Beer and Cellar Hygiene Rating: Cask Marque is taking cellar stars to drinkers in 2027. What it checks and what it's worth

The Beer and Cellar Hygiene Rating is Cask Marque's one-to-five star score for a pub's cellar, and from early 2027 it's going in front of customers. On 4 November 2026 Cask Marque said it will run a consumer campaign telling drinkers to check a pub's rating online before they visit, CAMRA is adding the ratings to its pub search, and the stars go on a sticker in the window. About 7,000 pubs have four or five stars today. The target is 30,000 by the end of the decade.

So this is the food hygiene sticker, but for the cellar. Nobody has to get one. Nobody has to display one. But once drinkers are told to look for it, a pub without stars on the door starts to look like a pub with something to hide, and that's the bit worth getting ahead of. Here's what the rating checks, where pubs fail, what it costs, and what a better cellar is worth on the stocktake.

What was announced

The Morning Advertiser reported the plan on 4 November. The campaign starts in early 2027 and points drinkers to the Beer & Cellar Hygiene Rating Pub Directory, plus the star ratings displayed outside pubs. CAMRA is also putting the ratings on its own pub search site. Cask Marque's director Paul Nunny said the trial of its Perfect Pint Promise scheme found almost half of pints served in UK pubs fail to meet basic standards, and that drinkers who get a bad one switch brand or switch pub.

He also put a number on the money side: Cask Marque's analysis says better cellar practice lifts beer yields by 10%. Its own audit page says 8% on yield and 2% on sales. I'd use the lower one, and I'd treat even that as a best case until you've measured your own, which I'll come to.

What the rating actually checks

The audit used to be called Scores on the Cellar Doors. It's an 11-point check running from the cellar to the glass: stock rotation, line cleanliness, equipment maintenance, glasswashing and general hygiene among them. You get one to five stars, and four or five is the pass everyone's aiming for.

Cask Marque named the four places pubs most often fall short:

Where pubs lose stars, per Cask Marque (4 November 2026), and the fix

Where pubs fall short	What good looks like	What it costs to fix
Cellar temperature	11 to 13 degrees, the Cask Marque cellar standard, held there all year	A thermometer and a daily log. A service call if the cooler can't hold it
Glassware condition and cleanliness	No chips, no lipstick, no film. Glasses that hold a head	Binning chipped glasses, which you should be doing anyway
Line and coupler cleanliness	Lines cleaned at least every seven days, couplers cleaned when kegs change	Cleaner and the beer you pull through, about 20 pints a week in an average pub
Glasswasher cleanliness	Strip-down and clean, right detergent and rinse aid, right temperature	Twenty minutes at close

Look at that list again. There's nothing on it you'd need a builder for. Every one is a habit, and every one is checkable on the day. That's good news if your cellar's tidy and bad news if it's tidy most weeks.

What it costs, and whether it's worth it

If you're Cask Marque accredited, the hygiene audit comes with your annual visit at no extra charge. If you're not, Cask Marque's page prices a standalone audit at £65 plus VAT, which includes one-to-one training on the visit, an action plan, the rating on its CaskFinder app and a window sticker if you get four or five stars.

£65 is about 27 pints of gross profit at £2.45 a pint, once, and VAT-registered pubs get the VAT back. The real question is the yield claim, because that's where the money is if it's true.

What a yield gap costs a pub selling 800 draught pints a week (my arithmetic)

Beer lost before the till	Pints bought to sell 800	Pints lost a week	Cost a week, at about £2 a pint	Cost a year
2%	816	16	£32	£1,660
5%	842	42	£84	£4,370
8% (Cask Marque's audit page figure)	870	70	£140	£7,280

The £2 is roughly what a £5.34 pint costs you once the VAT's off and you've kept £2.45 of gross profit. If even the 2% row is your pub, a £65 audit pays for itself in a fortnight. If you're already tight, it's a sticker for the window and not much else, and that's fine too.

For comparison, Cask Marque's own figures say 71% of pubs audited in the year to September 2026 got five stars first time and 79% got four or five. After Cask Marque's help that went to 86% and 95%. So most pubs pass. The campaign is aimed at the ones that won't, and at getting drinkers to notice the difference.

My take

I don't love another rating. Pubs already get scored on food hygiene, reviews and every app going. But I'd rather be measured on the cellar than on a one-star review from someone who didn't like the music, and the four failure points are things any licensee can fix this week for the cost of a thermometer and some discipline.

The bit nobody's saying out loud is the timing. The consumer campaign starts in early 2027. The pubs that get their audit done in January, while it's quiet, will have five stars on the door by the time drinkers are told to look. The ones that wait will be getting audited in the spring with customers already checking the app.

And one thing to be clear on: this isn't the law. The food hygiene sticker is compulsory to display in Wales and Northern Ireland and voluntary in England. This scheme is voluntary everywhere. Nobody can shut you for not having one. It's a trade scheme with a marketing push behind it, and it's only as strong as the number of drinkers who use it.

Two things to do before the audit

Put the evidence on the cellar door. A line-cleaning log and a temperature log, dated and initialled, pinned up where the auditor walks in. It costs nothing, it shows the habit rather than asking anyone to take your word for it, and it's the same paperwork a stocktaker or a pubco BDM is pleased to see. My temperature log guide has a format, and beer line cleaning has the step-by-step for the lines.

Measure your own yield first. Before you believe anyone's 8% or 10%, work out what you get now. Take one keg line for a month: pints rung through the till against kegs used. A 50-litre keg is 88 pints on paper, and the gap between that and what you sell is your number. If it's three or four pints a keg, you've got very little to gain. If it's ten, the audit and the cleaning routine are the cheapest money you'll find this year. How many pints in a keg and what draught wastage is normal have the sums, and the waste you log on line-cleaning day keeps the number honest.

Common questions

What is the Beer and Cellar Hygiene Rating?

A one-to-five star rating from Cask Marque based on an 11-point audit of a pub's cellar and dispense, covering things like stock rotation, line cleanliness, equipment maintenance and glasswashing. Four or five stars is the standard pubs aim for, and those pubs can display a window sticker.

Is the Beer and Cellar Hygiene Rating a legal requirement?

No. It's a voluntary trade scheme run by Cask Marque. Unlike the food hygiene rating, which must be displayed in Wales and Northern Ireland, nobody has to have or display a cellar rating.

How much does a Beer and Cellar Hygiene audit cost?

It's included in the annual visit for Cask Marque accredited pubs. A standalone audit is £65 plus VAT on Cask Marque's published price, including training on the day and an action plan.

Where do pubs usually fail the cellar hygiene audit?

Cask Marque named four areas in November 2026: cellar temperature, glassware condition and cleanliness, line and coupler cleanliness, and glasswasher cleanliness.

When does the consumer campaign start?

Early 2027, according to the Morning Advertiser's report of 4 November 2026. It will encourage drinkers to check a pub's rating online before visiting, and CAMRA is adding ratings to its pub search.