How Many Beers In A Keg? (US & European Guide!)

Everything you need to know to plan how many beers in a keg! The answer isn’t exactly simple. How big do you like your beers and what kind of keg did you get?

 

America’s favorite beer keg (the half barrel) contains 165 twelve-ounce beers or 124 pints.

While one of these two numbers is likely the answer you are looking for, there is a lot more to beers and kegs than that.

Common Beer Sizes

In the United States we standardly drink 12 oz or 16 oz beers. Some establishments serve their stronger beers in 10 oz pours, but we doubt anyone wants to determine how many 10 ouncers they get from a keg. Similarly, 64 oz growlers are very popular, but the calculation for growlers from a keg is pretty easy. Just multiply gallons by 2.

Europe complicates things a bit. Their most common beer sizes are 1/2 liter and 1/3 liter beers, but 1 liter beers are also common particularly at beer fests. You also occasionally see 0.2 liter beers though that is generally a wine measurement. The Brits have to further complicate this. While they use the metric system, they measure their beers in pints, but their pint is 20 Imperial ounces (19.22 US fluid ounces). The Brits just like their beers large. No offense in that.

Keg Sizes

Similarly, kegs come in different sizes. For a long time the traditional American beer barrel contained 36 gallons, but this evolved over time until we settled on a legal volume of 31 gallons to a barrel. The thing is, 31 gallons of beer is heavy and hard to move, so the beer industry settled on using kegs no larger than ½ barrel. Kegs get smaller from there to accommodate smaller festivities.

In Europe a 50 liter keg is the gold standard though they occasionally use 30 or 20 liter kegs for specialty beers.

Conversion Chart: Beers in a US Keg

Keg	Gallons	FL Oz	Liters	12 oz	Pint
1/2-barrel	15.5	1984	58.7	165	124
1/4-barrel	7.75	992	29	83	62
1/6-barrel	5.17	662	20	55	41
5-gallon	5	640	18.9	53	40
Mini keg	1.32	169	5	14	11

Conversion Chart: Beers in a European Keg

Keg	Gallons	FL Oz	.33 liter	.5 liter	1 liter
Standard	13.2	1691	150	100	50
30 liter	7.9	1014	90	60	30
20 liter	5.3	676	60	40	20

We hope this has been informative. Again, how many beers are in a keg? Typically, either 165 cans or 124 pints, but it depends on the size of the keg!