Everyone is writing about beer and money, but that's not the issue. He already knows a solution, which he wrote: "I'd like to halve that for 2015 and I'm looking for suggestions."
If you want to halve that, then halve that. I'm not MMM, but I suspect he'd say something like you deserve a facepunch if you know what to do and aren't doing it.
I think you're asking about motivation. You even identified the problem as emotional/motivational: "The problem is, I love beer too much to quit drinking it (good beer, that is, and therein lies the problem)."
I've found it difficult to act when my feeling is "I'm giving up something I like." Or in your case, love. Focusing on beer makes giving it up harder because you're thinking about it while trying to plan.
I enjoy beer but I've stopped drinking it, to maybe one a week, often less, and then usually because someone is giving me a free one. I've had several bottles in my fridge I haven't touched for months. Actually, I realized I was cutting it down a lot when I was watching a game at a bar and the owner, after a big score, offered a round on the house. I had already finished my beer for the day, so I declined without much thought. And this was a place with dozens of craft beers on tap.
How did I decline free delicious beer so easily?
I wasn't trying to "avoid beer," I was doing something I liked more that overrode my interest in beer. In my case I had increased my workouts and improved my diet to where I was improving my fitness. In particular, and somewhat ironically, I started approaching six-pack abs and I came to see beer as counterproductive. I'm 43 and never had six-pack abs before and i find I enjoy the long-term emotional reward from my fitness more than the fleeting sensory pleasure of the beer.
My particular alternative is just me. You don't have to make fitness your thing, but if your mental model for enjoying beer is less beer, the alternative sounds worse than the status quo. Changing won't make sense logically or motivationally. If you have something you like more, you'll choose that option without effort.
I recommend looking for something you like more and stop thinking about beer. In the meantime, I say enjoy the beer. Maybe you can find a use for the money, maybe you create another hobby that keeps you from the beer, maybe you find something else you like to drink more (vegetable smoothies come to mind, but that's just me), etc. Probably close to seven billion people drink less than you, so you have many examples to choose from.
I recommend fitness. I was fit before I started the process that crowded most beer out, but I'm more fit now and I love it. Plus it's free and improves many other parts of life.