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Draft Beer / Keg Cost Calculator
Pours per keg, cost per pour, pour cost percentage. Run the numbers on every tap before the menu price gets set. Healthy draft pour cost is 18–22% (Toast, BinWise). Most bars run 5+ points higher than they think — usually because nobody measured the glass.
Why this matters
Draft is the cleanest margin on the bar. When you run it right.
I started behind the bar at Cosmos Taverna in California and worked my way up to GM over five years. The draft program ran the full range — busy, slow, profitable, leaking, every kind of leaking. A 1/2 BBL of domestic at $130 sells for $819 at $7 a pint. That is the kind of margin that pays rent twice over. If you actually capture every ounce. Most bars do not.
The leaks are everywhere and almost none of them are theft. Foam waste is 8% on a healthy system, 15% on a dirty one (BevSpot). Bartenders pour 17.5 oz in a 16 oz glass without thinking about it. Biweekly line cleaning pulls 8 to 16 ounces per tap. Comp pours. Employee samples. "The keg kicked but I think there is half a pour left." By empty, the operator who thought they sold 124 pints actually sold 105 and gave away 19. Nobody is stealing. The bar program just bleeds.
Pour cost is what you charge for the liquid. Pour discipline is whether you keep what you charged. The first is on the menu. The second is on the floor.
I poured 1.7 oz when I started. I called it 1.5. The number didn't catch me — the senior bartender did. That is the mechanism almost every new hire goes through, and the fix is not a stern conversation. It is a jigger and a lined pint glass. Pour spouts and lined glassware fixed it for the well at Cosmos in two weeks. I have never had to "talk to the team about pour size" since.
The calculator does not lie about waste. Tell it 5% when your real number is 11% and your pour cost reads five points too low — and you will spend a year wondering why a profitable-on-paper bar can't make rent. Run the actual audit: weigh kegs in and out for 30 days. Most operators discover their waste is double what they assumed. That is not a bartender problem. It is not a distributor problem. It is a system problem. Cleaner lines, calibrated CO2, lined glassware, frosted glasses. Two weekends of work, pays for itself in a month, and the team stops getting blamed for what was never their fault.
Pour cost benchmarks by beer category
Pour cost varies by beer category. Domestic lagers run leanest because keg cost is low and menu price still commands $5–7. Specialty IPAs, imports, and seasonals run higher because keg cost climbs faster than customers will pay. Use these as starting targets, not hard rules.
Real scenarios
Three operators, three different draft cost stories
Same calculator, three different leaks. The fix depends on which one you actually have.
The 17.5oz pint that nobody knew was 17.5oz
Neighborhood bar, 14 taps, pour cost running 26% on what should have been 21% (Toast). Owner blamed the distributor.
Pulled three random pints with a graduated cylinder mid-shift. All three measured 17.5–18 oz in a "16 oz" glass. The bar had switched glassware six months earlier and the new glass had a wider lip. The bartenders were trained to fill to the rim of the old shaker. They had been pouring 12% over on every tap for half a year and nobody had measured.
Lined pint glasses with a fill mark at 16 oz. Two shifts of recalibration. Single laminated card at the well: "fill to the line, foam above."
Pour cost dropped from 26% to 20% in three weeks. Roughly $1,800/month back on draft alone. No menu change. No vendor switch. The bartenders were not the problem — the glass was. I have caused this exact mistake myself, on the well, in my first month.
The hazy IPA the owner refused to reprice
Taproom with a rotating IPA program. Distributor moved a flagship hazy 18% on the keg price. Owner held menu price at $7 to "keep regulars happy."
Pour cost on that tap moved 22% to 28% (over the high end of the IPA band per BinWise). Nine kegs a week. Roughly $54 of contribution per keg left on the floor. The "regulars happy" framing cost about $25K/year on one tap.
Menu price $7 to $8. Repositioned under a "limited release" header tied to seasonal scarcity. Staff training: "this one is the small-batch hazy, eight bucks."
