From 1 February 2026 draught beer carries £19.45 of duty for every litre of pure alcohol, which works out at 49.7p on a 4.5% pint. That is up 1.8p on the year. A 50-litre keg of the same beer carries £43.76 of duty, a 70cl bottle of 40% spirit carries £9.52, and a 75cl bottle of 12.5% wine carries £2.87. The Treasury talks in pence per pint. Your invoices arrive in kegs, cases and bottles, so here are the sums done at the size you actually buy.
I run a pub in Washington, Tyne and Wear. Every February the duty rates move, the trade press argues about whether it was a cut or a rise, and my wholesale price list arrives a couple of weeks later with the answer already baked in. What I have never found anywhere is a page that just shows the duty on a keg or a bottle at the strengths pubs really sell. So I built one. Every rate below is from the HMRC rate tables, and the arithmetic is mine, so you can check it.
The 2026 rates, side by side with 2025
Since August 2023 every drink is taxed the same way: a rate per litre of pure alcohol, set by strength band. Draught beer and cider under 8.5% sold from 20-litre-plus containers get a lower rate, called draught relief. Everything else pays the full rate. On 1 February 2026 every rate went up 3.66%, the RPI figure the government uses for uprating.
| Product and strength | Feb 2025 | Feb 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Draught beer, cider, wine, spirits 3.5% to 8.4% | £18.76 | £19.45 |
| Draught still cider 3.5% to 8.4% | £8.63 | £8.95 |
| Draught anything 1.3% to 3.4% | £8.28 | £8.58 |
| Packaged beer 3.5% to 8.4% | £21.78 | £22.58 |
| Packaged still cider 3.5% to 8.4% | £10.02 | £10.39 |
| Packaged wine, spirits, RTDs 3.5% to 8.4% | £25.67 | £26.61 |
| Anything 1.3% to 3.4%, packaged | £9.61 | £9.96 |
| Anything 8.5% to 22% (most wine, fortified) | £29.54 | £30.62 |
| Anything over 22% (spirits) | £32.79 | £33.99 |
Two things jump out of that table before you do any sums. Draught beer is taxed 13.9% lighter than the same beer in a bottle. And the step from 3.4% to 3.5% is a cliff: the draught rate more than doubles, from £8.58 to £19.45. That cliff is why so many new session lagers sit at exactly 3.4%.
Duty per pint at the strengths you sell
The sum is always the same. Serve size in litres, times the ABV, gives litres of pure alcohol. Times the rate gives the duty. A pint is 0.568 litres.
| Pint at | Duty Feb 2025 | Duty Feb 2026 | Rise |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.4% session beer | 16.0p | 16.6p | +0.6p |
| 3.8% cask bitter | 40.5p | 42.0p | +1.5p |
| 4.0% lager | 42.6p | 44.2p | +1.6p |
| 4.5% premium lager | 48.0p | 49.7p | +1.8p |
| 5.0% world lager | 53.3p | 55.2p | +2.0p |
| 4.5% from bottles or cans | 55.7p | 57.7p | +2.0p |
So the "1p or 2p a pint" you read about is right, as far as it goes. It just isn't the number that lands on your bar. Two more things sit on top of it. The brewer's own price move arrives in the same letter, and VAT is charged on the selling price with the duty inside it. On a 4.5% pint that's 49.7p of duty and then another 10p of VAT charged on that duty. A tax on a tax, and the customer pays both.
If you want to see where that pint price ends up once wholesale, VAT and margin are added, I broke a full pint down in the average price of a pint guide.
Duty per keg, cask and bottle
This is the table I wanted and couldn't find. Same method, at the container sizes on the invoice.
| Container | Pure alcohol | Duty 2026 | Rise on 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50L keg, 4.0% lager | 2.00 L | £38.90 | +£1.38 |
| 50L keg, 4.5% lager | 2.25 L | £43.76 | +£1.55 |
| 50L keg, 5.0% lager | 2.50 L | £48.62 | +£1.72 |
| 30L keg, 4.5% | 1.35 L | £26.26 | +£0.93 |
| Firkin (40.9L), 3.8% bitter | 1.55 L | £30.23 | +£1.07 |
| Firkin (40.9L), 4.2% ale | 1.72 L | £33.41 | +£1.19 |
| Case of 24 x 330ml bottles, 5.0% | 0.40 L | £8.94 | +£0.32 |
| 70cl spirit, 40% | 0.28 L | £9.52 | +£0.34 |
| 70cl vodka, 37.5% | 0.26 L | £8.92 | +£0.32 |
| 1L spirit, 40% | 0.40 L | £13.60 | +£0.48 |
| 75cl wine, 12.5% | 0.09 L | £2.87 | +£0.10 |
| 75cl wine, 13.5% | 0.10 L | £3.10 | +£0.11 |
And per serve, because that's how you price: a 25ml measure of 40% spirit carries 34p of duty, a 35ml measure 47.6p, a 175ml glass of 12.5% wine 67p. A double is 68p before the mixer has even been opened.
