Ullage claims: how a pub actually gets credit for spoilt beer, and the losses you'll never claim back

You cannot claim beer duty back from HMRC. Only the producer who paid the duty can, and your money comes back as a credit note from the brewery or wholesaler, on their process, on their timetable, and only if you follow the rules before anything goes down the drain. A 50-litre keg of 4.5% lager carries £43.76 of duty. A firkin of 4.2% cask carries £33.41. That's real money sat inside every container that goes wrong, and most pubs either never claim it or tip the evidence away first. Here's how it actually works in 2026.

First, the word. Ullage just means the beer you can't sell: the container that arrives leaking, the cask that won't drop bright, the keg that fobs from the first pint, the beer that goes past its date before you get through it. The trade uses the same word for the drip tray and line-cleaning losses too, which muddies things, because those two kinds of ullage have completely different money attached. One can come back as credit. The other is gone, and the best you can do is measure it.

Who actually claims the duty

The rules sit in HMRC's alcoholic products technical guide, under the 2023 excise regulations. Duty relief on spoilt beer goes to the producer who accounted for the duty in the first place, which means your brewery, not you. The product has to have become spoilt or otherwise unfit for use, it normally has to go back in the same container it left the brewery in, and there's a three-year limit from when the duty was paid. Sediment in a cask doesn't count, duty was never charged on it. And beer that's been diluted or had anything added is excluded completely, with no credit at all.

That last point matters more than it looks. Returned containers get analysed, and the lab is checking for two things: wild yeast strains that don't belong in that beer, and dilution. Either one kills the claim. So the pub that tops a slow cask up from another one, or lets the lines breathe into the container, has destroyed its own evidence. Send it back as it stands or don't bother.

What this means for you is simple. Your claim is never really with HMRC, it's with your supplier. The duty element is what the brewery can recover from the government, and their credit to you is a commercial decision built on top of that. When it's plainly their fault, a bad batch or a container that arrived damaged, the credit should cover the goods, not just the duty. When it's marginal, expect the argument.

What gets credited and what never will

How the usual cases tend to fall. Every supplier has its own returns policy; the shape below is common across the trade, but get yours in writing.

The case	Credit?	What decides it
Confirmed bad batch	Yes	The brewery's own analysis. Report it the day you find it, with batch details off the label.
Container arrives leaking or unlabelled	Yes, if flagged	Point it out to the drayman and note it on the delivery paperwork before signing. Found later, you'll often be credited for what's left in it, not the full container.
Keg or cask that won't condition, reported at once	Usually	Analysis again. Unbroached and returned promptly is your strongest position.
Sealed stock going out of date	Policy-dependent	Ask before the date passes, not after. An unbroached container has a case; a broached one rarely does.
Cask sediment	No	Duty was never charged on it, so there's nothing to reclaim.
Line cleaning, drip trays, fobbing in service	No	This is operating waste, not spoilt product. It's your cost to measure and manage.
Burst line emptying a connected keg overnight	No	Suppliers clamped down on this years ago. A coupling left engaged is treated as poor cellar practice, and the claim dies with it.
Topped-up or blended containers	Never	Analysis reads it as dilution or contamination and the whole claim is void.

One historic wrinkle worth knowing because old advice still floats around: during Covid, HMRC temporarily let pubs destroy beer on site with the brewery's advance permission and a video as evidence. That was an emergency measure. The standing position is that destruction happens on the brewery's terms with their sign-off, so never tip a container because a five-year-old article said you could film it.

The process that actually gets you paid

Start at the cellar door. Check every container as it comes off the dray, count what you sign for, and write shortages and damage on the note before the wagon leaves. I've covered what delivery problems do to your stock figures separately, and the same habit protects your ullage claims, because a fault flagged on delivery day is a clean claim and a fault discovered three weeks later is a negotiation.

When something's wrong in the cellar, stop and report before you act. Phone or email the supplier the day you find it, give them the beer name, container size, and the batch and date codes off the label, and photograph the label while it's in front of you. Then leave the container alone until they tell you what happens next. Uplift on the next dray is the normal route. What kills claims is doing the sensible-feeling thing, tipping the sour beer, rinsing the cask, sticking it out for collection, because at that point there's nothing left to analyse and nothing left to credit.

