How to Price a Beer Flight From Your Costliest Pour

Price a beer flight as if every pour were your costliest standard beer, then add a surcharge to each premium beer. With 4 tasters of 5 oz, a $0.75 costliest standard taster and a multiplier of 4, the base flight is $12. Below are the flight's size and shape, the worked math for a 16 tap taproom, the beers to keep out, and how to write it all on the board.

How many pours should a flight have, and how big?

Choose the pour count and the beer per taster first, because the total ounces set the beer cost. Each extra glass adds pouring and washing, and each extra ounce adds cost, so write the total down before you price anything.

A pint glass poured with a proper head holds less beer than its size. The example cost sheet in draft beer cost per ounce measures 14 oz of beer in a 16 oz glass. Against that pint:

Every shape in the table holds more beer than that pint, which matters when you compare prices per ounce further down.

Price from the beer in the glass, not the glass size. The Brewers Association's Draught Beer Quality Manual (page 56) recommends pouring with about a 1 inch collar of foam and calls filling a glass to the rim overpouring. A taster that holds 5 oz of beer needs a glass with room above it. Fill your taster glass with water to where the beer sits under the head and measure it once.

The example below uses 4 tasters of 5 oz. The bar already sells a 5 oz taster on its own, so the flight and the single taster share 1 cost.

Should you run a set flight or pick-your-own?

Run a set flight when speed at the rail matters most, and pick-your-own when guest choice does. You can also run both: a house flight at 1 price, and pick any 4 under the surcharge rule below.

Set flight

You choose the beers, so you know the exact beer cost and price it once. It pours fast, because nobody reads 16 lines aloud at the rail, and it can show a range: a lager, a hazy, a sour and a dark.

The set flight's weak spot is the kick. Name an alternate for every flight beer ahead of time, one that costs the same or less per ounce, so a swap never cuts into margin. For the example house flight on taps 1, 5, 9 and 11, the alternates are taps 2, 6, 8 and 10. What to do when a keg kicks mid-shift covers the rest of that routine.

Pick-your-own

Guests get what they came for, and slow sellers can move. It takes longer to order and pour, and the beer cost changes with every order, because nothing stops a guest from picking the 4 costliest beers on the board. Pick-your-own needs a pricing rule that still holds when that happens.

How do you price a flight from the costliest pour?

Split the board into standard and premium beers, price the base flight as if every pour were your costliest standard beer, and give each premium beer a surcharge that covers its gap. Use the same multiplier you use for full pours, so the flight and the pint follow the same math.

1. Find each beer's taster cost: cost per ounce times the beer in the taster.
2. Mark the premium beers. Premium means anything that costs well more per ounce than the rest, such as barrel-aged beers, big imperials, collabs and allocated kegs. You draw the line from your own cost sheet.
3. Base beer cost is the costliest standard taster times the number of pours. Base price is that cost times your multiplier, rounded up.
4. Each premium surcharge is that beer's taster cost minus the costliest standard taster, times your multiplier, rounded up.

A worked example

The numbers are made up to show the math. The bar is a 16 tap taproom pouring flights of 4 x 5 oz from every tap except 2 limited kegs. It prices every pour at 4 times beer cost and rounds up to the whole dollar.

The costliest standard taster is $0.75, on taps 9, 15 and 16.

Base beer cost:   4 tasters x $0.75 = $3.00
Base price:       $3.00 x 4 = $12

Tap 7 surcharge:  ($1.00 - $0.75) x 4 = $1
Tap 14 surcharge: ($1.50 - $0.75) x 4 = $3

In a flight, a premium taster earns its $3 share of the base plus its surcharge. For the barrel-aged stout that is $6 for 5 oz, or $1.20 an ounce. An 8 oz glass of the same stout holds 7.5 oz of beer and sells for $9, which is also $1.20 an ounce, so the stout earns the same whether it goes out in a flight or a full glass.

What goes wrong with 1 flat flight price?

A flat price with no surcharges undercharges the guests who pick from the top of the board. At a multiplier of 4, your target pour cost is 25%: $1 of beer for every $4 of price. Here is the same $12 flat price against base plus surcharges, for 4 flights a guest could order:

With the flat price, the top of the board drifts to 33% and a guest who orders 4 pours of the stout gets $6.00 of beer for $12. Because the base comes from the costliest standard taster, no mix of standard beers can go over 25%, and each surcharge holds its premium pour at 25%. At the rail, the bartender rings the base plus the surcharge printed on each premium line the guest picked.

The cost of a simple price shows up at the other end. A guest who picks taps 1 to 4 pays $12 for $2.40 of beer. If your lager and pale ale crowd is big and watches price, add a second tier and leave the base alone: a light flight of taps 1 to 4, $2.40 x 4 = $9.60, on the board at $10.

