We Need to Finally Talk About Craft Beer Prices

By Jim Vorel  |  January 4, 2024 | 3:20pm
Photos via Unsplash, Louis Hansel, Jonas Jacobsson Drink Features craft beer
We Need to Finally Talk About Craft Beer Prices

Edit: Well, that was quick. The new Other Half Brewing Chicago location heavily referenced in this article has seemingly backpedaled from the initial $16 price point of various pints following local outcry, announcing via social media Thursday evening that its most expensive pint will now be merely $9. That overnight, $7 reduction is certainly nice for Chicago area drinkers, though it would seemingly imply the company admitting it had massively inflated the price of those pints in the first place. Regardless, it at least brings that location’s pricing in line with prior Other Half locations. I missed it when initially publishing this story, but Revolution Brewing’s Doug Veliky also wrote about the pricing of this Other Half location, and how the associated music venue factors into it, on the Substack Beercrunchers.

It’s safe to say that the craft beer scene of a large, vibrant city like Chicago is pretty mature at this point. There are still yearly openings, sure, but so many of the new beer businesses coming to fruition these days are small, modest neighborhood joints that don’t particularly aspire to generate huge buzz or do a lot more than serve their local communities. There aren’t many national or regional brands, meanwhile, that could enter a city like Chicago and really generate headlines … but there are still a few. New York’s Other Half would be one such exception, retaining its status as makers of some of the industry’s most sought-after hazy IPAs in particular. And so, you’d naturally expect the opening this week of the company’s new south side Chicago taproom in the newly renovated Ramova Theatre to generate some appreciable buzz. And so it has–but seemingly not for the beer. Instead, the conversations of the city’s beer community I’ve seen geared around the new Other Half Chicago location are almost universally revolving around a topic that few in the beer world have wanted to discuss of late, but one of paramount importance: The price of craft beer in 2024 and beyond.

Craft beer prices are difficult to talk about, especially if you possess any cognizance at all of the challenges that the entire beer industry is facing at the moment. Last year was a brutal wake up call that felt in many aspects even more damaging than the likes of 2020, as myriad trailing factors that date back to the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to finally catch up with many small brewing operations, resulting in a still-ongoing wave of closures. In short: Making craft beer is painfully expensive these days, with sky-high costs for essentially every crucial brewing ingredient (from grain to hops to glass), shortages in things like CO2, and increased costs of labor, shipping and distribution. Beer has become inherently less profitable as every associated cost has risen–not to mention inflation–and breweries have responded with lineup diversification and price increases, though many are hesitant to raise prices to the levels they would need to in order to keep their previous profit margins in place.

The other thing that both the breweries and the rest of us need to face is the fact that consumers simply can’t be relied upon to approach this situation as objective, unemotional observers. When things cost more, people get angry–it’s as simple as that, and there’s no avoiding it. You can explain to them the various factors that go into price increases, but it will never be able to prevent sticker shock when prices simply don’t feel right to the consumer. And judging from the responses of Chicago beer geeks I follow on Twitter, this new Other Half opening felt particularly egregious when gauging the oh-so-important “vibes” of the situation.

Or as local beer influencer Chalonda White, better known as Afro Beer Chick, put it:

What kinds of prices are we talking about, here? Well, the one really catching people’s eye does seem to jump off the page: $16 pints of many of the beers on tap, including not only DIPAs but a few single IPAs as well. Suffice to say, that was more than some of the local beer geeks could stomach, and the idea of a $16 pint immediately raised a plethora of questions.

Why, for instance, does it seem that Other Half prices in Chicago are significantly higher than what the company charges for the same beers in its other taprooms in New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.? Of those taprooms, I’ve been to the facility in our nation’s capital (a very expensive city) within the last few months and can confirm that prices were significantly lower, though I can’t say exactly what they were when I visited. Posters on Twitter, however, seem to suggest that pints of some of the same beers could be had for merely $8, which is quite a difference from the $14 or $16 they cost in Chicago. Even odder: Why are the prices per oz lower on all the 12 oz pours in Chicago than they are on 16 oz pours? Why offer 16 oz glasses at all, if they’re a worse deal than smaller pours?

