Taproom stock control: the pub discipline your brewery software doesn't do

SIBA's 2026 Independent Beer Report says 46% of independent breweries now run a taproom, and 30% of independent beer is sold direct to the person drinking it. That direct margin is what's keeping a lot of breweries alive: closures ran at nearly three a week through 2025 and the UK started 2026 with 1,578 independent breweries, 137 fewer than a year before. So it's strange that the taproom bar, the highest-margin till most breweries own, is often the least counted bar in the building. All the counting energy goes on the brewhouse, because that's where the software points.

This guide is about the other half. Not grain, gyles and duty returns, your production system does that. The taproom is a pub, and it leaks the way pubs leak.

Your brewery software and your bar are different animals

Production platforms like Breww are built to track beer from raw materials through fermentation to packaged stock and the duty return, and they're good at it. What they are not is a bar stock system. Pints over the counter, GP% by product, part-bottle spirits on the back bar, the guest lines you bought in, spot checks against the till: that's retail stock control, and it needs the same discipline as any pub, which is a counting habit, honest yields and a wastage log. If you run the taproom "inside" the production numbers, the bar's losses hide inside brewing variances and nobody ever sees them separately.

The handover is where beer goes missing

The riskiest ten metres in the building is the trip from cold store to taproom cellar. In a pub, stock arrives on a dray with a delivery note and a signature. In a taproom, it arrives on a sack truck pushed by whoever was free, and half the time nothing gets written down, because it's all your beer anyway.

Treat the transfer exactly like a delivery. A quantity, a date, a record in both systems: out of brewery stock, into bar stock. The moment kegs can wander over with no paper trail, both numbers are fiction, the brewery's stock says beer exists that's already been drunk, and the taproom's GP is built on stock it never officially received. Every unexplained taproom result I'd investigate starts with the transfer record, the same way a pub starts with the delivery paperwork.

What does your own beer cost? Pick a number and defend it

Guest stock has an invoice, so its cost price is easy. Your own beer needs a decision. If you put it into the bar system at raw-material cost, the taproom's GP looks miraculous and the brewery side quietly eats the packaging, the duty and the labour. Most honest is a full production cost per container, ingredients, packaging, duty and a fair share of overhead, set once per beer style and reviewed when input prices move.

The exact figure matters less than the consistency. A taproom judged against a made-up cost price can't be judged at all, and at year end your accountant will want stock in the accounts at the lower of cost or net realisable value anyway, worked through in our year-end valuation guide. Whatever transfer price you pick, write it down and use it everywhere: bar system, management accounts, the price list you'd quote the trade.

Duty, in one plain paragraph

Beer duty falls due when beer passes its duty point, and beer poured in your own taproom is no exception, selling it to yourself doesn't make it duty free. The standard rate on draught beer between 3.5% and 8.4% ABV is £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol, roughly 50p on a 4.5% pint, with draught relief already knocking 13.9% off the non-draught rate for containers of 20 litres and up. If you produce under 4,500 hectolitres of pure alcohol a year, Small Producer Relief tapers that down further on a tiered scale. The rates and the SPR calculator method are on gov.uk, linked below, and your duty return is your production software's job. The taproom's job is simpler: make sure the duty you've already paid isn't going down the drain unrecorded.

The taproom's own leaks

A taproom has recording moments a normal pub doesn't, and each one needs a button or a line in the log, because anything unrecorded lands in your variance at full retail price.

• Flights and tasters. Third-pint flights and free tasters are real stock. Set flights up as products so the till knows a flight is three thirds, and log tasters like comps: the arithmetic is the same as pub comps, small cost, full-price hole if unrecorded.
• Growlers, crowlers and carry-outs. Fills sold by volume need their own till buttons mapped to the right volumes, or every fill reads as a couple of missing pints.
• Unfined and small-batch yield. Hazy and unfined beers leave more in the container. Judge those lines against their real sellable yield, not the label volume, or they'll read permanently short, the same trap as theoretical keg yields in a pub.
• Stock leaving for markets and events. SIBA found 33% of independent breweries sell through markets and events. Beer that leaves the taproom for a stall is a transfer out, with a record, or the weekend's market sales become the taproom's mystery loss.
• Staff pints. Brewery culture runs generous. Fine, your call, but put a zero-priced button on it so generosity and loss stay distinguishable.

A counting shape that fits around brewing

A full count of the taproom monthly, and a two-minute spot check weekly on your two busiest own-brew taps plus the spirits. Cask needs its own eye: SIBA's report has 58% of independent beer going into cask somewhere in the range, and a tapped cask is on Cask Marque's three-days-on-sale clock, so slow taproom weeks kill cask quietly; the cellar basics guide and the cask breather guide both apply to a taproom unchanged. If the taproom shares a building with the shop, count them as separate locations so a strong shop week can't hide a weak bar one.

Where StockTap fits, and where it doesn't

StockTap does not do production. No gyle tracking, no duty returns, no recipes, that's Breww's world and the two shouldn't be confused. What StockTap does is the bar half: the taproom's product library with real sizes and your chosen transfer prices, weighing for the back-bar spirits, tenths when you're busy, keg and cask yields, spot checks against the till, and a GP report per product so you can see whether the taproom is actually earning its 30% direct-sales reputation. It's £19 a month on the founding rate and the trial needs no card, so the cheap experiment is to run one honest month of taproom counts and see what the bar's really doing.

Common questions

Do I pay duty on beer sold in my own taproom?

Yes. Duty falls due when the beer passes its duty point; pouring it yourself in your own building doesn't avoid that. Rates, draught relief and Small Producer Relief are on gov.uk, and your duty return belongs in your production software, not your bar system. Talk to your accountant about your own setup, this page is a licensee's summary, not tax advice.

What cost price should my own beer carry at the bar?

A full production cost per container, ingredients, packaging, duty and a share of overhead, set per beer and kept consistent. Raw-material-only cost prices make the taproom look better than it is and hide problems inside flattering GP.

Can I just run the taproom inside my brewery software?

You can record some of it there, but production platforms aren't built for bar-level counting, part bottles, spot checks or per-product retail GP. The practical split most taprooms land on: production system to the cold store door, bar system from the door to the glass.

How often should a taproom count stock?

Monthly full counts, weekly spot checks on the busiest lines. If the taproom only opens weekends, count on the same weekday each week so the till period and the count period line up, the timing rules in our mistakes checklist apply to taprooms exactly.