Big Taps

“We sell more Keith’s at the Lower Deck than on the island of
Cape Breton,” Mike Condy, the Lower Deck’s general manager, says
proudly. Who wouldn’t brag? At 35, it’s one of the oldest beer halls in
town. A lot of that is Keith’s, he says, because he is hands-down
Labatt’s best customer in Halifax. He’s right. For every 20 kegs of
beer sold, estimates Dave Page, the Economy Shoe Shop’s bar manager,
six to eight will be Keith’s.

Condy didn’t reveal his sales numbers, but figured an average beer
hall would sell between 1,500 and 2,000 kegs of beer a year, though
that’s conservative. I asked all the big beer sellers in town: Shoe
Shop (1663 Argyle), Stayner’s (5075 George),
Peddlers’ (1903 Granville), Bubba Ray’s (5650 Spring
Garden), Alehouse (1721 Brunswick), Old Triangle (5136
Prince) and the Pogue Fado (1581 Barrington), and they all gave
ball-park figures ranging up to 4,000 kegs a year.

One 50 litre keg pulls about 110 pints, Page says. Keith’s brewery
concurs. A conservative estimate: 2,000 kegs equals 220,000 pints of
beer a year. Multiply that by seven and drinkers at these bars pound
back 1.54 million pints per year. It could be up to 3 million pints, if
you factor in 4,000 keg bars. That’s a lot of Coors Light.

A year of beer drinking is full of peaks and valleys. Take March 17,
when beer consumption could be double a Saturday night, then we might
say what? Twenty to 50,000 pints on Paddy’s Day? I won’t even try to
include all the small bars—it would start to sound too much like
President Obama’s bailout program.

This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2009.