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In public houses (i.e., buildings licensed for the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks), the phrase free beer tomorrow (also, occasionally, free ale tomorrow) sometimes occurs on notices used to trick patrons into returning: because tomorrow is always a day away, the notice’s promise is eternally deferred.

This phrase is used by extension of any incentive or reward that is perpetually promised but never actually delivered.

—Cf. also the phrase two more and up goes the donkey.

Both the phrases free beer tomorrow and free ale tomorrow occur, for example, in a transcript of the speech that one Eli Waddington delivered at the meeting of the Pontypool Constitutional Club that was held on Tuesday 17^th November 1908—transcript published in the Pontypool Free Press (Pontypool, Monmouthshire, Wales) of Friday 20^th November 1908 [page 3, column 6]:

He (the speaker) was reading only the other day some speeches which a well-known Radical member gave before the last election. He promised cheaper food, better clothes, lower rents, higher wages, and a number of other things. In one of his speeches he come perilously near to promising free beer. (Laughter.) He (Mr Waddington) was not quite sure if free beer would not knock Free Trade into a cocked hat as an election cry for the Radical Party. Mr Waddington then related a story of a publican who put up a placard stating that he would give “free beer to-morrow,” but when to-morrow came the promise still applied to the following day. They might very well name the Radical Party the “free ale to-morrow party.” (Laughter.)

These are, in chronological order, some of the earliest occurrences of free beer tomorrow that I have found—this phase is of American-English origin:

1-: From Coney Island. A Sketch of the Place as Seen This Season, published in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, New York, USA) of Monday 24^th June 1889 [page 1, column 7]:

Noah’s Ark, kept by a man named Noah, is the most unique thing in the New Bowery. It is a buffet bar against a plank. Noah shoves out the bottles while the menagerie drinks. A sign over the bar says:
“Free lunch to-day,
Free beer to-morrow.”
And to-morrow never comes.

2-: From The So-Different Saloon, published in The Chicago Sunday Tribune (Chicago, Illinois, USA) of Sunday 17^th November 1895 [page 37, column 3]:

“The “So Different” Saloon is on Quincy street. It gets its name because it is so different. It’s a little slip of a building squeezed in between two towering structures and looks like a wedge put in to stop a crack. […]
[…]
There is one steady caller. He comes every day. He never buys anything. He opens the door, looks at one sign, appears perplexed, and goes away. He comes the next day and every day, and says nothing. He is inspired by a great hope. Its realization is far off. The sign he looks at reads:
Free beer tomorrow.
He is watching for that tomorrow to become today. That tomorrow never comes.

3-: From The Chicago Daily Tribune (Chicago, Illinois, USA) of Saturday 18^th September 1897 [page 5, column 2]—the reference is to two U.S. baseball players, Cap Anson (1852-1922) and Jimmy Ryan (1863-1923):

One on Anson.

Jimmy Ryan read yesterday that Anson had declared in an interview he would win the pennant next year. Jimmy sighed a few lines and said: “That reminds me of a time when I was a boy. I used to be out looking for the worth of my money and getting the tallest beers I could for a nickel. One day I went into a saloon. There was a sign sticking in the mirror, ‘Free beer tomorrow.’ I spotted that place. The next day I went back. The same sign was still sticking in the corner of the mirror.”

4-: From the Crawford County News (Bucyrus, Ohio, USA) of Tuesday 24^th July 1900 [page 5, column 2]:

A Republic saloon keeper put a sign up in his place of business, one day last week, which read, “Free beer tomorrow.” The next day his place was crowded. The sign is still up but tomorrow is as far off as ever.

5-: From The Bloomington Record (Bloomington, Wisconsin, USA) of Thursday 26^th July 1900 [page 4, column 3]:

—A saloonkeeper in Milwaukee remembering the fact that to-morrow never comes has hoisted a large and alluring sign: “Free Beer To-morrow.”