An 11-gallon keg holds 88 pints. A 50-litre keg is the same thing near enough, 88 pints. A 30-litre keg holds 52.8, a 20-litre keg or bag-in-box holds 35.2, and a firkin of cask holds 72. That's what's in the container. What you'll sell is less: about 84 to 86 pints from an 88-pint keg and somewhere in the mid-60s from a firkin, once the changeover and the sediment have had their share. Price on the second number, not the first.
Most pages that answer this are written for people buying a mini keg for a barbecue. That's fine for a party. Behind a bar the question is never really how many pints are in it. It's how many you can ring through the till, what each one cost you, and why your stocktaker's number doesn't match the one on the side of the keg. So here's the full table, then the bit that matters.
Every UK keg and cask size, in pints
A legal UK pint is 0.56826125 of a litre and a gallon is 4.54609 litres, so a gallon is exactly eight pints. Everything below is just litres divided by 0.568.
| Container | Litres | Pints it holds |
|---|---|---|
| 11-gallon keg | 50.0 | 88 |
| 50-litre keg | 50 | 88.0 |
| 30-litre keg | 30 | 52.8 |
| 20-litre keg or cider bag-in-box | 20 | 35.2 |
| Pin (4.5 gallons) | 20.5 | 36 |
| Firkin (9 gallons) | 40.9 | 72 |
| Kilderkin (18 gallons) | 81.8 | 144 |
| Barrel (36 gallons) | 163.7 | 288 |
| Hogshead (54 gallons) | 245.5 | 432 |
Halves are double, obviously. The 11-gallon keg and the 50-litre keg come out at 88 pints either way, the difference is about a teaspoon. Most pubs will only ever see the top four rows plus firkins and the odd pin. Kilderkins turn up at beer festivals and in very busy cask houses. If someone delivers you a hogshead, ring me, I want to see it.
Why an American page told you 124
Search this and you'll hit American figures sooner or later. Their standard keg is a half-barrel of about 58.67 litres, served in US pints of 473ml, which is how they get roughly 124 pints. Same keg in UK pints is about 103. Neither number has anything to do with a British cellar. Nobody's delivering you a half-barrel, and if a stock spreadsheet you've borrowed from a US template is using 124 or 16-ounce pints, every draught line on it is wrong.
How many you'll actually sell
Every container loses a bit before anyone's done anything wrong. On a keg it's the fob at changeover, the drip tray, the beer left in the line when the keg blows and the first pint that comes off cloudy. On a cask it's the sediment at the bottom and what you pull through to check it's in condition. These working figures are my arithmetic, the same ones I use across the cellar guides on this site:
| Container | Holds | Working sellable | Built-in loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11-gallon / 50-litre keg | 88 | 84 to 86 | 2 to 4.5% |
| 30-litre keg | 52.8 | About 49 to 51 | 3.5 to 7% |
| 20-litre keg | 35.2 | About 31 to 33 | 6 to 12% |
| Firkin | 72 | Mid-60s | About 10% |
| Pin | 36 | About 30 | About 17% |
Look at the right-hand column, because it's the bit nobody tells you. The changeover loss is roughly the same couple of pints whatever size the keg is. On 88 pints that's a rounding error. On a 20-litre keg it's a tenth of the thing. Same with sediment in a pin against a firkin. Smaller containers waste more of themselves.
That doesn't mean small is wrong. On a slow cask line a pin that clears in three days beats a firkin that goes over on day five, and I made that argument in the draught lines guide. It means you pick the size on purpose, knowing what it costs either way.
Line cleaning is separate and I've kept it out of the table on purpose. That's about 3 pints a line every clean, and it comes out of the line, not the keg. Count it twice and you'll scare yourself for no reason. The full sums are in the line cleaning guide and the overall picture is in what draught wastage is normal.
What each pint really costs you
Divide the keg price by 88 and you get the cost on paper. Divide it by what you'll sell and you get the cost you actually pay. Here's an 11-gallon keg at a few invoice prices, with GP worked against the £5.34 average pint (£4.45 once the VAT's out):
| Keg price | Cost per pint on 88 | Cost per pint on 85 sold | GP on 88 | GP on 85 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £120.00 | £1.36 | £1.41 | 69.4% | 68.3% |
| £137.28 | £1.56 | £1.62 | 64.9% | 63.7% |
| £160.00 | £1.82 | £1.88 | 59.1% | 57.7% |
| £180.00 | £2.05 | £2.12 | 54.0% | 52.4% |
That gap of a point and a bit is exactly why a GP calculator and your stocktaker can give you a different answer on the same lager without any of them being wrong. One divides by 88. The stocktake divides by what physically went. I've walked through all four versions of the same pint in how to read your GP report, and the GP calculator will do yours if you put in your own keg price.
