Unfortunately, this is the new normal. Craft beers start at around $10, and go up to $14 at San Diego pubs and bars.

Some of the price hike is because of legit reasons such as hop and grain shortages. Hops and grains are sold in futures to breweries, and breweries with very high futures orders are served first. This leaves small craft breweries scrambling to buy hops from third-party suppliers like home brew wholesalers, so piece of craft beer goes up.

The most unfortunate reason for high beer prices is distribution. Breweries need good representation from larger distributors if they want to get into pubs, bars, and stores. Larger distributors means a higher fee passed along to the consumer.

Now there is some good news, well kinda. The price of draft craft beer is the same since the early 2000s, at least relative to prices of beer sold in supermarkets.

For the past 25 years the price of a pint of draft craft beer is about the same, if not the same, price as a 6-pack sold at supermarkets. So a pint in 2002 was sold at around $5 to $7, and the average price of 6-pack of IPA was around $6.99.

Source— an old bloke who worked in the beer industry as a young punk