What the rise costs a pub over a year
The headline rise is small per unit. It's the volume that turns it into a number. Take a wet-led pub getting through five 50-litre kegs a week at 4.5%, twenty 70cl bottles of spirits and thirty bottles of wine. Nothing exotic.
Kegs: 260 a year, £1.55 more each, £403. Spirits: 1,040 bottles, 34p more each, £354. Wine: 1,560 bottles, 10p more each, £156. That's about £913 a year of extra duty, before the brewer's price rise, before the wage rise, before the rates bill. On its own it's a week's wage for one part-timer. Stack it with the rates changes and the April wage rise and it stops looking small. Swap in your own weekly volumes and the table above does the rest.
Every pint you waste, you paid duty on
Here's the bit that connects this to stocktaking, and it's the reason I care about duty tables at all.
Duty is paid on the beer that leaves the brewery, not the beer that goes through the till. So the froth down the drip tray, the pull-through after a line clean, the half-pint at the bottom of the cask that never pours: all of it carried duty, and you paid it. A 50-litre keg of 4.5% lager that goes off, gets tipped or vanishes on the stocktake took £43.76 of duty with it. On top of the beer itself, on top of the VAT you fronted. Lose 3% of your draught to waste and on that 260-keg pub that's about £340 a year of duty alone paid on beer nobody bought.
You can't do anything about the rate. You can do plenty about the 3%. That starts with knowing what it actually is, which means calibrated kegs and casks and a count that separates line cleaning from leaks. My stock loss diagnosis guide covers how to tell them apart from the numbers. On draught, the GP% calculation guide shows why a keg of 88 pints is really about 84 sellable ones once head and waste come off, and that gap carries duty too.
The bit worth remembering
Duty moves every February, in line with RPI unless a Budget says otherwise, so the 2026 figures above will step up again on 1 February 2027. The strength bands don't move. If you're choosing between a 3.4% and a 3.6% session beer, that 22p of duty a pint is real money at volume. If you're choosing between draught and packaged for a line that sells the same either way, draught is 8p a pint cheaper in duty before you look at anything else. And whatever you buy, you only get the duty back on the bit you sell. Count it.
Common questions
How much alcohol duty is in a pint of beer in 2026?
On draught beer between 3.5% and 8.4% ABV the rate from 1 February 2026 is £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol. A 568ml pint at 4.0% carries 44.2p of duty, at 4.5% it is 49.7p, and at 5.0% it is 55.2p. The same beer in a bottle or can pays the non-draught rate of £22.58, so a 4.5% pint's worth in packaged form carries 57.7p.
How much did alcohol duty go up on 1 February 2026?
Every rate rose by 3.66%, in line with RPI inflation. Draught beer went from £18.76 to £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol, non-draught beer from £21.78 to £22.58, and spirits above 22% from £32.79 to £33.99. On a 4.5% pint that is about 1.8p more duty; on a 70cl bottle of 40% spirit it is about 34p more.
How much duty is on a 50-litre keg?
Multiply the litres by the ABV to get litres of pure alcohol, then by the rate. A 50-litre keg at 4.5% holds 2.25 litres of pure alcohol, so the duty is 2.25 times £19.45, which is £43.76. At 4.0% it is £38.90 and at 5.0% it is £48.62. A 30-litre keg at 4.5% carries £26.26.
What is draught relief and how much is it worth?
Draught relief is a lower duty rate for beer and cider under 8.5% ABV sold from containers of 20 litres or more through a pump system. Since February 2025 the draught rate has been 13.9% below the packaged rate. At 4.5% ABV that is worth about 8p a pint compared with the same beer in bottles.
Do I pay VAT on alcohol duty?
Yes. Duty is inside the wholesale price you pay the brewer or wholesaler, and VAT is charged on the whole price including the duty. You reclaim that input VAT if you are VAT registered, but your customer pays 20% VAT on the selling price, which includes the duty. On a 4.5% pint that is roughly 10p of VAT charged on top of 50p of duty.
Sources
- HMRC, Alcohol Duty rates — rates in force from 1 February 2026, all strength bands, draught and non-draught.
- HM Treasury / HMRC, Alcohol duty uprating (policy paper) — rates in force from 1 February 2025, draught relief at 13.9%, the 1p-a-pint draught cut.
- House of Commons Library, Alcohol duty: current policy and developments (CBP-9765) — the August 2023 strength-based system, draught relief conditions (under 8.5% ABV, 20-litre-plus containers), February 2026 RPI uprating.
- Morning Advertiser, 16 December 2025 — the 3.66% RPI uplift from 1 February 2026.
- Per-pint, per-container and per-serve duty figures are the author’s arithmetic from the HMRC rates: volume in litres × ABV × rate per litre of pure alcohol, rounded to the nearest penny. The annual example uses illustrative volumes, not the author’s own pub.