The problem with our beer prices

And how we can address it.

As I was sitting on the sofa a few nights ago, lost in the ether of the internet, I stumbled upon a new craft beer bar on Banthat Thong Road called Beer Pradith. I looked it up on Google and saw that it was highly rated. Swiping through photos, I liked what I saw for the most part. Twenty-plus taps, a sort of steampunk design, a Thai food menu that sounded interesting—absolute bait for beer geeks in Thailand.

Then I saw the prices.

I was astonished to see beers that cost about the same as a drink at a high-end cocktail bar in Bangkok. What appeared to be a 330ml double IPA from a Thai brewery would set you back THB 450, about $13. A locally made lychee mead cost THB 400. The cheapest beer on the board, a lager, went for THB 250.

Lest anyone think I’m calling out this bar, I’m not. If you visit practically any craft beer bar in Bangkok, you’ll notice that prices have soared. Thai craft beer and imports alike. So no, I’m not slamming one (presumably good) bar. I’m talking about a pernicious little problem: a spike in pricing that I believe could set the whole industry back.  

Craft beer’s bougie makeover

I can’t remember the first time I saw a beer marked above THB 400. I’ve seen that number so often these days—whether I’m drinking at import-focused bars like Mikkeller and Hair of the Dog or a local spot like Brewave—that I’ve become numb to it. Some beers go for more than THB 500, and not just barrel-aged stouts, either.

I feel confident that everyone reading this has felt this pain and gets why imports are expensive. Taxes, logistics and shipping, inflationary pressures. Need I go on?

When you account for the many hoops that importers must jump through, it’s easy to see why an IPA will set you back more here than it would in Chicago or Berlin. Relative to cost of living, at least. Which, yeah, let’s take a look at that.

In Bangkok, the minimum wage is THB 363 per day. The people who make the minimum tend to work in manual labor—construction workers, street cleaners, janitors. It should go without saying that they are not craft beer drinkers.¹ Young people with disposable income are. But Bangkok doesn’t have a massive middle class, and young people don’t get paid much. A normal starting salary for a white-collar job might be THB 20,000 per month, give or take.

Those jobs tend to be staffed by university-educated, generally aspirational twentysomethings. The kind who might be craft beer curious, in other words. I’m no math expert, but just two or three double IPAs could drain 5% from that salary.

Part of the paradox of beer in Thailand is rooted in its positioning.

Beer basically everywhere is the drink of the everyman, the common person. In Thailand, beer is something of a luxury item because it’s expensive.²

Where I come from—the Midwest, the bulging waist of America’s beer belt—craft beer is not fancy. It’s what you drink if you like punk rock, bluegrass, or grunge, you’re middle-class, or you have nothing better to do. It doesn’t exclude first-jobbers, because you can always find something good for cheap, a la Founders Solid Gold.

No offense to anyone, least of all myself, but Thailand’s craft beer drinkers are cut from the same neo-hipster cloth as those in the West. They like good beer—and they’ll pay for a nice one—but they also like to have more than the occasional drink.

The catch is the market doesn’t have a lot of high-quality beers that are both affordable and accessible.

The math doesn’t math

Usually, independent players compete against the titans of industry in one of two ways: by having either a superior product or a cheaper one.  

At the beginning of the craft beer movement in Thailand, when Chit Beer first took its small axe to the big trees of power, it seemed likely that consumers would get both better and cheaper beer sooner than later. At the very least, the budding community of beer rebels seemed poised to force the beer giants to up their games.

The beer improved. Then it plateaued as brewers had to circumvent silly laws by contract brewing. Then it improved again. And now, with Bangkok’s microbreweries a year or two into their legal existence, it seems to have plateaued again.

There are some excellent beer brands and brewers in Thailand.³ From top to bottom, the quality has improved from the freewheeling days of illicit homebrewing. But Thailand still hasn’t made the leap that other beer cultures have, for lots of reasons.⁴

The problem is, even though many beers available at bars are now being brewed in Thailand, the prices have climbed before the quality has.