Volume held flat. Pour cost back to 22%. The reframe did the work the price hike could not. Distributor increases need a menu response. Absorbing them is just slower bleeding with a smile.
The waste audit the bartenders had been waiting for
Sports bar, 24 taps, target pour cost 24%, tracking 28%. Variance reports blamed the bartenders every month for two years.
Real waste audit: weigh every keg at change-out for four weeks. Average waste was 11%, not the assumed 5%. Lines were dirty (CO2 cranked up to compensate, classic). Glasses came out of the under-counter washer warm. Three taps had bad seals nobody had pulled.
Nitrogen-blended CO2 at proper PSI per beer style. Pour technique retrained: 45-degree angle, straighten at 2/3 full. Replaced three tap seals. Glass-frosting unit installed.
Real waste dropped 11% to 6% in 30 days. Pour cost fell to 23%. Two years of accusing bartenders of theft, and the leak was a glass washer running too hot. The variance flagged the gap. It did not flag which kind of wrong it was.
FAQ
Common questions
01 What is pour cost?
Cost of the liquid divided by the menu price. Cost per pour ÷ menu price × 100. For draft beer, healthy is 18–22% (Toast, BinWise). Below that, you can raise prices. Above it, something is leaking — over-pour, foam waste, dirty lines, or a menu that has not caught up to the distributor.
02 How do I calculate it on draft?
Three steps. Usable oz = keg size × (1 − waste %). Pours per keg = usable oz ÷ pour size. Cost per pour = keg price ÷ pours per keg. Then cost per pour ÷ menu price = pour cost %. Most operators skip the waste step and undercount real cost by 5–10 points.
03 What is a healthy draft pour cost?
18–22% for draft (Toast, BinWise, BevSpot). Domestic lagers lean (18–20%), craft ales mid (20–25%), imports and IPAs higher (22–28%). Above 28% means oversize pours, foam, theft, or a menu price that has not kept up.
04 What sizes do kegs come in?
Four common. 1/2 BBL is 1,984 oz, the standard bar keg. 1/6 BBL ("sixtel") is 661 oz, common for craft rotators. 1/4 BBL ("pony") is 992 oz. Cornelius is 640 oz, 5-gallon homebrew style. A 1/2 BBL gets you about 124 sixteen-ounce pints at 0% waste, 117 at 5%.
05 What is a Sankey coupler?
The fitting that connects keg to draft system. Sankey D is the US standard for domestic and most craft. European imports use S, U, A, G, or M depending on country. Wrong coupler, no pour. The math here is the same regardless — only volume matters.
06 How much does foam actually cost?
More than operators think. Industry default is 5% waste. Real-world numbers on unmaintained systems run 8–15%. CO2 too high, dirty lines, warm glassware, or a tap pulled wrong all add foam. A 1% waste drop on a 1/2 BBL kicked weekly is roughly 1.2 extra pints sold. Across 12 taps that is real money on a Tuesday.
07 Does line cleaning count as waste?
Yes. Biweekly cleaning pulls 8–16 oz off each tap. Across 12 taps that is 100+ oz of cost-of-doing-business you cannot sell. Bake it into your waste percentage. If you skip cleaning, the off-flavor problem and the foam erosion cost more than the saved pints.
08 What if pour size drifts?
Cost per pour scales linearly. 16 oz pint costs twice what an 8 oz costs. Pour cost % stays flat as long as menu price scales the same way. The trap is bartenders pouring 18 oz in a 16 oz glass: cost goes up 12.5%, menu price stays flat, pour cost % jumps the same. Lined glassware fixes this in one shift. I know because I caused it the first month I was on the bar.
09 Cost per oz vs cost per pour — which do I use?
Cost per oz is raw input (keg price ÷ usable oz). Use it for cocktail recipe costing where everything is in ounces. Cost per pour is keg price ÷ pours per keg, accounting for waste and pour size. That is the operational number for draft.
10 Does this calculator save my data?
No. Nothing is stored, transmitted, or tracked. Math runs in your browser and disappears the moment you close the tab. No signup, no email, no account.
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