Beer Gas Costs: What Pubs Pay and How to Cut It Friday, half seven, the stout line goes. One of your team heads down to the cellar, finds the mixed gas cylinder empty, and there is no spare. You ring round, pay an out-of-hours delivery charge, and lose two hours of stout sales on the busiest night of the week. That one evening can cost more than a month of gas, which is why beer gas costs are rarely about the price printed on the cylinder. Most quotes you will be sent lead with a price per cylinder. It is the least useful number on the page. What you actually pay over a year is the gas, plus rental, plus delivery, plus whatever the small print says about minimum orders and emergency drops, divided by the beer you sold. Below we open the whole invoice, then show you how to turn it into one figure you can act on. What makes up your beer gas bill Five lines do most of the work on a dispense gas account. The gas itself, priced per cylinder of CO2 or mixed gas. Cylinder rental or deposit, charged annually, daily, or replaced by a one-off refundable deposit. Delivery, either included on a scheduled drop or added per visit. Minimum order or small-drop charges, which bite hardest on quiet sites taking one or two cylinders at a time. Out-of-hours and emergency callouts, usually the highest rate on the account and the one nobody budgets for. Why the cheapest cylinder is not the cheapest bill A supplier can quote you a keen price per cylinder and still cost you more over twelve months. For a start, if that price only applies on a four-cylinder minimum and you turn over two a fortnight, you will either hold stock you do not need or pay a small-drop charge every time. Add rental on each cylinder in the cellar and the headline saving disappears quietly, a few pounds at a time, across fifty-two weeks. Rental, deposits and the cylinders you forgot about Rental is the charge licensees forget. Cylinders sitting empty behind the keg stillage, or full ones for a product you stopped selling in the spring, can keep accruing rental for months. We see it on nearly every account review: two or three cylinders no longer in use, still billing. The quickest saving available to most pubs is not a better unit price at all. It is counting what is physically in the cellar, matching your holding to actual weekly throughput, and sending the rest back. Rental models differ too, so ask whether you are paying per cylinder per year, per cylinder per day, or a refundable deposit with no ongoing charge. Compare on the same basis or you are not comparing anything. Contract length and drinks tie-ins Before you look at prices, find out what you are free to change. Some gas supply sits inside a drinks agreement, some sits on its own contract with a notice period, and some rolls on year to year with a price review clause you have never read. Check the notice period, whether prices can be adjusted mid-term, and who owns the cylinders in your cellar. Those three answers decide how much of this article you can act on this month and how much waits until renewal. CO2, mixed gas or nitrogen: matching the blend to what you pour Pure CO2 does most of the work in a British cellar. Lagers, keg ales and ciders are generally dispensed on CO2 for beer dispense, with the gas doing two jobs at once: pushing the beer and maintaining its carbonation. Nitrogen blends come in where you pour smooth-flow ales and nitro stouts, because nitrogen is far less soluble in beer and lets you apply dispense pressure without over-carbonating the product. 60/40 or 70/30, and which figure is which Blend naming is a genuine trap. One supplier’s “60/40″is quoted CO2 first, another’s is quoted nitrogen first, and the cylinders look identical on the pallet. Get it the wrong way round and the fault does not announce itself as a gas problem. You get flat, lifeless stout, or keg ale that arrives at the glass over-gassed and fobbing, and the cellar spends a week blaming the cooler. Always confirm in writing which figure is the CO2 and which is the nitrogen, and check it against the dispense specification the brand owner publishes for that product. Thirty seconds on the phone before you order saves a skipful of returned beer. Do not put the whole cellar on one blend Mixed gas costs more per cylinder than CO2, and cellars often get switched wholesale onto a nitrogen blend for the sake of one or two smooth products. Every keg dispensed then carries the higher cost, including the lagers that never needed it. Take a two-bar site running four lagers, a keg ale, a smooth ale, a cider and a nitro stout. Pure CO2 feeds the lagers, keg ale and cider through one manifold. The nitro stout and the smooth ale sit on their own mixed gas supply. One reserve cylinder of each is held for changeover. That split is a straightforward reduction and it takes a fitter an hour, not a refit. One more point worth knowing when you compare prices. CO2 is supplied liquefied and sold by weight, while mixed gas is a compressed gas sold by volume at pressure. You cannot compare the two cylinder for cylinder, so ask for the fill weight on CO2 and the water capacity and fill pressure on mixed gas if you want a like-for-like view. Cylinder sizes, changeovers and the cost of running dry Bigger cylinders usually give you a better price per kilogram of gas and fewer deliveries. They are also heavier, take more floor space, and are harder work for a part-time barperson on a Sunday. Sizes vary between suppliers, so ask for the fill weight rather than guessing from the look of the thing, then weigh that against who in your team will actually be moving it. Keep a reserve of each gas type you use. Changeover should happen before service, not during it, as part of the cellar check: look at the contents gauge, swap anything low, bring the spare up to position. Emergency and out-of-hours drops are where margins disappear, and a routine that takes five minutes a day removes nearly all of them. Keep a simple log too. Date on, date off, cylinder type, and the date empties went back. A sheet on the cellar wall is enough. It tells you what you genuinely use per month, it stops you paying rental on gas you have already poured, and it gives you real numbers when you review the account. Cylinders should be stored upright, secured against falling, away from heat and out of walkways, which sets a practical limit on how many you can sensibly hold. The British Compressed Gases Association publishes guidance on storing and handling cylinders, and it is worth a read before you decide to hold four spares in a cellar built for two. Where gas and