The Reason Why People Won’t Splurge on Beer | The Wall Street Journal

When it comes to booze budgets, people will spend vast sums for vintage wine and bourbon—no string of zeros seems too long. Yet despite craft beer’s decades-long ascendance, there remains a ceiling to how much even the geekiest IPA aficionado will shell out for a brew. “Beer is [still] considered a commodity,” said Justin Catalana, CEO and co-founder of Fort Point Beer Co. in San Francisco. “People talk about a six-pack’s cost the same way they do a carton of eggs.”

For my latest article for the Wall Street Journal, I looked at why beer has an artificial price ceiling—and how breweries are looking to stay afloat amid choppy economic waters by cutting costs but not quality.