It turns out that, on a global scale, beer costs in the United States are pretty steep (you'd think being the home of Budweiser would tip the scales a bit, but apparently not). GoEuro published an analysis of the cheapest places around the globe to get blitzed on beer, and only four cities in the States made it to the top 50.
The three cheapest places to pick up cold ones in the U.S.? GoEuro's Beer Price Index for 2016 found that Los Angeles (yes, really), Boston (of course), San Francisco, and Chicago ('da beers) were the top 4 cheapest U.S. cities globally.
While L.A. is the cheapest U.S. city to rank globally, it ranks 34th cheapest overall, with the average cost of a beer purchased either in a bar or in a supermarket coming our to $3.64. Next up comes Boston, where the average cost of beer is $3.66. A beer in third place San Francisco will run you an average of $3.78, and in Chicago it's $4.48.
As a point of comparison, the cheapest city for beer in the world is Bratislavia, Slovakia, where the average cost of beer is just $1.65 (take note for your next Euro-trip).
In each of the U.S. cities to make the top 50, GoEuro found that the average annual consumption of beer per capita was 23 gallons. Recent studies have revealed that in 2013, Americans aged 21 and over consumed 2.46 gallons worth of pure ethanol from beer in 2013.
That same year, the state of North Dakota had the highest annual per capita consumption rate for beer, at 43.3 gallons. Curiously, none of the globally cheapest places to buy beer made the 2013 list for highest rates of consumption.
