Guide
Cellar Management: Where Draught Profit Is Made and Lost
By David Holden · Stock Auditing since 1992 – Allied Domecq, Hilton, Marco Pierre White, RedCat Hospitality Ltd.
A ten-tap venue losing 1.5 pints per tap per day loses around £27,000 a year. Not stolen, not written off – just lost between what the system should produce and what it actually does.
Draught should be one of the most profitable lines on your P&L. Most of what decides whether it is happens before a pint reaches the glass: what you stock, how it’s kept, and how the system is set up. This guide brings together everything I’ve written on it.
PART ONE - CASK & KEG SIZES
How many pints in a 9-gallon cask, and how many will you actually sell?
A 9-gallon firkin holds 72 pints. Allow just under 4 pints per firkin for tapping, venting and the unavoidable waste at the end of the cask. Lose more than that and it’s worth investigating.
Gallons × 8 gives pints. For metric kegs, litres ÷ 0.568.
PART TWO - RANGE & FRESHNESS
How quickly does a cask need to sell?
Within about three days of tapping. Cask Marque’s guidance gives cask beer three days on sale to stay in good condition, and keg beers five to seven days. A firkin needs to sell around 24 pints a day.
Cask is live and unpasteurised. Once it’s on sale, oxygen gets in every time it’s drawn. Sales dip because the beer isn’t great, the beer gets worse because sales dip – and a cask ends up costing you money simply by existing.
The range trap: put three casks on when demand is still 24 pints a day, and each sells about 8 a day. Five days in, each has 32 pints past its best – about £160 per cask, £480 across the three.
The fix: build a cask range that reflects your actual daily sales, and order the size you can sell. Often fewer casks means better beer.
PART THREE - CELLAR SETUP & CONDITIONING
How should cask beer be set up and conditioned?
Cask arrives as live beer, still carrying yeast. It isn’t saleable until it’s been properly conditioned in your cellar – and if that stage goes wrong, nothing at the bar can fix it.
Horizontal stillage is the traditional method: less kit to clean and easy sampling, but more lifting and more space. Vertical extraction saves space and lifting, but needs more cleaning and careful rod setting – a rigid rod touches the bottom, then comes back 2.5cm so it isn’t sitting in sediment.
Temperature matters as much as setup. In Cask Marque’s research, 97% of drinkers were satisfied with cask served at 11–13°C. Above 14°C, satisfaction fell to 52%.
PART FOUR - THE NINE SYSTEM PROBLEMS
Where does draught beer loss actually come from?
Nine places: beer temperature, flow rate, gas and pressure, line cleanliness, pour technique, line condition, FOB detectors, glassware and faulty equipment. Most venues are losing on several at once.
A few that catch sites out: a cellar should sit around 12°C, and a warm keg can take 12 hours to come down to temperature – put it straight on and you pour foam. Lagers and ciders should pour in 14–16 seconds, stouts and ales 16–22. Gas is set to the brand owner’s specification, and compressed air should never be used.
Check the numbers before you call the engineer. Compare actual keg consumption against pints sold through you till. A keg that shows a major variance isn’t always going to be a system fault - The loss can be due to over-pouring, pints that never went through the till, or a bad count.
PART FIVE - AT THE BAR
What is the drip tray really costing you?
Eight taps, one full drip tray each a day, at £5 a pint: £21,900 a year.
That’s fobbing, excess foam from a warm cellar, dirty lines, low coolant or poor technique. It isn’t normal wastage, it’s a sign something isn’t being maintained. At the bar, the common causes are a half-open tap, starting the pour before the glass is in place (leading to a 50ml loss each time), and the nozzle touching the glass.
Check drip trays daily against the rota. If they’re fuller on certain shifts, it’s a technique problem with specific people, not a system problem.
PART SIX - READING THE RESULT
What yield should each type of draught achieve?
It depends on the category – there’s no single “normal” figure.
Yield % = quantity sold through the till ÷ quantity used from stock × 100.
A keg over 100% isn’t fiddling, industry guidance accepts a pint served with a head as at least 95% liquid, so a well-poured pints legitimately generate surplus.
What’s it worth to you?
A ten-tap pub losing 1.5 pints a tap a day pours away over £7,000 of beer a year at cost, this is more than double the average pub’s new rates saving.
Read: Budget 2026 – a £3,000 rates saving, and £7,000 of beer down the drain →
PART SEVEN
Common questions
How long does a cask last once it’s tapped?
About three days at its best. Keg beer lasts 5 to 7 days once connected.
What temperature should a beer cellar be?
Around 12°C, within 11–13°C. Above 14°C, cask quality drops sharply.
Why does my Guinness show over 100% on the stocktake?
Because a properly poured pint with a head legitimately generates a surplus. Up to 4 pints over on an 11-gallon keg is realistic. If stout is losing money you probably need to investigate why.
RELATED GUIDES
Understanding Your Stocktake Report
What the numbers mean, and when a variance is a problem.
Deliveries, Ordering & Stockholding
Goods in, empties out, and the stock sitting on your shelf.