When beer prices get out of hand, head to social media

We’ve written lately about beer prices getting out of hand at bars in New York City. With the growing popularity of craft beer in the city, it’s no surprise that some businesspeople might try to take advantage of the boom by driving up prices.

How do we combat this?

Well, we always recommended voting with your wallet, but another option might be to harness social media. Above was a Twitter conversation between a bar patron and Hill Farmstead. When Rattle-N-Hum charged $9 for an 8-ounce pour of their Motueka Pale Ale, someone smelled a rat. And they were right to: between the time the beer left the brewery and was tapped at the bar, it was marked up by 1256%!

Last month, another Twitter user red-flagged an Upper West Side supermarket for charging well above the suggested retail price for a four-pack of Sixpoint Diesel:

Of course, as Sixpoint points out, bars and stores are free to charge whatever they want for the beer they get from a distributor regardless of what they paid for it. But without this kind of feedback, the breweries aren’t necessarily keen to what price every bar and retailer is charging.

The best way to gauge whether or not a bar is overcharging for a beer is to use Beer Menus, a great resource that empowers beer drinkers with the ability to comparison shop. A dollar or two of leeway on a pint between places in the city is pretty normal, but when you’re seeing one bar sell a pint for $7 and another sell eight ounces of the same beer for $9, it might be time to raise the issue.

And while it won’t always get results, smaller breweries with limited stock can sometimes micro-manage in very powerful ways: