Are beer prices increasing?

Maybe the government will help us....

Treasury brews up ideas for a more competitive beer market - ABC News (go.com)

 

Voodoo has a limited box set of 5 beers and a glass for $250…and I’m thinking about entering the lottery.

 

From the above linked article (with emphasis in bold by me):

“Pease says his association is working on building solutions for smaller brewers where federal enforcement is lacking.

“What has been a consistent pattern over the past 12 to 24 months is wholesaler consolidation, where there are fewer and fewer beer distributors, which inhibits small brewers’ ability to go to market," he said. “What we’re doing now is pushing for direct to consumer shipping.”

Now, how the heck is “direct to consumer shipping” going to improve (decrease) beer costs overall?

I am somewhat fortunate that I live in PA where I am permitted to order beer from out of state craft breweries but I have yet to do so since I personally refuse to pay the cost of shipping those beers. The prices that breweries charge to ship their beers would result in those beers being quite expensive.

I personally purchase my beers either at local beer retailers (e.g., local supermarkets, retail beer distributors) or directly from the breweries’ taprooms.

In my opinion, what Bob Pease (Brewers Association) is “pushing” for is not what I consider to be consumer friendly from a cost perspective. Hopefully he has better ideas here that he can push instead.

Cheers!

@JuliaLauren

 

Well a chocolate bar I like recently kept the price the same but got smaller.
I guess little glasses of DIPA may get more push.

 

If you can order beer from anyone and have it shipped directly to you that could theoretically lower prices due to increased competition amongst breweries. That would take a while to see, though, and would not work right now with the higher cost of ingredients.

 

I potentially could envision that being the case if craft beer consumers were price sensitive shoppers. It appears to me, based upon my readings, that many (most?) BA craft beer consumers are less sensitive to price than I am as a craft beer consumer. For those craft beer consumers there does not seem to be much incentive for craft beer consumers to lower prices.

Cheers!

P.S. I am fortunate that in SEPA there are plenty of high quality beers available at reasonable (e.g., less than $14/16 for a four-pack/16 ounce cans) prices so I choose to not pay a lot for beer.

 

I agree with this because to me it's like any other hobby where the better the product, the more expensive the item will be, and folks are looking for a quality product. But just like anything if some breweries start to make a quality product for cheaper and more people buy from that brewery, others will need to follow suit.

Agreed. Our prices can suck but the flip side is we do have a lot of great options, especially locally.

 

My most recent purchase was a six-pack/12 ounce cans of Sly Fox Reality Czech for $9.50 (at the Phoenixville Brewpub). I discussed this beer earlier on NBW today (as you are aware).

Cheers!

 

Yes

 

I remember 99 cent six packs. Prices have continually gone up since then. That must have been a long time ago, in typing this I realized that there is no cent character on my keyboard. My manual typewriter probably had one.

 

Recent article about Ball's new crazy policy. https://www.cpr.org/2022/02/15/colo...ns-raise-prices-ball-drops-smaller-customers/

 

Beer prices are going up, but am I also getting a raise to match?

 

Haha, that’s not how this works. We’ll just continue with the erosion of the US school system to the point that no one cares when child labor laws are dropped so our kids can help. Easy way to fill all those labor shortages.

 

It is if your union and employer have a contract that includes cost of living raises, or your employer has such a program or if you collect Social Security.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-16/heineken-says-outlook-is-becoming-cloudier-as-costs-increase

This article contains a lot of the sentiments already expressed in this thread. It also has some concrete figures from Heineken to illustrate the issue: aluminum costs up 50% from January 2021, price of barley has doubled since last year, etc. if one of the world’s largest brewers is feeling the pinch, surely our local places are too.