Cellar gas is 3p a pint until something goes wrong. The 2026 prices, and what a gas fault does to your stocktake

There's about 3p of gas in every pint you pull. A 6.35kg CO2 cylinder refills at £39.38 and pushes around 1,200 pints, and nobody counts it, which is roughly right. But when gas goes wrong it stops costing 3p a pint and starts costing the full £4.89, because the waste comes out of the beer, not the cylinder. Here's what cellar gas costs in 2026, the pints-per-cylinder arithmetic, and how a gas fault turns up in your stocktake looking like stock loss.

The suppliers will sell you cylinders and the brewers will talk to you about beer quality. Nobody connects the gas to the stocktake result, and that's the connection that costs money, because a gas fault doesn't announce itself. It hides in your variance and lets you go looking for pouring problems that aren't there.

What gas runs what

Three gases cover a British bar. Pure CO2 runs carbonated lagers, ciders and the postmix for soft drinks. 30/70, which is 30% CO2 and 70% nitrogen, runs stout and bitter, the nitrogen is what makes the head creamy. 60/40, the other mix, runs craft lagers and pale ales. You can push standard lager on 60/40 and some do, but it drifts the taste over time.

The rule that matters is boring: every beer on the gas its brewer specifies. The wrong gas doesn't just change the taste, it causes dispense trouble, and dispense trouble is beer in the drip tray.

What cellar gas costs in 2026

Refill prices below are from Adams Gas's bottled gas arm, checked 8 September 2026. The cylinder deposit is on top and refundable when the bottle goes back. Your local supplier will differ a bit, and some charge monthly cylinder rent instead of a deposit, which adds up on a slow-moving cylinder, so ask which model you're on before you sign.

Cellar gas refill prices at a national supplier, checked 8 September 2026. Deposit extra and refundable.

Gas	Cylinder	Refill	Typically runs
CO2	6.35kg	£39.38	Lager, cider, postmix
CO2	15kg	£89.80	Same gas, bigger cellars
60/40 mix	10L	£39.25	Craft lager, pale ale
60/40 mix	20L	£63.62	Craft lager, pale ale
30/70 mix	20L	£54.52	Stout, bitter

The pints arithmetic

Adams Gas puts a 6.35kg CO2 cylinder at around 1,200 pints when everything is running right, which is a touch over thirteen 11-gallon kegs, or 5.26 grams of gas per pint. At £39.38 a refill that's 3.3p of gas in every pint. The 15kg cylinder works out at 3.2p, call it the same. Set that against the £4.89 an average lager pint sells for and gas is the cheapest thing in the glass by a distance, a fifteenth of the roughly 50p of duty in it alone.

Which is why gas is the wrong place to economise and exactly the right place to pay attention. Adams' stockholding rule is worth keeping: hold one and a half to two times what you go through in a week, because most beers won't dispense at all without it. A cylinder is £40. A Friday night with the lager tap dead is not.

Where gas actually costs you money

Not the cylinder. Four ways, and every one of them is dearer than the refill.

Wrong pressure fobs beer. Too much or too little gas pressure and beer comes through as froth, gets pulled through until it settles, and the tray takes the difference. A fault that wastes a couple of pints a session is 14 pints a week, £68 at average lager prices, past £3,500 a year. My arithmetic, and deliberately a mild case. On a 1,500-pint week, 14 pints is close to 1% of your volume, which is most of an acceptable variance band gone on dispense before anyone has poured a single drink wrong.

Flat pints come back. Wrong gas on the wrong beer, or a cylinder that quietly emptied mid-shift, and you're replacing pints on goodwill. Every replacement is stock out with no sale against it, which is exactly the shape a stocktake flags as loss.

Running out closes taps. Covered by the stockholding rule above, and cheap to prevent. The cost of not preventing it isn't the gas, it's every pint the dead tap would have sold.

Leaks. If your gas usage jumps, or you keep running short, Adams' guide says what I'd say: leak or wrong pressure, get a qualified cellar technician in. The gas a leak wastes is pennies. The dispense faults that ride along with it are not. And CO2 pooling in a badly ventilated cellar is a safety job before it's a money one: monitor on the wall, cylinders upright and chained, trained hands only on the changeover.

What your stocktake sees

A stocktake can't see gas. What it sees is the fingerprint. Draught yields down across several lines while spirits and bottled stock sit normal is dispense-side, gas or lines or cooling, not pouring habits. It's the same diagnosis logic as working out whether loss is pouring, waste or measuring error, and it matters because the fix for a gas fault is a technician, not a quiet word with whoever closed on Saturday.

The discipline that keeps the number clean is the same one as line cleaning: waste logged as waste, when it happens. The pints fobbed at a keg change, the tray poured away after a pressure problem, the flat ones replaced on the house. Logged, they're a costed problem with a date on it and the technician's visit pays for itself on paper. Unlogged, they surface in your variance weeks later as unexplained loss, and unexplained loss starts arguments.

In StockTap that's the waste log plus a spot check on the suspect lines between full counts, and a keg you've calibrated and dipped before and after a busy session tells you in a day what a monthly count takes a month to show. One honest limit: StockTap has no gas module. You can put cylinders in the product library with a cost against them if you want them valued at stocktake, but the job that pays is logging the beer the gas wastes, not counting the cylinders it comes in.

And no, the duty doesn't come back. The ullage rules are narrow supplier-credit territory for specific spoilt-container cases. The drip tray is never in scope.

Common questions

How much does cellar gas cost a pub in 2026?

Refill prices at a national supplier, checked 8 September 2026: 6.35kg of CO2 at £39.38, 15kg at £89.80, 60/40 mixed gas at £39.25 for a 10L cylinder and £63.62 for the 20L, 30/70 mixed gas at £54.52 for the 20L. Cylinder deposits are on top and refundable, and some suppliers charge monthly rent instead of a deposit. On an efficient system it works out near 3p of gas per pint.

How many pints does a CO2 cylinder pour?

Around 1,200 pints from a 6.35kg cylinder on an efficient system, which is a touch over thirteen 11-gallon kegs, or about 5.26 grams of gas per pint, per Adams Gas. Line length, cellar temperature and the condition of your dispense equipment all pull that number down.

Which cellar gas runs which beer?

Pure CO2 runs carbonated lagers, ciders and postmix soft drinks. 30/70, which is 30% CO2 and 70% nitrogen, runs stout and bitter. 60/40 runs craft lagers and pale ales. Every beer should be on the gas its brewer specifies, because the wrong gas causes taste and dispense problems that waste beer.

Why is my pub using so much cellar gas?

Gas usage jumping, or repeatedly running short, usually means a leak somewhere in the dispense system or incorrect pressure. Get a qualified cellar technician to find it. The same fault tends to show in the stocktake as draught yield down across several lines while spirits and bottled stock sit normal.

Can I claim duty back on beer a gas fault wasted?

No. Beer fobbed into the drip tray or poured away after a dispense fault is never claimable. The ullage rules are narrow supplier-credit territory for specific spoilt-container cases, and dispense waste is not one of them. Roughly 50p of duty in every wasted pint stays gone.