NA Beer on Draft or in Cans: 5 Checks to Decide

Put NA beer on draft only when your NA sales empty the smallest keg your distributor offers inside the brewery's freshness window, a line can pour NA for the whole year, someone owns that line's cleaning, and guests can tell the NA handle from the beer handles. If any of those fails, keep NA in cans for now. Below are the 5 checks in the order to run them, the keg math, the money on 1 pour, and the rules for deciding.

Why are more bars weighing NA beer on draft?

Bars are asking because NA beer is selling more on premise, and some of that growth is on draft. NielsenIQ's May 7, 2026 release on its Draft Beer Report with Draftline Technologies says the share held by no and low alcohol alternatives nearly doubled in 2025, and calls that a new opportunity for venues on draft.

The Brewers Association's look inside American drinking places, published May 13, 2026 from Nielsen's CGA data, puts low and non-alcoholic beer volume at bars up roughly 5 times from pre-COVID levels between 2019 and 2025. That was more than 2.5 times the growth of the next best performing style group.

Those are national numbers. Whether an NA keg empties fast enough at your bar is a separate question, and only your own count answers it. Make the call for the whole year. If you're working through Dry January prep, a tap that goes up January 1 and comes down in February gives the guests who found it nothing to come back for.

How many ounces of NA beer does your bar sell a week?

Count it from your can inventory over the last 4 to 8 weeks: cans on hand at the start, plus cans received, minus cans on hand now, divided by the number of weeks. Do it for each NA beer, then multiply by the can size, because kegs hold ounces.

Here is a made-up example for a 16 tap bar. Swap in your own counts.

A tap pours 1 beer, so the number that matters is the ounces for the style you would put on draft. Here that's the 360 ounces of NA lager, plus whatever share of the hazy IPA drinkers would switch to it. Treat the result as a rough range. Some can drinkers won't switch, and a handle on the wall brings in guests who never asked for a can. Leave hop water out, since it stays in the can either way.

How long would 1 NA keg last at your pace?

At 360 ounces a week, a sixtel lasts about 13 days and a half barrel about 39 days. The keg sizes come from the keg table on page 6 of the Brewers Association's Draught Beer Quality Manual. The days are keg ounces divided by weekly ounces, times 7.

Foam and line losses make a real keg empty a little sooner than the table says. That helps on freshness and hurts on cost. The days column only means something once you set it next to the brewery's freshness window for that keg, which is the next check.

What should you ask your distributor about NA kegs?

Ask your rep which NA beers come in kegs, in which sizes, and how long the brewery says each keg holds once tapped. The full list:

• Which NA beers can you get in kegs, and in which sizes?
• Is any of them a special order, and what is the lead time?
• How long does the brewery say the keg holds once tapped, and how long from the packaging date?
• Does the brewery stabilize the beer for draft, for example by pasteurizing it?
• Can you keep it in stock all year, or only around January?

The Brewers Association manual says each brewer sets its own freshness window for beer on tap, and that beer flavor in kegs on tap longer than 45 days may have changed from what the brewer intended. That 45 day line is written for draft beer in general. NA beer has no alcohol to slow spoilage, so go by the window the brewery gives for that keg and don't stretch it toward 45 days on your own.

If the smallest keg on offer would take longer to empty than the brewery's window, keep cans. If you run a brewery and the NA beer is your own, the questions change, and pouring your house NA on draft covers them.

Which tap line should pour NA?

The NA keg needs a line of its own for the year, either a spare line or one you take from your slowest beer. Many bars have no spare line, so a beer comes off the wall for as long as the NA keg is on.

Choose that beer from your beer-side counts: the slowest line that isn't a big seller on busy nights, or a second beer in a style you already pour. Tap rotation planning shows how to keep the rest of the list balanced once a line is gone.

Keep the line on NA all year. A dedicated line keeps the cleaning schedule, the handle marking and the spot on the wall fixed, so staff and regulars learn them once.

Who cleans the NA line, and how often?

Before you order, name the person or service who cleans the NA line and agree on its schedule, because NA beer spoils more easily in a draft system than regular beer. In a study published February 26, 2026 in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing, researchers took 53 samples of draught no and low alcohol beer, covering 17 brands, in 12 pubs in Nottingham, England. They rated 54.7% of the samples unacceptable because of microbial growth.

The authors write that removing ethanol takes away an antimicrobial hurdle. They also tie spoilage to how clean the dispense equipment is and how fast beer moves through it, and they call for thorough, regular cleaning of long line dispense systems. The throughput point matters for the keg math above, since a slow NA keg leaves beer sitting in the line longer between pours. The samples came from UK pubs, so read the result as a warning about NA lines in general. Your own line depends on your cleaning and your pace.

