The Price of Rounds: Why Your Pint Costs a Tenner in 2025
Why your pint costs a tenner in 2025 .. and where every penny actually goes.
Last week I bought a round at my local. Four pints. Two IPAs, a Guinness, and a cider for the mate who “doesn’t really like beer.” £38.40. The barman said it with a straight face, like he hadn’t just quoted me the price of a decent blender.
I tapped my card with the fixed smile of someone who’s died inside but still needs to look sociable. Walking back to the table .. trying not to spill forty quid’s worth of liquid .. I started doing the maths.
Turns out it’s complicated. Properly complicated. And almost nobody’s getting rich except the tax man.
Dissecting the £9.50 DIPA (8.4% ABV)
Liquid (malt, hops, yeast, water, expertise): £2.00 .. £2.20
Beer duty (Draught Relief rate): £0.90
VAT (20 %): £1.58
Pub costs (rent, wages, energy, Sky Sports, loo seats): £3.50 .. £4.00
Publican’s margin: ~£1.50
That’s roughly a 16% margin on a good day. Your local Tesco makes more on a banana.
The tax game nobody talks about
February 2025’s duty reset uprated everything by RPI (3.65 %), solidifying the “strength-based” tax system introduced two years ago. The ABV cliffs now look like this:
- < 3.5 % .. £8.28 per litre of pure alcohol (Draught rate)
- 3.5 .. 8.4 % .. £18.76 (The “Standard” draught band)
- 8.5 .. 22 % .. £29.54 (The “Premium” penalty zone)
- > 22 % .. £32.79 (Spirits territory)
Translated to a 568 ml pint in a pub (inc. Draught Relief):
- 3.4 % macro lager: 16 p duty
- 4.5 % session pale: 48 p duty
- 8.4 % DIPA: 90 p duty
- 10 % imperial stout: £1.68 (No draught relief > 8.5%)
- 16 % barley-wine: £2.68 (No draught relief)
The “Draught Relief” discount (roughly 13.9 %) only applies to beer under 8.5 %. Cross that line, and you’re paying full whack.
Draught relief knocks ~14 % off the duty bill for standard pints, but a 10 % imperial stout pays nearly 4x the tax of a session pale because it loses the relief and hits the higher band.
What actually happened
Energy: a 10-barrel Midlands brewery now pays £125 k a year for electricity (was £30 k in 2021).
Barley: UK maltsters jumped from £180 to £450+ per tonne after the Ukraine war; one Manchester brewery has reformulated its bitter three times and the regulars noticed every time.
Hops: 2024’s harvest was too hot in Yakima, too wet in Germany, wrong in Kent. Citra and Sabro are rationed like white truffles.
The brewery death spiral
SIBA reckons 136 indie breweries vanished in 12 months .. one every 2.7 days. Can prices up 22 %, 90-day payment terms, £10 k minimum orders, Brexit paperwork: death by a thousand cuts.
The costs nobody mentions
Wastage: cask lasts 3-4 days. Pubs pouring £500 a week down the drain = £26 k a year.
Cashless tax: 75 p on a £38 round × 100 transactions a day × 365 = £27 k lost to card fees.
Wages: living wage £12.21 + NI + pension + table-service apps = £40 k extra per year for a ten-person pub versus 2019. That’s 4,000 pints of profit just to stand still.
What’s actually dying
The after-work pint is now a financial event. Students pre-load in Tesco car parks; old boys nurse halves for ninety minutes; Tuesday quizzes drop from sixteen teams to six. Four hundred pubs closed in Q1 2025 alone.
What’s actually working
- Session beer: duty maths finally favours 3.4 .. 4.0 % brews; Cloudwater’s core range is 65 % of turnover.
- No & low: 32 % volume growth in Q1; zero duty, solid margin, stigma gone.
- Shared brewhouses: 40-50 % cut in energy & labour costs for users.
- Subscription clubs: cash up-front, no distributor, no 90-day wait.
Easiest win: turn up on the quiet night. A £6 pint on Tuesday keeps the lights on more than three Saturday tenners.
Where this ends
Peak beer arrived at the moment most people can’t afford to drink it. But session styles, shared kit and direct sales give indie brewing a bridge to 2030. Show up mid-week, drink the 4 % stuff, and the pubs (and breweries) you love will still be here next year.