The fix isn't to argue about which number is right. Set your price knowing you're selling 85, not 88, and that point of GP stops being a surprise.
The duty that's inside every keg
You don't pay duty to HMRC on a keg, the brewer does, but it's in your invoice price and it goes down the drain with every pint you waste. Draught beer from 3.5% to under 8.5% pays £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol at the current HMRC draught rate. On a 50-litre keg that works out at:
| Strength | Duty in a 50-litre keg | Per pint |
|---|---|---|
| 4.0% | £38.90 | 44p |
| 4.5% | £43.76 | 50p |
| 5.0% | £48.63 | 55p |
A 30-litre keg at 4.5% carries £26.26, the same 50p a pint. So when a keg fobs four pints at changeover, that's about £2 of tax gone with it, never claimable. Proper ullage in a returned container is a different matter, and the rules for that are in the ullage claims guide. The full duty picture, including bottles and the VAT that sits on top, is in the duty guide.
How many kegs a week
Take the pints a line sells a week off the till and divide by the sellable figure, not 88. A lager doing 300 pints a week gets through about 3.5 kegs, so on a weekly delivery you want four in plus the one on. A guest ale doing 100 a week in firkins needs about one and a half. That's your par, and the par levels guide covers how much to hold so you're not tying cash up in a cellar full of full kegs.
And check how long the container is going to be on. Cask has a three-day clock once it's on sale. Keg is gentler, but brewers set their own on-sale windows and they're not all the same, so if a line takes three weeks to empty a keg, that's a conversation with your rep about a smaller one.
What it means at stocktake
Your stocktaker isn't counting 88s. They're counting full kegs plus what's left in the open one, by weight or by dip, then comparing it with what the till says you sold. If your part kegs are guessed by lifting them, or your dip rod was made for a different cask, the yield looks wrong and the beer looks missing. That's covered properly in the keg and cask calibration guide.
In StockTap you set each draught product's size once, 30-litre, 50-litre, 11-gallon or any capacity in litres you type, and casks by the pints on the dip rod. Then the count is full kegs plus the pints left in the open one. The variance sits next to the sales, product by product, so you find out which line is giving you 79 instead of 85 before the stocktaker does.
What I'd do this week
Pull your last three keg invoices for your best-selling lager. Divide the price by 85 rather than 88 and put that cost into your GP sum. If the GP you get is the one you've been quoting, good. If it's a point lower, that's not a loss to chase, it's the real figure, and the price board should be set off it. Then do the same for your slowest line, and see what size it's coming in.
Common questions
How many pints are in an 11-gallon keg?
88. A gallon is eight pints. Realistically you'll sell about 84 to 86 of them once the changeover and the line end have taken their share.
How many pints in a 50-litre keg?
88.0, effectively the same as an 11-gallon keg. A UK pint is 0.568 litres, so 50 divided by 0.568 is 88.
How many pints in a 30-litre keg?
52.8. Plan on selling about 49 to 51, because the couple of pints lost at each changeover is a bigger share of a smaller keg.
How many pints in a firkin?
72, because a firkin is 9 gallons. Sediment and pulling through to check condition take a share, so mid-60s sellable is a fair planning number. Measure yours cask by cask.
How many pints in a 20-litre bag-in-box of cider?
35.2. You still lose the line end and the odd first pour at each change, so plan on a little under that.
Why do some sites say a keg holds 124 pints?
That's an American half-barrel keg of about 58.67 litres served in 16-ounce US pints. In UK pints the same keg is about 103, and it isn't a size UK pubs use.
Sources
- Pint = 0.56826125 cubic decimetre and gallon = 4.54609 cubic decimetres: Weights and Measures Act 1985, Schedule 1.
- Standard UK keg of 11 imperial gallons = 88 pints, firkin 72 pints: Hukins Hops, pints in a beer barrel.
- US half-barrel of 15.5 US gallons, about 58.67 litres, approximately 124 US pints of 16 ounces: PerfectDraft, how many pints in a keg of beer. The 103 UK pints is my conversion.
- Draught rate of £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol for beer from 3.5% to less than 8.5%: HMRC, Alcohol Duty rates, checked 6 October 2026.
- £5.34 average pint: Morning Advertiser pint price survey, May 2026, as used in the average pint price guide. £137.28 is the illustrative keg price used across these guides (£1.56 a pint on 88).
- Cask on sale for no more than three days: Cask Marque cellar guidance, as used in the cask breather guide.
- Author's arithmetic: every litres-to-pints conversion, the working sellable figures and built-in loss percentages, the cost and GP table, duty per keg and per pint, and the kegs-per-week examples. Sellable figures are planning numbers, not guarantees; your own stocktake gives you yours.