Draught vs bottled beer in 2026: which makes a pub more money, priced brand by brand, and the weekly sales where a tap stops paying

Bought from the same free-trade wholesaler this morning, six of seven premium lagers cost more per pint of liquid in 330ml bottles than from a 50-litre keg, by between 6p and 36p. One, Birra Moretti, was 8p a pint cheaper in bottles. Most of the gap is duty: bottles pay 16% more per litre of alcohol than draught. But draught carries costs the invoice doesn't show, and on a line selling under about 20 pints a week, cleaning waste alone wipes out the cheaper keg for most of these brands.

Every pub has this conversation at some point. The slow lager tap, the rep pushing a new font, the bottle fridge doing better than anyone expected. Search for the answer and you get a Morning Advertiser piece from 2005 and American bar blogs that talk in ounces. So here it is with this year's duty rates and real prices.

Same beer, keg against bottle

All prices are Inn Express's published ex-VAT web prices, checked on 13 October 2026, for the same brand in a 50-litre keg and a case of 24 x 330ml bottles. A 50-litre keg is 88 pints. A pint is 1.72 bottles' worth of liquid.

Beer	50L keg	Per pint	24 x 330ml	Per bottle	Bottles, per pint of liquid	Bottles vs keg
Peroni Nastro Azzurro	£189.91	£2.16	£35.15	£1.46	£2.52	+36p
San Miguel	£151.21	£1.72	£28.72	£1.20	£2.06	+34p
Corona	£167.50	£1.90	£30.93	£1.29	£2.22	+32p
Asahi Super Dry	£189.44	£2.15	£32.56	£1.36	£2.34	+18p
Heineken	£187.59	£2.13	£30.66	£1.28	£2.20	+7p
Madri Excepcional	£198.53	£2.26	£32.33	£1.35	£2.32	+6p
Birra Moretti	£206.29	£2.34	£31.50	£1.31	£2.26	−8p

Per pint and per bottle figures are my arithmetic from the published prices. The keg column assumes every one of the 88 pints is sold, which never happens, and that's the point of the rest of this page. Peroni's keg is listed at 5.0% and its bottle at 5.1%; the others match.

Two things jump out. The gap is all over the place, from 36p down to minus 8p, so "draught is cheaper" is a rule of thumb, not a fact. And Moretti is cheaper per pint of liquid in bottles than in a keg from the same supplier, before a single pint has gone down the drain. If Moretti is your slow premium tap, that's a conversation worth having.

These are free-trade prices. If you're tied, your price list is your price list, and the gap between keg and bottle on it could be bigger or smaller. My tied vs free-trade prices guide shows how far apart the two can be.

Why bottles start behind: the duty

Since 1 February 2026, beer from 3.5% to 8.4% ABV pays £22.58 per litre of pure alcohol in bottles and cans. On draught, thanks to draught relief, it's £19.45. That's 16% more duty on every drop of alcohol that goes in a bottle.

5% lager	Duty
Pint on draught	about 55p
Pint's worth in 330ml bottles	about 64p
One 330ml bottle	about 37p

So about 9p of every pint's worth of bottled beer is the duty difference, and glass, labels, caps and cases add the rest. I've got the full rate table and per-keg sums in alcohol duty 2026 per pint, keg and bottle.

The duty bands can swing it hard. Carlsberg Pilsner is a good example: on the same price list the keg is 3.4% and the bottle is 3.8%. Under 3.5% on draught the rate drops to £8.58 per litre of alcohol, so the keg pint carries about 17p of duty against about 49p for a pint's worth of the bottles. The keg works out at £1.40 a pint and the bottles at £1.91 a pint of liquid. Different beer, strictly, but it shows how much the band matters.

What the keg price doesn't include

The invoice says 88 pints. The cellar disagrees. Every draught line costs you beer every week, whether it sells or not:

• Line cleaning. What sits in the python plus the pull-through to clear the cleaner. On a 10-metre run I work it out at about 3.25 pints a line every weekly clean, as set out in my line cleaning guide. Bottles lose nothing to this.
• Gas. About 3.3p a pint for CO2 on my cellar gas sums. Small, but it's on every pint.
• Fobbing, the end of the keg, a pint poured back. All real, all hard to put a fixed number on. My draught wastage guide covers what's normal.
• Kit and quality. The font, cooler and python usually belong to the brewer or pubco, but the quality risk on a slow line is yours. A tired pint handed back costs you two.

Bottles have their own costs: fridge space and the electric to run it, glass to recycle, the odd breakage and the date on the label. My best-before guide covers that last one. None of them is a fixed weekly loss in the way a line clean is.

The weekly sales where a tap stops paying

Here's the sum that matters for a slow line. Take the 3.25 pints lost per weekly clean, value them at the keg's cost per pint, and ask how many pints the line has to sell before the cheaper keg price has paid that back compared with selling the same beer in bottles. I've left gas and fobbing out, so these are the most generous numbers draught will ever get.

