Craft Brewery Batch Margin Calculator

What does each beer really earn, and where should it be sold?

Enter your beers and your sales channels. The page takes each batch through yield loss, labour, ingredients, federal and state excise and a share of overhead, then shows profit per barrel in the taproom, as kegs and as distributor cans, flags any channel that loses money, and ranks beers by profit per barrel of fermenter per day, the number that decides what deserves the tank.

Your recipes and prices are used in this browser tab and never leave your device. The numbers are examples; replace them with yours.

1. Sales channels

One per line: name, units per barrel (248 pints or 16 oz cans, 2 half-barrel kegs), price per unit, packaging per unit, other cost per unit (delivery), percent of sales lost (bar staff, card fees).

Channels

2. Beers

One per line: name, batch barrels, fermenter days, ingredient cost per batch, then where it goes as channel:percent; channel:percent.

Beers

Loss, brewhouse to package (%)

Labour hours per batch

Labour rate per hour

Utilities and cleaning per batch

Overhead per month (rent, loans, insurance, salaries)

Barrels sold per year

State excise per barrel

Fermenters

Fermenter size (barrels)

Tank time available (%)

Edit the channels and beers, then click Work out the margins.

Result

Beers, best use of the tank first

Beer	Revenue	Profit	Margin	Per barrel	Per barrel-day	Best channel	Worst channel

Every beer in every channel

Beer	Channel	Barrels	Revenue	Profit	Per barrel	Break-even price

How it decides, and what it leaves out

Batch cost: ingredients, labour hours at your rate and utilities and cleaning, divided over the barrels that reach a package after loss.
Excise: federal excise at the reduced craft rates ($3.50 a barrel on the first 60,000 barrels, $16 above) averaged over the barrels you sell a year, plus the state rate you enter.
Overhead: monthly overhead spread evenly per barrel. It lowers every channel by the same amount per barrel, so it does not change which channel wins, only whether it pays.
Per barrel-day: profit divided by batch barrels and fermenter days, so a 60-day beer is judged by the tank time it uses.
Not decided: state and local licensing, tied-house and franchise rules, sales and alcohol taxes on retail sales, tips, the real cost of keg loss and returns, working capital, and your TTB filing. Distributor prices and taproom costs here are your inputs, not market quotes.

Common questions

What is the real margin on a batch of craft beer?

It depends far more on where the beer is sold than on the recipe. A barrel poured as pints in your own taproom can earn several times what the same barrel earns as kegs to a distributor. This page costs each batch after yield loss, labour, excise and a volume share of overhead, then shows profit per barrel in every channel.

How much federal excise tax does a small brewery pay per barrel?

Under the Craft Beverage Modernization Act a brewer making 2 million barrels or fewer a year pays $3.50 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels and $16 per barrel above that. The page uses that rate and lets you add your state's excise. Confirm both with TTB and your state.

Which beer should I brew more of?

Rank by profit per barrel of tank per day, not profit per batch. A 60-day barrel-aged stout can show a bigger batch profit than an IPA and still earn a third as much for each day it occupies a fermenter.

How many barrels is a keg?

A half-barrel keg is 15.5 US gallons, so a barrel (31 gallons) is two kegs, about 248 pints of 16 ounces or 248 cans of 16 ounces.

Is my recipe data uploaded?

No. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere. Downloads are files on your own device.