The comparison feels especially stark when scrolling down to the Ramova Grill cocktail menu, which ranges from $14-16. You’re telling me that the house Ramova Old Fashioned, made with “overproof bourbon, sarsaparilla root, cherry bark and ‘orange cream citrate’” is $14, while a pint of 7.5% ABV hazy IPA is $16? With consumer perception of cocktails as inherently more “upscale” than beer–even the most hyped craft IPA–it’s pretty much impossible to ask that consumer to rationalize the pint of beer costing more than the cocktail from the same bar in this context. The brain just doesn’t want to accept it, not when the average 4-pack of 16 oz cans costs roughly the same in package stores these days.

Then there’s the local context to consider. The Ramova Theatre is located in Bridgeport, traditionally a diverse, working class bastion of the city’s south side. Just a few blocks down 35th Street, the Chicago White Sox play in Guaranteed Rate Field, and although they saddle fans with some of the higher beer prices in baseball, they’re still well under $16 pints. Even closer to the Ramova is the former site of Chicago’s oldest bar, Schaller’s Pump, which finally closed in 2017 following 136 years in operation. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that this kind of place was not populated by the type of clientele who would have stood for $16 pints from their local craft brewery. This isn’t the Gold Coast, or Lincoln Park: It’s a modest urban community with high expectations of value, and the sudden arrival of this kind of pricing can’t help but feel like gentrification.

Paying these kinds of prices for beer in a stadium or a club? That’s one thing, as consumers have effectively been trained to expect gouging in those locales. But paying those prices at a brewery’s own taproom is another thing entirely, whether or not the prices reflect the economic pains this industry is experiencing. In particular, it’s a rough look for a brand new brewery opening, one that seems to say: “This place cost a ton of money to bring to life, and we need to start recouping that immediately.” And perhaps that will work for a while, as the city’s local beer community makes their pilgrimages to investigate the hot new kid on the block in the next few months. But indefinitely? I’m not so sure about that.

Nor is this really a story about a brand like Other Half, specifically–this week’s opening of the Chicago location simply provides a jumping off point for a topic that has been stewing in the back of my mind for quite a while now, and it sounds like Other Half might already be considering changes in the wake of these complaints. Rather, this likely feels like a familiar experience to beer geeks regardless of where they’re living in 2024. In my own city of Richmond, Virginia, I’ve watched prices creep up and outpace inflation dramatically in the last two years. This has had the unfortunate effect of transforming the vibe of some of Richmond’s more modest local watering holes–taprooms that have gone from “a good place for a cheap weeknight drink” to “Do I really want to spend $8.50 on a pint of kolsch?” over the course of 2022-2023. It’s becoming more frequent that my wife and I decide to abstain instead, and I doubt we’re alone.

Much has been made of beer’s overall market share suffering in recent years, losing ground to the likes of wine, spirits, premixed cocktails and even other malt-based alcoholic beverages. Countless factors are suggested whenever we see dismal data like 2023’s overall decline in beer production: Demographic swings away from beer as a hip beverage, reduction in overall drinking rates, or disenchantment with beer styles or the industry itself. And yet, when I actually browse beer communities on reddit, or listen to beer conversation among acquaintances, these factors are rarely discussed. What they’re all actually talking about, most of the time? It’s price. They’re people frustrated with the idea of $20 or $25 four-packs of IPA cans, not-so-surprisingly observing just how much more perceived value they can get with their dollar elsewhere. Might I suggest that it’s these consumers who are most likely to be migrating away to other sectors–people who haven’t necessarily become less interested in beer, but can no longer deny that beer simply feels like a poor value in 2024?

Or to put it another way: Can you blame someone for buying a bottle of whiskey or gin for $20, or a bottle of red wine for $10, when the hot new brewery taproom down the street is now asking $16 for a pint of IPA? At what point does beer just become entirely too hard to justify?

At the end of the day, 2023 was a terrible year for the world of craft beer. This year has just begun, and I’d like to believe that it represents the opportunity to reverse beer’s fortunes, or at least staunch the bleeding … but this inherently feels like wishful thinking. One thing is certain: Beer pricing has made consumers feel particularly anxious, and time alone will be slow to minimize the perception of lost value. Breweries may need to learn to have these conversations with their customer base, or risk losing customers who can no longer easily justify the cost of a pint.

Jim Vorel is a Paste staff writer and resident craft beer and spirits geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more drink writing.

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