Outrageous beer prices aren’t limited to pints

We’ve been hammering away at the fact that not all craft beer should be sold at $7 a pint. The phenomenon of the $7 is creating two problems: Price Creep, where more and more bars believe it’s acceptable to charge $7 for all pints of beer, and Price Acceptance, where beer drinkers unwilling to comparison shop accept $7 as a reasonable price for a pint of any beer.

Unfortunately, these concepts aren’t limited to the pricing of pints; it also applies to beer sold in bottle shops - especially when the beer is a small-batch, rare, or once-a-year release.

A couple of our readers reported sticker-shock upon visiting Top Hops Beer Shop (94 Orchard St., at Broome St., Lower East Side) to pick up a bottle of the Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout last week. The pricetag for one 22-ounce bottle? $30. Chicago stores were selling it as low as $12.99, and even in the New York area we saw it priced at a still-reasonable $19.99. But $30? We have never seen a single bottle of any American craft beer retail for that price anywhere in New York… except at a bar or restaurant, where we’re begrudgingly willing to accept that kind of markup. Although Downtown Bar & Grill (160 Court St., at Dean St., Cobble Hill) is selling bottles for $40, while the average restaurant in Chicago is pricing them between $22 and $26.

Of course, all stores and bars have the right to price it any way they wish, and as long as people buy the beer, they’re going to continue to charge that price. But if someone is obsessed with Coffee BCS, they might be willing to pay that exorbitant $30. And in New York, they might be even more willing to shell out the money so they don’t have to cross the city five times simply trying to find a place that has it in stock.

In the early days of City Swiggers (320 E. 86th St., at 2nd Ave., Upper East Side) late last year, when there was anger in one online forum over a sudden change in the price of Dogfish Head Faithfull Ale. In one week, the price for a bottle jumped from $17.99 to $25.99, to the outcry of a repeat customer who had come back for more. A Yelp reviewer claimed that the store’s owner justified the markup to him via email:

One person came from another area to buy them out, and complained when we limited quantity. [Others] weren’t satisified with sharing, and tried to find a loophole in our limit by returning the next day for more.

Due to [selfish people], we were forced to raise the price so that others could try this limited beer.

You can see both sides here and understand the struggle that retailers have. Stores have an incentive to keep their rarer beers in stock, as it’ll drive more people into the store. And we hate to see people buying large quantities of these beers only to turn around and sell them on eBay for five, ten, or a hundred times the retail price to beer geeks in places outside of the brewery’s distribution footprint.

But price-gouging does nobody any good. If one store drives up their prices to keep the hoarders from hoarding, other stores will likely follow suit, and that will result in a “price creep” that will make it acceptable in the eyes of retailers and gullible consumers that paying $25 for a large-format bottle of 5% ABV beer is somehow reasonable. It’s not. Neither a beer black market nor price-gouging is good for craft beer.

Many people attribute craft beer’s success during the economic downturn to its accessibility - it’s an affordable luxury. Charging over a dollar per ounce at retail for beer makes it just as expensive as a mid-priced wine - something that could turn many occasional craft beer drinkers off and drive them back to cheap, mass-produced beer. And forget about the potential craft beer drinkers; as the price gap between macro and craft beer widens, craft beer looks less and less attractive to a price-conscious consumer.

Unfortunately, the explosion of craft beer across the country will breed opportunists - people who are in it for the money, not the love of the beer. Those people aren’t just the retailers or the bar owners; they’re also the beer drinkers who run beer on the black market and the beer reviewers who hype rare beers and drive people to pay outrageous sums of money to drink what may otherwise beer a mediocre brew.

Thankfully, our free market also allows us to choose where we buy our beer. We can choose not to buy these beers at these prices.There are plenty of suckers - beer-worshippers, we call them - that will pay any price to get their hands on a beer that they love, and that drives up beer prices for all of us. Don’t be a beer-worshipper. Act smart when you buy beer, and vote with your wallet. Buyer beware!