How does the flight compare with a full pour per ounce?

Check the flight's price per ounce against your full pours before you post it. The base flight is 20 oz of beer for $12, or $0.60 an ounce.

The flight lands inside the range of the full pours. A guest pays a little more per ounce than for a lager pint and gets 4 beers and 4 glasses for it. If your flight came out well under most of your pints per ounce, regulars who already know what they want could order flights to save money. Decide on purpose whether you are fine with that.

Which beers should stay out of flights?

Keep a beer out of flights when a taster costs you something a surcharge cannot pay back: a scarce keg, or a beer that pours badly into a small glass.

Limited kegs

A sixtel holds 660 fluid ounces, according to the keg table on page 6 of the Brewers Association manual. Say the barleywine on tap 12 is your only sixtel of it this season and 600 of those ounces will sell.

Full pours:       600 oz / 7.5 oz per 8 oz glass = 80 pours
30 flights with it: 30 x 5 oz = 150 oz
Pours gone:       150 oz / 7.5 oz = 20 of the 80

A surcharge would cover the cost of those ounces, but the guests who came in for a glass of the barleywine would have 20 fewer to buy. That is why taps 12 and 13 stay out in the example.

Beers that pour badly small

If a beer has foam or temperature trouble and its tasters keep going out half foam, take it out of flights until the line is fixed. A 5 oz taster has little room to hide a bad pour.

Very strong beers

A flight of strong beers adds up faster than it looks. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines a US standard drink as about 0.6 fluid ounces of pure alcohol, the amount in a 12 oz beer at 5% ABV. Multiply each pour's ounces by its ABV, add them up, and divide by 0.6:

If your house rule already limits strong beers to small pours, decide whether a 5 oz taster counts as one. A simple rule is a cap of 1 pour at 9% or stronger per flight, written on the board. Whichever beers you keep out, mark those lines so a guest does not build a flight around them and hear no at the rail.

How should flight prices read on the board?

Put the flight rule in a short block at the top or bottom of the list, and put each surcharge on the beer's own line. A guest building a flight reads the tap lines and skips footnotes.

FLIGHTS: 4 tasters, 5 oz each
House flight (taps 1, 5, 9, 11)        $12
Pick any 4                             $12
  Premium pours add the amount on their line
  Not in flights: taps 12 and 13

7   Double IPA                   9.2%    10 oz $8    flight +$1
14  Barrel-aged imperial stout   12.4%   8 oz $9     flight +$3

Keep pour sizes and prices in the same order on every line so the surcharge always sits in the same spot. ABV, IBU, style and pour size on a draft menu covers how to write those fields.

On a TapDisplay board, each tap's line shows the beer's name, brewery, style, ABV and a price per pour, 2 pours by default and up to 4, so a taster price can sit on the same line as the full pour. When a house flight beer kicks, you mark it from a phone, a tablet or a computer, and the line stays on the board struck through and labeled KICKED, the word a brewery or bar menu gets from its business type. Each connected screen checks for changes every 30 seconds, so the swap to the alternate shows within about 30 seconds.

What goes on a flight pricing worksheet?

The worksheet needs 1 row per tap that can go in a flight, plus the few numbers every row uses. Fill it in from your cost sheet.

Beer per taster: ______ oz      Pours per flight: ______
Multiplier (from your cost sheet): ______
Rounding rule: ______

TAP | BEER | COST/OZ | TASTER COST | STANDARD, PREMIUM OR OUT
____|______|_________|_____________|_________________________
____|______|_________|_____________|_________________________
____|______|_________|_____________|_________________________
____|______|_________|_____________|_________________________

Costliest standard taster cost:                 $______ (A)
Base beer cost = A x pours per flight:          $______ (B)
Base price = B x multiplier, rounded up:        $______
Each premium surcharge = (taster cost - A) x multiplier, rounded up

Before the price goes up, check 3 things: the top of the board flight lands at or under your target pour cost, every house flight beer has a named alternate, and the flight's price per ounce sits where you want it against your pints.

Rerun the worksheet when a keg comes in at a new cost, and check whether that beer has moved between standard and premium. If a new standard beer becomes the costliest, the base moves too. A discounted flight hour is a separate decision with its own start and end, covered in happy hour beer specials without price fights.

The bottom line

Price the base flight from your costliest standard taster, times the number of pours, times the same multiplier you use for full pours, and give each premium beer a surcharge that closes its gap. In the 16 tap example that is a $12 base with $1 and $3 surcharges, and no flight a guest can order goes over a 25% pour cost. Keep scarce kegs out, print each surcharge on the beer's own line, and rerun the worksheet whenever a keg comes in at a new cost.