For every beer line, the Brewers Association manual says to clean every 7 to 14 days, and it notes that problem systems may need a more aggressive schedule. Ask whoever cleans your lines, in house or a service:

• Can the NA line be cleaned at the short end of that range, or on its own schedule?
• What does that add to the bill each month?
• Who checks the log to make sure it happened?

Put a name next to the NA line. If nobody will own that schedule, you aren't ready for an NA draft. The routine itself is in NA draft line cleaning.

How will NA guests know the pint is NA?

Guests know a draft pint is NA from the handle, the spot on the wall and the bartender saying the name, so set those up before the keg goes on. A pint from the same wall looks like everyone else's drink, and for some NA guests that matters more than the brand. Other NA guests prefer the can, because the label tells them what they're drinking.

A draft has to give the second group that certainty another way:

• An NA handle that can't be mistaken for a beer handle.
• A fixed spot on the wall that never pours anything else.
• Bartenders who say the name when the drink lands: "Your NA lager."
• An NA section on the board, with the ABV from the label.

If you can't make the handle unmistakable, stay with cans. Stopping wrong NA pours covers the bar habits, and 0.0% vs 0.5% on the menu covers what the ABV line should say.

When are cans the better call?

Cans are the better call whenever 1 of the checks fails, and in a few other cases:

• NA sells slower than the smallest keg allows inside the brewery's window.
• Every line is spoken for, and no beer is slow enough to give up for a year.
• Nobody will own a separate cleaning schedule.
• You want range more than volume. A cooler can hold a lager, a hazy IPA, a stout and a hop water, and 1 tap covers 1 style.
• Your rep can't keep the keg in stock all year.

Picking which cans to carry is its own question, covered in how many NA options a bar should carry.

Does draft NA make more money per pour than cans?

In the example below, a draft NA pour leaves 52 cents more than a can at the same $7 price, and 1 dumped sixtel wipes out about 8 weeks of that gain. These are example inputs. Swap in your own invoice numbers.

Inputs:

• NA sixtel: $79.20, which is $0.12 an ounce over 660 ounces.
• A 16 oz glass holds 14 ounces of beer under the head.
• A 16 oz NA can lands at $2.20.
• Both sell for $7.
• The tap sells 20 NA pints a week, which is 280 ounces, so a sixtel lasts 660 / 280 x 7 = about 16.5 days.

The gap is $5.32 minus $4.80, or $0.52 a sale. At 20 pints a week that's 20 x $0.52 = $10.40 a week in favor of draft, as long as every keg empties inside the brewery's window. A dumped sixtel costs $79.20, and $79.20 / $10.40 = about 7.6 weeks of the extra margin. Half a sixtel down the drain costs $39.60, close to 4 weeks.

The $0.12 an ounce assumes every ounce sells. Foam and line losses push the real number up, and draft beer cost per ounce shows how to work from usable ounces.

Price the can side from this month's invoice. The Brewers Association reported on April 3, 2026 that sheet aluminum and finished aluminum cans sit at the 50% tariff rate, and that higher input costs are likely to flow through from suppliers. For setting the $7 itself, see pricing NA beer and zero-proof drinks. At 52 cents a pour, the stronger case for draft is usually the guest who wants a pint like everyone else.

What are the rules for choosing draft or cans?

Go draft when all 5 checks pass, and keep cans when any 1 fails.

Then:

• If the volume isn't there, start with cans and recount in 3 months.
• If the volume is there but the line or the cleaning isn't, settle both before you order.
• If you go draft, keep the cans. They cover the styles the tap doesn't and back it up when a keg runs out early.

How does an NA tap look on a TapDisplay board?

On a TapDisplay board, the NA tap is a line like any other: name, brewery, style, the ABV from the label, and a price per pour, with 2 pours by default and up to 4. Start typing the beer's name and pick a match from the catalog, and it fills in the brewery, style and ABV you haven't entered yet. Check that ABV against the keg label before service.

Give NA its own section. A long list adjusts its type to fit and then turns pages, and you can split 1 list across several screens or give each screen its own sections, so the NA section can sit where NA guests look first. Building an NA section on a digital tap list walks through it.

When the NA keg kicks, staff mark it from a phone, tablet or computer. The line stays on the board, struck through and labeled KICKED, the word bar menus use. Each connected screen checks for changes every 30 seconds, so the change shows within about 30 seconds and the bartender can point guests to the cans. You can also type in keg levels by hand, which helps you watch a slow NA keg against its window. Keg levels on the board covers how to set a low mark.

The bottom line

Go draft on NA when your own count empties the smallest keg inside the brewery's freshness window, a line can stay NA all year, someone owns its cleaning, and guests can't mistake the handle. If the count falls short, cans are the right call for now, and a recount in 3 months tells you whether that has changed. If you do go draft, keep the cans for the styles the tap doesn't pour and for the day the keg kicks.