Research
Original research on home draught beer.
Annual data reports, customer-conversation syntheses, regional market analyses. The numbers behind the editorial. All freely citable, with suggested format provided per report.
Published reports
Annual report · Published 2026-05-23
The 2026 Home Bar Cost Report
12 months of customer conversations (~220 owners) plus 2025 industry data (Brewers Association, CAMRA, Statista). Documents real-world annual ownership spend, the host-subsidy gap, break-even economics, and regional cost variation.
- $487 USD / £405 GBP: median annual ownership spend after equipment
- 4.2×: typical drinker ratio between heaviest and lightest at home bar parties
- $14: average per-party subsidy from light to heavy drinkers under even-split chip-ins
- 14 months: median break-even on a $700 kegerator at 10 pints/week
- 3.2 gallons: per-keg waste among occasional owners
Upcoming
- 2027 Home Bar Cost Report (target: April 2027). Annual update with larger conversation sample plus opt-in usage telemetry from DrinkCountr users.
- Kegerator Buyer's Cohort Study (target: Q3 2026). Tracking the first-12-months experience of new home kegerator owners: what they bought, what they regretted, what they wished they'd known.
- Regional Keg Pricing Index (target: Q4 2026). Quarterly pricing snapshot across 8 markets (US, UK, AU, NZ, CA, IE, NL, DE) so home owners can benchmark what they're paying.
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For journalists and bloggers
Every report on this page is freely citable. Suggested citation format is included at the bottom of each report. If you cite a specific number, link back to the source page rather than the figure in isolation. The methodology section of each report matters; the numbers are pattern-recognition from non-randomised samples cross-referenced against public data, not peer-reviewed statistics.
If you'd like the underlying spreadsheet, a regional cut, or a guest column with specific framing, email editor@kegnotes.com. Whatever is useful, within the limits of customer confidentiality.
Methodology principles
Each report follows the same editorial standards:
- Source transparency. Every dataset and figure has a stated source. Customer-conversation data is explicitly labelled non-randomised and self-selected. Public-data references include the publisher, dataset name, and year.
- Limitation disclosure. The "what this isn't" disclosures come before the headline numbers. Self-selection bias, regional skew, sample-size caveats, all stated explicitly.
- Confidence calibration. Where the data is solid (n > 200), figures are presented with full confidence. Where the sample is smaller (n < 50 for specific sub-questions), the figure is flagged as directional.
- Update cadence. Annual reports get explicit yearly refreshes. Quarterly indexes refresh four times per year. Both maintain a public change-log on subsequent editions.
- No paywall. Every report is free, no email gate (signup is optional), no PDF download required. Plain HTML, optimised for citation.
Research catalogue updated as new reports publish. Full editorial methodology at /methodology/. Author info at /author/daniel/.