taking the premium keg because the rep made a good case, then pouring it at 20p above the mainstream price because you’re nervous. That’s the £175 row at the £4.50 column — 44.4% GP on a line you probably believe is one of your better ones.
The number that actually matters: cash GP per week
This is the bit I wish someone had told me five years earlier, and it’s why I stopped ranking my lines by GP percentage.
GP% tells you the quality of each pint. It tells you nothing about whether the line is worth a tap. A tap is a scarce asset. What you want to know is what each one earns you per week.
Cash GP per week = (net pour price − cost per pint) × pints sold per week
Run that across your lines and the ranking usually reshuffles hard. Two real-shaped examples:
- Line A — mainstream lager, £120 keg, £5.00 pour, 68.8% GP is a good headline… but at 65.7% GP and a full keg a week it earns £230 a week.
- Line B — craft IPA, £180 keg, £6.50 pour, 58% GP, sells a quarter of a keg a week. It earns about £69 a week — and it ties up £180 of stock plus a deposit for a month, and the last third of the keg is quality-marginal by the time it pours.
Line B might still deserve its tap — a craft line pulls a crowd who then drink other things, and range matters. But you should be making that decision knowing it costs you about £160 a week against the alternative, not because the GP percentage looked respectable on a spreadsheet.
Working this out by hand across ten lines every week is exactly the kind of job that quietly stops happening after a fortnight. StockTap calculates cost per pint, GP% and cash GP per line automatically from your own buy prices and pour prices — so the ranking is there every week without you rebuilding a spreadsheet. Free to start; Pro is £19/month, Premium £39/month. See how StockTap works →
How long does a keg last once it’s tapped?
Longer than most people fear, shorter than most people assume.
A pasteurised keg lager under gas, on clean lines, at cellar temperature, will hold quality for several weeks. Unpasteurised and craft keg lines are less forgiving. Cask is a different animal entirely — three to five days once vented, and that’s being generous.
My working rule: if a keg line doesn’t empty within about three weeks of tapping, it’s a problem line. Not necessarily because the beer has gone off, but because it’s telling you the rate of sale doesn’t justify a 50L format. The fix is usually to move that line to a 30L keg if the brand offers one. You’ll pay slightly more per pint, and you’ll get fresher beer, less ullage and a lot less cash sitting in the cellar. That trade is almost always worth it on a line selling under half a keg a week.
How many kegs should you actually hold?
Par levels for kegs are simpler than people make them:
Par = (pints sold per week ÷ saleable pints per keg) × weeks between deliveries, rounded up, +1 on your top two lines.
So a line selling 170 pints a week on 84-pint kegs, delivered weekly, is roughly two kegs a week — hold three, so a big weekend never runs you dry mid-service. A line selling 30 pints a week is holding one keg and shouldn’t be holding two, no matter what the multi-buy deal looks like.
The deal-driven over-order is a genuine cash killer in tight months. A “buy four get one free” on a line that turns half a keg a week isn’t a discount, it’s ten weeks of your money parked in the cellar plus five deposits.
How to stocktake your kegs
Whichever beers you run, the money is made or lost on accurate counting — especially the part-used kegs, which is where nearly all keg-side variance actually hides.
- Sealed kegs: count them. That part’s easy, and it’s the part people get right.
- Part-used kegs: weigh them, or use a keg checker. Do not eyeball it and do not guess “about a third”. A third of a 50L keg is 28 pints — guess wrong by a quarter and you’ve mis-stated £50 of stock on one keg.
- The weight method: (current weight − empty weight) ÷ (full weight − empty weight) × gross pints. Use the tare stamped on the chime, not a number from a table.
- Cask: dipstick, every time, and allow properly for ullage.
- Same day, every time: record the readings and reconcile against the till the same day. A count you reconcile on Thursday for a Sunday close tells you almost nothing.
Full walkthroughs: our guide to measuring a part-used keg covers the weight and dipstick methods in detail, and the cask wastage guide covers the losses that are legitimate versus the ones that mean something’s wrong.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best-selling draught lager in the UK?
Birra Moretti is now the UK’s best-selling draught lager, having overtaken Carling. Guinness remains the best-selling draught beer overall by volume.
How much does a 50-litre keg cost in the UK in 2026?
On free trade, roughly £120–£140 ex VAT for mainstream lagers like Carling or Foster’s, £140–£175 for premium lagers such as Stella, Moretti or Peroni, and £170–£200+ for craft and speciality lines. Add a refundable deposit of £30–£65 and delivery of £10–£40. If you’re on a tied agreement, your price comes off your pubco’s list less your discount and will differ from these figures — use your own invoice.
How many pints are in a 50-litre keg?
88 pints gross. Around 83–85 are realistically saleable once you allow 3–5% for line cleaning, fobbing, drip trays and dregs. Use 84 as a working figure.
How do I calculate GP on a keg of beer?
Divide the ex-VAT keg price by your saleable pints to get cost per pint. Divide your menu price by 1.2 to get the net pour price. Then GP% = (net pour − cost per pint) ÷ net pour × 100. Forgetting the VAT step overstates your GP by roughly five points.
Which keg beer has the best GP?
It depends entirely on your buy price against your pour price, not on the brand — and even then, GP% is the wrong question. Rank your lines by cash GP per week: (net pour − cost per pint) × pints sold per week. A high-GP line that barely moves earns less than a mid-GP line that turns.
How much does a full 50L keg weigh?
Around 62–63kg full and 12–13kg empty, though empty weights vary by manufacturer. Always use the tare weight stamped on the keg chime for stocktaking rather than a generic figure.
Why do I pay more for kegs than the prices quoted online?
Almost certainly because you’re tied. Published keg prices reflect free-trade wholesale. A tied agreement buys from the pubco’s list, less your negotiated discount, and typically sits above free-trade rates — with rent and support arrangements bundled in on the other side of the ledger. Calculate GP from your invoices, never from a published price list.
How do I measure how much is left in a part-used keg?
Weigh it or use a keg checker. (current weight − tare) ÷ (full − tare) × gross pints gives you the remaining pints. See our guide to measuring a part-used keg for the full method.
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