money leak away in the cellar Over-pressurised regulators are the most common hidden cost in a cellar. The pour goes slow, someone turns the pressure up, and for a day or two it looks fixed. Then the beer starts fobbing into the drip tray, waste climbs, and the cylinders empty faster. The gas bill and the beer waste figure rise together while the actual fault is almost always cooling or line condition. Worn washers, perished hoses and tired keg couplers drain cylinders slowly and invisibly. A leak you cannot hear will still empty a cylinder over a fortnight. Leak detection spray on every joint, once a month, costs very little. Line cleaning takes beer and gas with it every time, which is simply the cost of pouring a clean pint, but a cellar cleaning at the wrong frequency wastes on both sides. Too infrequent and you get dirty lines, poor pours and returned pints. Too frequent and you are flushing saleable beer down the drain and using gas to do it. Follow the schedule your brewer or technical services provider sets for the product. Cellar temperature matters more than people expect. A warm cellar pushes carbonation out of balance, produces fobbing and slow pours, and the whole lot gets blamed on the gas. Check your cellar cooler and your door seals before you change supplier, because no gas price fixes a cellar sitting three degrees too warm. Working out your real beer gas cost per keg Here is the sum. Take twelve months of gas invoices and add everything on them: gas, rental, delivery, small-drop charges, any callouts. Divide that total by the number of kegs you sold over the same twelve months. The answer is your cost per keg dispensed, in pence, and it is the only number worth taking into a supplier conversation. Then track cylinders used per month against your barrelage. If throughput is flat and cylinder use jumps, you have a leak or a pressure setting that has crept up. That comparison catches problems weeks before anyone notices them at the pump. When you have two quotes, put them side by side on one sheet with the same six rows filled in for each: Gas price per cylinder, with fill weight or volume stated Rental basis: annual, daily, or a refundable deposit with none Delivery charge, and whether it is included on a scheduled drop Minimum order value or minimum cylinder quantity Out-of-hours and emergency callout rate Contract term and notice period Savings from that exercise can be substantial. Our own account reviews regularly turn up reductions on dispense gas and bottled gas once the whole invoice is compared rather than the headline cylinder price alone. Your figure will depend on what you pour and what you are paying now, so work from your own invoices rather than anyone’s example. Switching dispense gas supplier without losing a service Switching is straightforward if you do it in the right order. Check your notice period and who owns the cylinders first, because some are supplier-specific and cannot simply be refilled by someone else. Give notice, agree a date, and arrange collection of the old cylinders so rental stops cleanly rather than running on for another quarter. Confirm the practical things before you commit: which days your new supplier delivers to your postcode, which depot serves you, and how quickly an urgent drop can realistically reach you on a Saturday. A supplier that is honest about that is more use than one that promises everything. A supplier review is also the right moment to revisit cellar safety. CO2 is heavier than air and collects at low level, which is exactly where cellars are. HSE’s EH40 workplace exposure limits set carbon dioxide at 5,000 ppm as an eight-hour time-weighted average and 15,000 ppm short-term, so ventilation, a CO2 alarm where your risk assessment calls for one, and a COSHH assessment covering the gas should all be part of the conversation. While you are down there, check the inspection dates stamped on the cylinders, which are subject to periodic inspection and testing under the Carriage of Dangerous Goods and Use of Transportable Pressure Equipment Regulations. Any cylinder that looks neglected should go back on the next collection. When you are ready to compare, have your last twelve months of invoices and your cylinder log to hand and request a quote. We will price the gas, the rental basis and the delivery on the same sheet as your current supplier so you can see where your beer gas costs actually sit, and you can read more about how we supply bottled gas to pubs and businesses across Yorkshire, the North West and beyond. Frequently Asked Questions What affects beer gas costs most in a typical pub? Volume poured sets the floor, but the charges around the gas usually decide the total: rental on cylinders you hold, delivery and small-drop charges, and emergency callouts. Regulator pressure set too high and small leaks on couplers and hoses push consumption up on top of that. Work out your cost per keg and the real drivers become obvious. Is mixed gas more expensive than CO2 for beer dispense? Yes, mixed gas generally costs more per cylinder than pure CO2, and the two are sold on different bases (CO2 by weight, mixed gas by volume at pressure), so compare the gas content rather than the cylinder. The saving most cellars miss is using a blend only on the products that need it, such as nitro stout and smooth ale, and keeping everything else on CO2. How long should a CO2 cylinder last behind a busy bar? There is no standard answer, because it depends on your fill weight, how many lines you run, your dispense pressure and the condition of your lines. The useful approach is to log every cylinder change for two or three months and work out your own average. Once you know that figure, any sudden drop in cylinder life points you straight at a leak or a pressure setting that has crept up. Do I have to pay cylinder rental on dispense gas? Not always. Some suppliers charge rental per cylinder per year or per day, others take a refundable deposit with no ongoing charge. Whichever model you are on, return cylinders you no longer use, because empty or redundant cylinders sitting in the cellar can keep billing for months. Can I switch beer gas supplier if I am tied to a drinks agreement? Often you can, as dispense gas is not always covered by a drinks tie, but you need to read your agreement rather than assume. Check whether gas supply is named in the contract, what notice period applies and who owns the cylinders currently in your cellar. If gas sits outside the tie, you are usually free to compare a mixed gas supplier for pubs on price, rental and delivery.