There are valid reasons for Thai craft beer to be not cheap. Equipment costs. Brewing materials. Licensing.⁵ A Thai-made craft beer shouldn’t cost as little as a glass of Singha. But it stands to reason that Thai craft beer shouldn’t cost as much as a world-class IPA brewed by Range. The fact that they often do could hinder progress.

As mentioned above, many consumers in Thailand don’t have strong purchasing power. Some can afford a THB 400 stout occasionally, but most will gravitate to more affordable beers. This is something I notice at one of my favorite bars, Eight Days a Week. Lots of customers drink Singha instead of the craft beer on tap. That’s fine! Drink what you like and within your means, both financially and physically.

But if you have 20-plus beers on tap and few sell quickly, you might end up with an IPA that sits on the lines for months. How can you guarantee quality when your products don’t move? And how does that encourage brewers to make better beer?

How to make it better

I talked about this earlier. Thai brewers should be thinking about making affordable beers, and making them accessible. That’s the hole to fill. Some are doing that.

Mahanakhon and The Brewing Project, for example, make really good beers. Neither has its own brewing facilities, so scaling could be an issue. Knowing the teams behind both, I’m sure they’re looking for solutions both to grow and improve their products.

Chithole has also done a fantastic job of championing Thai beer. At THB 250 for a pint at the bar, prices still aren’t where they should be; the quality, while improving, can be hit or miss; and canning, distributing, and scaling are non-starters at the moment. I wouldn’t bet against Chit. It’s just hard to tell how soon it will all click.

There are outside comparisons. One friend of Critical Drinking resides in Kenya. He explained that when Nairobi’s first craft beers entered the market, they were pricy and mediocre. In time, the quality improved gradually, but prices stayed high. Eventually, new startup breweries opened, offering cheaper beers that sold better and moved faster. To compete, the original breweries had to find ways to bring their prices down without sacrificing quality—or improve quality to justify their prices.

I’m bordering on a neoliberal fever dream here, but this is the way business works in emerging markets. Thai beer will get better if there’s a reason for it to get better. Typically, that reason is competitive pressure. We don’t really have it right now.

Support local, but don’t settle, either

Drinking local is a wonderful thing to do. The right thing to do. But consumers can’t be expected to shoulder the burden of a brewer’s growing pains. The beer has to be good, or else drinking local becomes an exercise in empathy. It also sets unreasonable expectations. It suggests that anyone can and should be able to sell a less-than-perfect product at an inflated price. There’s no risk; only reward at the expense of consumers.

It’s hard to tell how many brewers are attempting to bring on advisors, learn new techniques, or use their earnings to invest in better equipment. The complex laws and coup-y nature of the Thai political machine no doubt make it hard to plan too far into the future. Craft beer is in an odd place globally,⁶ but craft beer in Thailand has always been mired in uncertainty because of forces beyond brewers’ control.

But we can still expect more from the industry, too. If we want our beer to get better, and faster, we should look at the way we price our products and reconsider the products we make, too. Some super-clean pilsners and session pale ales that cost, say, THB 150? That might be the catalyst that takes Thailand’s beer scene to the next level.

1. They drink other things, like ya dong, that I’ll cover in a future story.

2. I always find it odd when a beer bar looks like a cocktail bar or fancy restaurant, or when the staff give you actual service. Like, why aren’t my shoes sticking to the floor? Shouldn’t my beer come with a slap in the face? What am I missing here?

3. Baan Bangkok, Maalstroom, Puma, and Samata come to mind. There are obviously others.

4. Like, I don’t know, the fact that it’s still kind of illegal in most instances.

5. Recall that Thai breweries have to obtain environmental certification, and it isn’t cheap.

6. Just this week, Lagunitas announced it would be closing its Chicago brewing facilities, and so the blood-letting continues.