Beer	Cleaning loss a week, at cost	Keg saving per pint vs bottles	Line needs to sell at least
San Miguel	£5.59	34p	about 16 pints a week
Peroni Nastro Azzurro	£7.01	36p	about 19 pints a week
Corona	£6.19	32p	about 20 pints a week
Asahi Super Dry	£7.00	18p	about 38 pints a week
Heineken	£6.93	7p	about 102 pints a week
Madri Excepcional	£7.33	6p	about 116 pints a week
Birra Moretti	£7.62	none, bottles are cheaper	never wins on cost

My arithmetic: 3.25 pints a clean on a 10-metre run, weekly cleaning, Inn Express prices from the first table. Add gas and the Heineken and Madri figures roughly double. A longer run pushes every number up.

For the big-gap brands, draught wins easily on any line that's actually selling. For the brands where the keg and bottle are close, a line doing 50 pints a week is costing you money against a fridge of bottles, before you've counted a single fobbed pint. That lines up with the rule in my draught lines guide: a keg line under about 60 pints a week belongs on a review list.

Then there's what you charge

Cost per pint of liquid isn't the whole story, because nobody prices a bottle per millilitre. A customer pays per serve, and a 330ml bottle is 58% of a pint.

Take the Morning Advertiser's 2026 average for a premium lager pint, £5.94, which is £4.95 before VAT. Here's the cash each draught pint makes on these keg prices, the bottle price you'd need to make the same cash per serve, and what a bottle makes at £4.80, a price I've picked for illustration. Put your own in.

Beer	Cash per £5.94 pint	Bottle price for the same cash	Cash per bottle at £4.80
Birra Moretti	£2.61	£4.70	£2.69
Madri Excepcional	£2.69	£4.85	£2.65
Heineken	£2.82	£4.91	£2.72
Asahi Super Dry	£2.80	£4.98	£2.64
Peroni Nastro Azzurro	£2.79	£5.11	£2.54
Corona	£3.05	£5.20	£2.71
San Miguel	£3.23	£5.31	£2.80

My arithmetic, at 88 pints a keg with no waste, so the draught column is flattered. A bottle at around £4.70 to £5.30 makes the same cash per serve as a £5.94 pint of the same beer, out of a lot less beer. In GP% terms the bottle usually looks better too: a Heineken bottle at £4.80 is about 68% GP, the pint at £5.94 about 57% before any waste.

That doesn't mean rip the taps out. A customer who wants a pint wants a pint, and a bar with nothing on draught is a different kind of pub. It means the slow premium tap and the bottle fridge should be judged on the same sheet, with the waste in, rather than on gut feel.

My take

Keep draught for what sells by the pint. For anything ticking over on a tap at a few dozen pints a week, price it in bottles from your own supplier and run the line sum above. If the gap per pint is small, the bottle wins. If it's big, keep the tap and log the cleaning waste against it so the variance report stops blaming your team for the python.

Whichever way you go, your stocktake needs to know. Bottles are easy, they're counted as each. Kegs are where the money hides, which is why I weigh them rather than guess. StockTap counts kegs by weight against your keg sizes and bottles as each, logs cleaning waste against the product, and shows GP% by product, so the tap-versus-fridge decision is made on your own numbers rather than the rep's.

Common questions

Is draught or bottled beer more profitable for a pub?

Per pint of liquid, draught is usually cheaper to buy: on seven premium lagers priced at a free-trade wholesaler in October 2026, bottles cost between 6p and 36p more per pint of liquid on six of them, and one was 8p cheaper in bottles. But a bottle is usually priced higher per millilitre than a pint, has no line cleaning waste and no fobbing, so a bottle can match a pint's cash profit from much less beer. On a slow line, bottles often win.

Why is bottled beer dearer per pint than draught?

Partly duty. From 1 February 2026, beer between 3.5% and 8.4% ABV pays £22.58 per litre of pure alcohol in bottles and cans, against £19.45 on draught thanks to draught relief. That's 16% more duty per litre of alcohol in a bottle, about 9p more per pint's worth of a 5% lager. Packaging and glass add the rest.

How many pints a week does a draught line need to sell?

It depends on the price gap between the keg and the bottle of the same beer. With about 3.25 pints lost per weekly clean on a 10-metre run, a line where bottles are 30p a pint dearer needs only around 20 pints a week to beat bottles on cost. Where the gap is 6p or 7p, it needs over 100. Where bottles are cheaper per pint, the keg never wins on cost alone.

How much duty is in a pint of draught lager?

At the February 2026 rate of £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol, a pint of 5% draught lager carries about 55p of duty, and a 4.6% pint about 51p. The same 5% beer in 330ml bottles carries about 37p a bottle.