The U.S. average cost for a beer at a restaurant or bar has reached $6.52! Wow, that tells me how long it’s been since I went out drinking.

“The most expensive city to buy a beer in is New York, at an average price of $9.16, and the most expensive states are New York, Hawaii, and California.

“The most affordable city to buy a beer in is San Antonio, and the places with the highest cost growth are New Mexico, at 4.8%, and Philadelphia at 3.3%,” The Food Institute recounts about findings by Toast.

Following the end of Prohibition in the early 1930s, nickel beer became common across the country. Often, in those tough times, free food came with the beer.

My dad would talk with joy about the free sandwiches. We even once went to an old bar in the pre-gentrified Washington, D.C. that still had that perk in the 1970s.

Those days are long gone now. I suppose the only upside to expensive beer is that it’s much tougher to get drunk on beer now than it was when I was in college in Milwaukee, the original beer town, where we were served free beer on campus once a year.

If you plan to belly up to the bar now, be sure your wallet is full first.