Tied tenants run the same play through the pubco's process instead. The shape is identical everywhere: unbroached containers uplifted get the full credit, anything destroyed on site with permission tends to get the duty element only, and nothing gets credited without the paperwork. If your agreement has a stock element to it, the credit note matters twice, because it moves your stock result too.

Put it through the stocktake or the numbers lie twice

Here's the bit that costs pubs more than the duty ever did. A keg goes back to the brewery and never gets recorded in the stock system. Now your stocktake shows 50 litres of lager missing that nobody drank, your variance looks like a pouring problem, and if a credit note lands next month and the stock figure never moves, the books are wrong in the other direction too. Log the ullage on the day it happens, what went and why, and log the credit when it arrives. A returned container is not a loss, it's a transfer, and it should net close to zero once the credit's in.

The unclaimable ullage deserves the same discipline for the opposite reason. Line cleaning and drip-tray waste can't come back as credit, but they're a steady leak you can actually size. A pub cleaning its lines weekly pours the full line contents away every time, and whether that's a small cost or a serious one depends on your line lengths and how much beer you shift, which is exactly what a proper record tells you. If your variance is bigger than your recorded waste explains, you've got a different problem, and the stock-loss guide is the place to start diagnosing it. Getting your kegs and casks calibrated properly is what makes those numbers trustworthy in the first place.

What the duty is actually worth

Since February 2026, draught beer between 3.5% and 8.4% carries duty of £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol. Work that through the containers, my arithmetic from the published rates, and you get the money at stake in every claim.

Duty inside common containers at the rates in force from 1 February 2026. Author's arithmetic from HMRC published rates; the wholesale price on your invoice is on top.

Container	Duty inside it
Pint of 4.5% draught lager	49.7p
Firkin (9 gallons) of 4.2% cask ale	£33.41
50-litre keg of 4.5% lager	£43.76

And remember the duty is the smaller half of the story. The wholesale price you paid for that keg is the bigger number, and when the fault is the supplier's, the credit conversation should start at the goods value, not the duty. The full rate tables and the per-pint workings are in the 2026 duty guide.

None of this is a fortune on any single container. Across a year of normal trading, a couple of dud casks, one leaker, a keg that wouldn't settle, it's a few hundred pounds that either comes back to you or doesn't, decided entirely by whether you reported before you tipped and kept the labels. The habit costs five minutes a time. That's a rate of pay most of us would take.

Common questions

Can a pub claim beer duty back from HMRC?

Not directly. Under HMRC's rules, spoilt-product duty relief goes to the producer who originally accounted for the duty, normally the brewery. A pub's route is a credit from its brewery, wholesaler or pubco, who then recover the duty element from HMRC. Report faults promptly and never destroy beer without the supplier's agreement, or the claim usually dies.

What counts as ullage in a pub?

The trade uses it for any beer you can't sell: spoilt or out-of-condition containers, leakers, out-of-date stock, plus operating waste like line cleaning and drip trays. Only the first kind can come back as credit. Operating waste is your own cost, and the useful thing to do with it is measure it so your stocktake variance tells the truth.

How much duty is in a keg of beer?

At the rates in force from 1 February 2026, a 50-litre keg of 4.5% lager carries £43.76 of duty and a firkin of 4.2% cask ale carries £33.41, using the draught rate of £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol. That's the element the brewery can reclaim when beer is properly spoilt.

Do I get credit for line cleaning losses?

No. Beer poured away during line cleaning was sound when it went through the tap, so it isn't spoilt product and no relief applies. It's operating waste. Record it anyway, because unrecorded waste shows up in your stocktake as an unexplained loss and sends you hunting for a problem you don't have.

How long do I have to claim for spoilt beer?

HMRC's limit on the producer's relief is three years from when the duty was paid, but that's not your real deadline. Suppliers expect faults reported promptly, and your practical position weakens by the day. Report the week you find it, keep the container as it stands, and let the supplier decide uplift or destruction.